TEAC EXTERNAL FLOPPY DISK DRIVE

Teac External Floppy Disk Drive, retail $85.00 ($49.99 factory direct) (https://shop.teac.com...)
Manufactured by Teac (www.teac.com)
Last updated 05-07-10




This isn't a laser, flashlight, or other product specifically designed to produce light, but since it uses an LED for a rather important function, I figured "what the H-E-Double-Bendy-Straws" - I'd probably get eternal darnation if I failed to add it to this website because of that LED in it anyway.

This is an external 3.5" floppy disk drive that plugs into any free USB port on your computer. Its purpose is to allow computers without floppy disk drives to read data from 1.44 megabyte 3.5" floppies (remember those things?)


Size of product w/hand to show scale SIZE



This disk drive is actually quite easy to use.

Plug the cord coming from the disk drive into any free USB port on your desktop or laptop computer. The computer (at least Windows XP machines anyway) should almost immediately "sense" its presence and automatically install the correct driver. According to the product's web page on the Teac website, this product can be used on both Windows and Mac operating systems.

At this point, the disk drive should now be working.
Insert a 3.5" floppy diskette into the front of the drive, orienting it so that the circular metal "hub" on one side of the diskette faces down and the rectangular metal "gate" on the diskette goes in first. Gently push in on the diskette until it latches into place.

Here, let's show you with a couple of photographs...snap...click...and it's off to the Fotomat we go!





To access the content, click on the START button at the lower left of your display (assuming that you have the taskbar & system tray at the bottom like most Windows users), click on the text labelled "My Computer", and click on "3― Floppy (A:)".
From that point, you may treat it like any disk drive and run programs, copy to it, delete from it, etc.

Whenever the disk is being read from or written to, a yellow-green LED on the front of the product will come on. It is rather important to NOT remove the diskette when this light is on; data on the diskette can become corrupted (scrambled) or lost if you do!

When you're finished with the diskette and want to put it away or swap it for another, firmly press the "eject" button located on the right front of the disk drive's face; the diskette should now come out far enough for you to grab with your fingers -- allowing you to pull it the rest of the way out of the drive.

You may now either insert another diskette or unplug the disk drive from the USB port.



This product obtains all of the power it requires right from the USB port, so I do not have to tell you which part to remove, huck into an open-pit uranium mine so that a piece of heavy machinery runs over & flattens it, and then rather emphatically tell you not to.

Like most USB devices, the Teac External Floppy Disk Drive is hot swappable; simply meaning that you do not have to turn your computer off before plugging it in or unplugging it.

Unable to measure current usage due to how the product was constructed.



The Teac External Floppy Disk Drive is designed to be a computer peripheral, not a flashlight meant to be carried around, thrashed, and abused; so I won't try to drown it in the toliet tank, bash it against a steel rod or against the concrete floor of a front porch, let my mother's big dog's ghost or my sister's kitty cats spring a leak (uranate) on it, run over it with a 450lb Celebrity motorised wheelchair, stomp on it, use a medium or large ball peen hammer in order to bash it open to check it for candiosity, fire it from the cannoņata, drop it down the top of Mt. Erupto (I guess I've been watching the TV program "Viva Piņata" too much again - candiosity is usually checked with a laser-type device on a platform with a large readout (located at Piņata Central {aka. "Party Central"}), with a handheld wand that Langston Lickatoad uses, or with a pack-of-cards-sized device that Fergy Fudgehog uses; the cannoņata (also located at Piņata Central) is only used to shoot piņatas to piņata parties away from picturesque Piņata Island, and Mt. Erupto is an active volcano on Piņata Island), send it to the Daystrom Institute for additional analysis, or perform other indecencies on it that a flashlight might have to have performed on it. So this section of the web page will be ***SIGNIFICANTLY*** more bare than this section of the web page on a page about a flashlight.

In fact, that spectrographic analysis below may very well be it.

Back when I programmed the Commodore 64 computer, I was familiar with the system at the hardware level; even down to the data density and physical locations of data stored on the diskette (for example, the disk directory started at track 18 sector 0 if I remember correctly), but I honestly don't know this type of data for floppy drives on the pee-cee.


Spectrographic analysis
Spectrographic analysis of the yellow-green "drive activity" light in this product.

USB2000 spectrometer graciously donated by P.L.








TEST NOTES:
Product was given to me by my stepmother in mid-2009.

Product was made in Malaysia.
A product's country of origin really does matter to some people, which is why I published it on this web page.


UPDATE: 00-00-00






    MANUFACTURER: Teac
    PRODUCT TYPE: USB external 3.5" floppy disk drive
    LAMP TYPE: LED
    No. OF LAMPS: 1
    BEAM TYPE: N/A
    SWITCH TYPE: N/A
    CASE MATERIAL: Plastic
    BEZEL: N/A
    BATTERY: N/A
    CURRENT CONSUMPTION: Unknown/unable to measure
    WATER- AND PEE-RESISTANT: Light splatter-resistant at maximum
    SUBMERSIBLE: NO WAY HOZAY!!!
    ACCESSORIES: Driver CD-ROM
    SIZE: ~4.10"W x ~6.30"D x ~0.90"H
    WEIGHT: ~0.70 lbs
    WARRANTY: 1 year

    PRODUCT RATING:

    Product was not intended to be a light-emitter, so the conventional "star" rating will not be used.





Teac External Floppy Disk Drive * https://shop.teac.com...






Do you manufacture or sell an LED flashlight, task light, utility light, or module of some kind? Want to see it tested by a real person, under real working conditions? Do you then want to see how your light did? If you have a sample available for this type of real-world, real-time testing, please contact me at ledmuseum@gmail.com.

Please visit this web page for contact information.

Unsolicited flashlights, LEDs, and other products appearing in the mail are welcome, and it will automatically be assumed that you sent it in order to have it tested and evaluated for this site.
Be sure to include contact info or your company website's URL so visitors here will know where to purchase your product.


WHITE 5500-6500K InGaN+phosphor 
ULTRAVIOLET 370-390nm GaN 
BLUE 430nm GaN+SiC
BLUE 450 and 473nm InGaN
BLUE Silicon Carbide
TURQUOISE 495-505nm InGaN
GREEN 525nm InGaN 
YELLOW-GREEN 555-575mn GaAsP & related
YELLOW 585-595nm
AMBER 595-605nm
ORANGE 605-620nm
ORANGISH-RED 620-635nm
RED 640-700nm
INFRARED 700-1300nm
True RGB Full Color LED
Spider (Pirrahna) LEDs
SMD LEDs
True violet (400-418nm) LEDs
Agilent Barracuda & Prometheus LEDs
Oddball & Miscellaneous LEDs
Programmable RGB LED modules / fixtures
Where to buy these LEDs 
Links to other LED-related websites
The World's First Virtual LED Museum
Legal horse puckey, etc.
RETURN TO OPENING/MAIN PAGE
LEDSaurus (on-site LED Mini Mart)



This page is a frame from a website.
If you arrived on this page through an outside link,you can get the "full meal deal" by clicking here.