In the "filesystems and I/O" portion of my Operating Systems course in college today.

[seanwbruno@infosec.exchange]

In the "filesystems and I/O" portion of my Operating Systems course in college today. Brought some floppy disks in to help understanding storage system history and the archaic methods for data organization: tracks, sectors, partitions, etc.

I was surprised at how much the disks were investigated and examined by the students and how much curiosity was expressed. We almost had to suppress questions to get to the course material.

I think this is instructive. I'll try and incorporate some kind of tactile thing this spring when I'm teaching.

#retrocomputing #teaching

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@seanwbruno You might want to throw in some Sinclair microdrive cartridges to confuse them even more. 😀

[seanwbruno@infosec.exchange]

@amoroso I really did want to bring a #c64 drive in with its top case removed so we can watch the drive head seek around when commanded with the drive alignment program.

With only 16-20 students, that is practical, with 60-100 I'd have to move that to a lab demonstration.

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@seanwbruno That would be a great demo as these days computers no longer have much mechanical beyond fans.

[seanwbruno@infosec.exchange]

@amoroso I think it might be useful to do this or some kind of bread board with some 4164 style memory that can be read and written via a arduino or other micro controller to demonstrate the bytes and bits.

I'm very interested in what other types of teaching that can be done to augment the standard PPT slides and lecture.

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@seanwbruno You may compare notes with @elb

https://social.sdf.org/@elb/114889457426493864

[Guest]

@amoroso @seanwbruno When I did a minor in physics, way back, we had a lab course where we had to built a character generator using 7400 logic and an oscilloscope.

[amoroso@oldbytes.space]

@gmc Pretty cool.