One of the oddities from the old computing world was this #standalone #floppy drive unit.
It spoke RS-232 and was designed to...well, I'm not really sure. I acquired a bunch of them when an employer went out of business, but they've kind of sat on a shelf since then.
I've written a little bit about these TechTran disk drives, check it out.
https://wereboar.com/projects/index.php/2023/01/07/the-techtran-980-standalone-5-14-disk-drive/
@wereboar I'm desperately jealous. The only thing that could make me want one more would be if it could read cassettes, too. Floppy disks over RS-232 is the pinnacle of fun!
@indigoparadox There was a similar device made by a company called ADPI that was a RS-232 addressed cassette deck.
I've seen one in my lifetime.
@wereboar I have a device very similar to this that was designed to have NC (CNC) code written to disks via the serial port and it would then be able to stream the NC code to a connceted CNC machine via serial. It has a keypad on it and can format its own disks. Hard-sectored I think.
@f15sim Very cool. I assume these were originally designed for a similar purpose.
@wereboar that sounds cursed and overcomplicated. I like it!
It was certainly an interesting piece. I really need to hook one of these up and see if it still talks.