cronbat

lauren, 15 days ago to random

Long ago in DEC PDP-11/70 days there were disk drives the size of washing machines to provide 80 or 100MB or so of storage. These all had removable disk packs, some had clear glass covers over the disks.

I used to like staring into the top of those while the disks were spinning so rapidly. I occasionally had the uncomfortable thought of what would happen if one of those disks broke loose at that speed. I also was haunted by the concept that one day I'd be removing one of those disks with the work of dozens of people on it and it would break loose from the cover (much like a big cake cover) and shatter on the floor.

Bizarrely, I now get much the same morbid thrill from staring through the top glass cover of my direct drive washing machine, which in spin cycle spins VERY fast and so looks very much like those old disk drives in action.