Don went to Canada Computers on a work-related errand, and I tagged along because I wanted to buy a floppy drive. A floppy drive? Yes, a floppy drive! I can’t put a floppy drive in an iMac, but the nutty folks at Bytecc offer a tiny USB 3½″ floppy drive for just $25. It’s powered by the USB connection as well.
Here it is:
Unlike in the photo, I assure you that the USB cable is connected to the drive!
Why did I get this thing? The main reason is that I want to create a DOS virtual machine on my Mac so I can play Begin. It’s a text-based starship combat simulator that I really enjoyed in the early 1990s. The problem was that it could be slow at times. My 12 MHz 286 could take minutes calculating the results of the turn even with only two starships. I never bothered trying larger-scale battles because it was just too slow. I’m thinking that it will be quite sprightly on today’s hardware.
I might even try installing Windows 3.0 for a laugh. Goodness knows the VM file and memory use will be ridiculously small.
Photo courtesy of Bytecc, Inc.
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