Nina KalininaThere was a brief period of time when upgrade modules for computers looked like upgrade modules for computers.
Space Hobo@nina_kali_nina We all just wanted Sony cyberdeck aesthetics without the Sony made-up-a-proprietary-lock-in-and-nobody-cared formats and protocols.
Kevin Karhan 
@spacehobo @nina_kali_nina Gilfoyle Voice "Kinda like that one?"
points at #VAIO #P11Z
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Vaio_P11Z
@kkarhan @nina_kali_nina https://www.msx.org/wiki/Sony_HB-10 ← This was more what I was going for, or maybe the HB-F1...
@kkarhan @nina_kali_nina Heck, even the standard 3½" diskette or the minidisc are design classics compared to what we all ended up with.
@spacehobo @nina_kali_nina I still think the 3,5" FDD has the supreme handling of any removeable media, which is why I advocate to copy it's design for hot-swappable SSDs
- Simply because it's just a superior design!
Tho granted if it were to help I'd accept increasing THICC-ness from 3,3mm to 5mm since that could increase mechanical stiffness and prevent idiots.from shoving it into a real 3,5" FDD drive…
- Certainly it's better than USB flashdrives and (often precariously dangling) external SSDs.
The genius engineering of the 3½ inch floppy disk
Krutonium://@kkarhan @spacehobo @nina_kali_nina https://github.com/KBtechnologies/NeoFloppy/blob/main/documentation/neofloppy.specification.md
For the record, the Helium isn't used for cooling, it's used because it's physically smaller than the atoms used in the makeup of air, and that's required due to how close the heads are to the platters.
@krutonium @spacehobo @nina_kali_nina To be precise, Helium is an excellent thermal contuctor and has way less friction compared to air or plain nitrogen, and high-capacity drives have both problems with the platters getting hot at their packaging density and having to transfer that heat away.
- Helium does solve these issues and is still (too!) cheap.
If it was mere atom size, the use of Hydrogen would be even better but like Helium that too leaks very well through tanks and enclosed metal containers and on top of that can quickly form explosive atmospheres, so it wasn't an option.
- Other gases either have the opposite properties (i.e. SF6 is an excellent insulator) or introduce other issues on top of that and are generally worse for the job.
Liquid-filled HDDs were abandoned for similar reasons on top of the incompatibility with existing drive heads.
Savely@spacehobo @krutonium @nina_kali_nina @kkarhan, helium beats even hydrogen on particle size, because hydrogen bundles up into molecules which are bigger than singular helium atoms.
@volemo @spacehobo @krutonium @nina_kali_nina point taken!
Air and espechally nitrogen being a good insulator and the effects of both laminar and turbulent flow forces acting on the heads due to the spacial density and the heat concentration make it necessary to use some sort of coolant/thermal conductor with negligible resistance. Most liquid coolants would have way too much force so unless extremely slow access and transfer speeds (i.e. a 600rpm instead of 5400rpm drive) were to be accepted.
- Personally I think that #SMR & #Helium drives are a bad direction given the unpreticably worsening performance and "write amplification" with (SMR) and the wasteful use of a valuable element needed for nore important tasks (Helium).
Instead, the use and development of #Flash and #NVRAM, espechally #FeRAM and #NvSRAM should be prioritized.
@kkarhan @volemo @spacehobo @nina_kali_nina But has tape though? Sure we might not be able to increase data density per inch of tape any more (though I bet we could), the density of data per reel is incredibly easy to continue expanding, since more tape makes the roll expand slower over time.
@krutonium @[email protected] @volemo @spacehobo there's new LTO release every few years, with more and more data per inch. Yes, on paper both LTO-9 and LTO-10 are "545 kbit/inch", but that's per track; the tape width is the same, but LTO-10 packs 15104 tracks while LTO-9 only had "only" 8960 tracks. These numbers are so mind-boggling, really: LTO-10 holds 1 GB of data per 1 inch of a half-an-inch tape.
Attie Grande@nina_kali_nina
> LTO-10 packs 15104 tracks
... woah, thanks for dropping that one into my consciousness! 😱
I've always loved tape, but never been very hands on with it... 😢