Monday 11 May 2009

The Area 51 TravelBug

I said yesterday I'd put some pictures of the travel bug up so here they are. The plan is to drop this in a cache tomorrow in the park behind CMU so I figured I'd better take the pictures whilst I still had the bug.


This bug is a mystery piece of equipment rescued from Area 51. Each finder takes a look at the item and attempts to identify it before moving it to a new location for another cacher to take a shot. So... any ideas? Tech-y people to the rescue?


I think whatever it is it should play music - those tooth comby bits have a couple of wires/strings running along them and the combs themselves are nice and flexible giving me a plinky-plink kind of feel. Each of the combs is actually half of a pair with some sort of connective material (or at least I assume it's connective) between them. Not sure about the purpose of that wire coil though - it does join up to the circuit board as well.

Still, if it doesn't play music then I shall suggest that or it must be a typewriter for midgets who need shelter from the rain :o) All those solder points look like tiny little keys/hammers.

Look at all that wonderful comment space ready for your suggestion... And to encourage you some more, I'll even post a picture of the electronicsy bit (that's the bit under the rain shelter). It's not a great picture though.

4 comments:

  1. I think it's a hard disk actuator and heads - this (wikipedia) is the best picture I can find.

    It looks like yours had a lot more platters than modern drives though - I count nine platters for yours (a head on each side of a platter), whereas the wikipedia photo only has two platters.

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  2. I think it's old telephone exchange bit
    Old exchanges used these weird things that spin round with the pulse of the dialling code to connect the right wires together.
    (like giant 50-pole relays)
    Looks just like the arm that spins.

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  3. Jan says disk head too, "for a pretty big disk though". Sorry Chris :o) Still, your answer sounds a lot more technical than mine :)

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  4. Can't say i've ever seen a 10 platter heard disk!

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