After three years of faithful service, my beloved Pioneer DVR-109 internal optical drive has failed. I replaced it today with a brand new, robust DVR-115 (which has already proven itself faster and more reliable than its predecessor—it earned those additional six increments in its name!).
Once I got the new drive in there, I disassembled the old one. And look! Such elegance, such simplicity inside old "cyclops." How many horror movies and LOST episodes and science fiction epics and Sopranos seasons (and websites and CGI models and novels and drawings) passed through that single glass laser eye (which you can just make out, in the lower half of the picture: a centered blue circle framed by support electronics)? How many Netflix movies spun on that magnetized turntable hub? But shed not a tear for this aluminum and plastic and silicon partner in crime (literally); its earnest, capable young replacement is already burning its merry way through flimsy circles of polycarbonate and vegetable dye, fiendishly inscribing them with cinematic and tele-visual binary goodness. Out with the old, in with the new.
A stalwart, tireless servant; a triumph of design and engineering—and you never even see it. (And it only costs $35 to replace.) Aren't machines beautiful?
6 comments:
The sad truth, Jordan, is that this could be a picture of the innards of a 1930's radio and I would have to accept it as whatever you described.
In fact, if you put up a picture of an elderly Elf and told me that was what made computers run until they got too old and had to be replaced by young magical creatures, I'd be no more or less baffled than by what you already wrote...
It's nice to know that some people pay attention to these things though.
But it's so cool! I wish you could see it in person.
The laser carriage slides up and down on a worm gear, which is a concept that goes all the way back to Ptolemy and other ancient Greeks (circa 1st Century B.C.) A metal post with a spiral groove, like a barber pole stripe, so that a motor can turn and the carriage can slide along the axis of the DVD.
Imagine if you could tell Ptolemy that, two thousand two hundred years later, we'd still be using his invention!
The radius, not the axis.
I really don't understand, but you make me smile...
I think that kind of enthusiasm for anything is cool.
(My wife doesn't understand the blog...but reading a Jordan post that goes over my head in another hotel room just makes me feel at home. It is very strange to feel like you know people a little just by reading paragraphs written by them floating in the ether...)
What? You said "the axis"??? The ghost of Ptolemy scorns you!!!
Miko, you silly goose, everybody knows machines are full of tiny squirrels, not elves.
That's a pretty piece of hardware. You should hang it on the wall and then place a couple of tiny Star Wars figurines inside it.
Miko, I agree completely. Checking out Horrorthon while I was in a hotel room in Indiana made me smile.
Octo, yeah—and it's small! They designed it so well. There are two circuit boards that frame it (one of which holds the motor that opens and closes the tray), and then the metal case and the plastic gearing that frames the disc compartment...and that's IT. The piece I photographed IS the machine. The top spins the disc; the bottom positions the laser. It's clever as hell.
Post a Comment