Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mysterious 20-Year-Old Analog Media?

Posted by Cliff on from the can-you-identify-it dept.

discHead asks: "Presently I work for a transcription company. We received an interesting medium that we're having trouble identifying. It looks like a 3.5-inch floppy, but just the magnetic disc itself--no plastic shell, not even a metal hub in the center. It's punched with a small center hole and an additional wedge-shaped hole nearby (but in a different position and smaller than the rectangular hole in a standard floppy's metal hub). It's foil-stamped with a 3M logo and a serial number, but 3M referred us to Imation and Imation is stumped. Our only other clues: we're told it's an analog(!) audio recording and that it dates back to about 1985. Our Google research has yet to turn up anything. Anyone know what in tarnation this thing is and what we can do with it?"

14 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. More Information by Zexarious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Show pictures and serial number, or buy us a crystal ball

  2. No pic? by MJArrison · · Score: 3, Insightful

    picture(1) == words x 1000;

  3. You hold the key to unlocking mankind! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny


    That disk is from the future! It holds the encoding of DNA from the human race 100,000 years in the future! They have cured all major disease and live in a utopic creative society! Do you realize what you have got?!?! You can be on the cover of Time Magazine!!!!

  4. Analog? by fm6 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why is Imation so sure it's an analog disk? I've never heard of disks being used for magnetic analog recording. (There's vinyl disks, of course, but they're mechnical recordings.) And why would anybody create one? Once you go to all the trouble of creating the hardware to access the tracks, you're pretty much in the digital world anyway, and might as well go all the way.

    1. Re:Analog? by SA+Stevens · · Score: 4, Informative

      Analog disks have been used for magnetic audio recording in the past. They were used for voice dictation. I have owned such a machine in the past.

      'Hardware to access the tracks' is a worm gear. There's only ONE track, you see.

  5. a game by MarkRose · · Score: 3, Funny

    Anyone know what in tarnation this thing is and what we can do with it?

    Play Frizbee?

    --
    Be relentless!
  6. Another mysterious media by Sandmann · · Score: 3, Funny

    I am in possession of another mysterious media, said to be more than twenty years old. It is a black disk, perhaps 50cm diameter, made of a mysterious material that I have not been able to identify. The disk is light and has a small (~5 mm) hole in the middle. It has a spiral shaped groove covering the entire disk with and what looks like 'bands" where the spiral groove is cut deeper. In the outermost and the innermost bands it looks like there is longer between the windings.

    Any idea what this could be? Could it be a media left behind by aliens trying to communicate with us?

    1. Re:Another mysterious media by zygote · · Score: 4, Funny

      don't bother me with such ramblings.

      busy trying to decern the origin of a retangular plastic object with a delicate ribbon of black at one end.

      strangely stamped: Best of B.T.O

      the aliens are among us!

      --
      the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
  7. Shot in the dark, courtesy of google groups by moreati · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Starting with this search: audio diskette, 1981-1988

    Lead me to posts regarding compusonics who patented and marketted such a technology. Although whether it was analouge is questionable.

    Regards, and I'd please let us know any outcome.

    Alex

    1. Re:Shot in the dark, courtesy of google groups by Txiasaeia · · Score: 3, Funny
      I know this is way offtopic, but I just love this post from that thread:

      Sorry, not to harp, but...a Laserdisk as to a CD disk as a Space Shuttle at launch is to OS-360. Both are big, and impressive--each in its way--but one is, if not the pinnacle of cahievement in its field, a milestone on the way; while the other is just a big, ugly abortion. I submit that CD is the latter. The head on a CD disk does make contact with the recording surface, unlike the Laserdisk. Both the media and the read head suffer from this. I've heard a rumor that the CD is to soon be no more, while the future of the Laserdisk seems assured, so let's not mix the two, eh?

      In a nitpicking mood,
      Dave Ihnat
      ihuxx!ignatz

      I, for one, welcome our future-assured Laserdisk overlords!

      --
      Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
  8. Re:Entire article is just a troll by gothzilla · · Score: 3, Funny

    He can't take a photograph because his other archaic recording device takes 110 film and he can't find it anywhere.

  9. Dictaphone machine by TFGeditor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think what you have might be a disk from a Dictaphone or other dictation/transcriber machine.

    I'd start by contacting Dictaphone http://www.dictaphone.com/ , then maybe Google for other Dictaphone contacts, perhaps a museum or broker of "antique" electronic gear.

    --
    Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
  10. Re:Huzzah! by mikiN · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have used such a device in the past. The media were disks with a spiral groove on one side. The groove was used to steer a magnetic recording/playback head. The device had a slider on the front to place the head anywhere on the disk.
    I used the device for voice recording and for primitive analog sampling.

    --
    The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
  11. A photo for those who doubted its existence by discHead · · Score: 3, Informative

    Long overdue, I know: a photo of the mystery disc. As I said, it looks very much like the inner portion of an ordinary floppy disk. But we're told it's about 20 years old.