I’m something of a retro technology hoarder myself, so I’ve got plenty of appreciation for hacks that enable you to sort through your old stuff. There probably aren’t too many Giz readers out there with five thousand floppies any more… but if you do, have we got a gadget for you!
MAKE has the details on this sweet Floppy Autoloader, built around a floppy disk duplicator and an Arduino; as it processes and copies each disk, it takes an archival photo. I appreciate the hackery involved, and the utility of easy hard drive access, but there’s part of my brain that still misses that distinct chunking noise the Amiga floppy drive made while accessing… or for that matter, spiralling into a Guru Meditation Error. [MAKE]