Random memory address access:
a magazine protip that tried to tell people that to make a low density 3.5 inch floppy disk into a high density one you just needed to drill a hole in the plastic casing opposite the write protect hole.

Like. Not a joke. Actually printed in a magazine. Published. Sold to the public.

At least I think it was in a magazine. It was pre internet at any rate.

@Nine i mean, it works

it's not great but it works

@squirrel
It like.. makes the computer read it as if it is a 1.44 meg disk, but anything over 720kb won't write because past that it's "bad sectors' or something doesn't it?

@Nine that's not how it works, on a high density drive it'll try to write twice the number of tracks in the same space, so it's not going to write "over the limit" but the lower quality magnetic disk will result in the data being more prone to "blurring together" and becoming unretrievable more easily, but for the most part it works

it's like in cassette tapes how the magnetic tape formulation and the speed at which it's being run affect audio quality by how much sound information it can store

@Nine only with analog audio, lossy just means hiss or lost frequencies that might still make a song listenable to

with data, you either read it right or you don't

@squirrel
Holy shit this is info I didn't even know. You are awesome :D

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Computer Fairies

Computer Fairies is a Mastodon instance that aims to be as queer, friendly and furry as possible. We welcome all kinds of computer fairies!