FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
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FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
1–10 of 66 posts
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#2Re-imagine this with USB ports instead of a floppy drive and internet instead of dial up, and you've got quite a cute data transfer device for very non technical people.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#3I never thought of something like this existing but it seems obvious now and I'm surprised I haven't seen one before. The fact that PCs had these capabilities built in was I guess enough to kill it, but that didn't stop actual fax machines from clinging on to life for far too long - I suppose they had momentum.
I'd love to see LGR or Techmoan do a video on this thing.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#4In 2018, transferring large files over the internet is still not exactly straightforward. Few years ago Skype was excellent for P2P transfers of very large files, but since then they removed this feature, and today Skype's file transfer limits are ridiculously low. Using Dropbox or Google Drive for that requires a pre-paid amount of cloud storage space: you can't really stream anything directly with any well-known widely available layman tool.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#5In 2018, transferring large files over the internet is still not exactly straightforward. Few years ago Skype was excellent for P2P transfers of very large files, but since then they removed this feature, and today Skype's file transfer limits are ridiculously low. Using Dropbox or Google Drive for that requires a pre-paid amount of cloud storage space: you can't really stream anything directly with any well-known wi…
There are a couple that use webrtc for p2p transfers. The one I know and use is https://www.sharedrop.io/ (needs javascript, obviously).
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#6Ah the "what should have been a blog post as a series of 50 tweets" format, not my favourite publishing mechanism.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#7Ah the "what should have been a blog post as a series of 50 tweets" format, not my favourite publishing mechanism.
Sometimes I write a blog then sit on it for ages and never actually publish it because writing a blog is such a grand ordeal. If this format helps people ‘just get it done’ then I’m for it.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#8Ah the "what should have been a blog post as a series of 50 tweets" format, not my favourite publishing mechanism.
Sorry. I've got ADHD, so that's really the only way I can usually do these things.
I'm planning to videoify it in the future, if that's more your style.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#9Many years ago I was involved in a product called DiskFax which was similar. Used a fax modem which gave 9600bps even over crappy links like satellite.
I believe there is one in the NSA museum as we did a version where the serial link between the modem and UART was broken out to the back so an encryption unit could be plugged in (I seem to recall it was used to send details of PoWs during the Bosnian conflicts)
One odd major use area was for sending disks with patterns for knitting machines around the world.
Oh and for those with a Sinclair fetish the case was designed by the Sinclair designer Rick Dickinson.
Re: FISK – It's a floppy disk fax machine
#10In 2018, transferring large files over the internet is still not exactly straightforward. Few years ago Skype was excellent for P2P transfers of very large files, but since then they removed this feature, and today Skype's file transfer limits are ridiculously low. Using Dropbox or Google Drive for that requires a pre-paid amount of cloud storage space: you can't really stream anything directly with any well-known wi…
transfer file with Skype? are you kidding? You had plenty of free stream service... Skype is just a bloatware/malware.