With the rise of high-speed web connections and streaming providers, bodily media has been quickly disappearing. This alteration introduced us many new conveniences, like having our music and films obtainable to us wherever we go, and on any machine. However now that we’ve got been residing on this streaming world for a while and the honeymoon is over, we’re additionally experiencing the downsides of this transition. There’s something about holding the media in a single’s hand that’s now lacking, and all too typically the content material that we love merely vanishes in the future as licensing agreements expire.
Proudly owning not one of the media we devour is carrying skinny on many individuals. This has even led to a rising development during which many younger adults have taken to accumulating DVDs, data, and different types of media simply in order that they will bodily personal it. Given this backdrop, Abe Haskins’ newest venture may be very well timed. Lacking the sport cartridges and floppy disks of yesteryear, Haskins determined to construct a retro-inspired storage answer that blends fashionable know-how with a drive and cartridge that might have slot in simply superb within the Eighties. Is it sensible? No. Will you need it? Nearly actually.
Assembling the cardboard reader (📷: Abe Haskins)
Since Haskins determined to make use of SD card storage below the hood, you may count on that this may be a easy construct, however that didn’t grow to be the case. The primary try concerned making a {custom} PCB that merely broke out the pins on an SD card adapter and routed them to pads on the fringe of the board. Contained in the drive that reads them, the method was reversed earlier than a single board laptop learn the cardboard within the regular method. Sadly, the stiffness and sharp edges of the PCB broken the case of the classic floppy drive that the parts had been housed in, so this easy strategy was out.
Subsequent Haskins experimented with 3D-printed cartridges and custom-built drives, however in a technique or one other, new issues continued to come up. If it wasn’t stickers peeling off of the plastic, it was stripped screws or misalignments attributable to comfortable and bending plastic parts. All in, Haskins spent two years working to get this venture stable.
Accomplished drives (📷: Abe Haskins)
Studying from the numerous errors that occurred alongside the way in which, Haskins lastly settled on utilizing a {custom} cartridge reader PCB with pogo pins that make contact with the cardboard’s edge connector. This afforded a measure of flexibility within the design in order that it didn’t must be fairly so exact for constant operation. This was paired with PCB cartridges which have 3D-printed covers and labels sprayed with a transparent acrylic to forestall peeling. The cartridges use both XTSD chips or SD card sockets for storage.
The cardboard reader parts had been put in right into a 3D-printed drive case that went by way of a number of rounds of sanding and sealing earlier than it was lastly spray painted. The outcome appears fairly stunning. In actuality, it might be simply an excessively sophisticated technique to learn an SD card, however there isn’t a denying that Haskins’ drive would look higher in your desk than a plain previous SD card. Try the video to see the unexpectedly troublesome path Haskins took to construct this nostalgic cartridge-based storage system.
