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by trevithick 216 days ago
This is really cool. I'm glad people are out there making this stuff even if I'll never have a use for it.

What are the use cases for this? I'm guessing retro computing and possibly very old machines tied to very obsolete hardware that can't be virtualized (e.g. manufacturing controls).
1 comments
deaddodo 216 days ago
This is most useful for retrocomputing, and that’s gonna be the target demographic.

While it’s true that industrial and manufacturing sometimes have really old hardware, that’s usually less due to them not having newer options and more due to preferring something tried and true (it “just works” for their workflow) or the sheer economics of upgrading; in most of those cases, there’s already a flow for interfacing with newer technology (FTP or USB 1.0/2.0 commonly). So this device wouldn’t offer much benefit, if any.

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actionfromafar 216 days ago
I have seen EDM machines with floppy interfaces. A great upgrade for those is a floppy emulator.
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masfuerte 216 days ago
I'd never heard of Electrical Discharge Machining. The video is less than two minutes and gives a quick introduction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_discharge_machining

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1D5DLWWMp8

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trevithick 215 days ago
Interesting, thanks for posting. I never heard of this either and read EDM as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music

Which kind of makes sense.

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