November 20th, 2007 by Ulaf Silchov
ULAF FIND THIS IN THE GARAGE OF BENJ TODAY. IN FACT MY MIND ALMOST DIED ON IT BECAUSE THE DEVICE MAKES A HEAVY GOOD TRIPPER. DOES ANY OF MY PERSONS UNDERSTAND WHAT IS THIS? TELL ULAF DURING THE COMMENTARY UNDER THIS MESSAGE.
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November 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Whatever it is Ulaf, they printed all the writing backwards on it. I wonder if they ever got it to work!?! But it’s clearly a disk duplicator. You put a 3.5″ floppy in the top slot and it duplicates (most) of the data on a 5.25″ floppy in the bottom slot. Or vice versa. Using the keyboard, you can tell it which sectors to duplicate and which sectors to trash. Duplication progress is given on the LCD display at the top.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Well the writing says DiskFax so I am assuming it is some way to fax a document directly from a floppy disk.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
omg Ulaf that fire extinguisher is backwards too, does it in fact spread the flames rather than extinguish them in the bizarro would that this photograph represents?
Anyway, I also vote disk fax (what RC said), but I am barely knowledgeable in the old time computer stuff. I’m here for the vintage gaming. 🙂
November 20th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Huh, disk-faxing, and interesting concept. I wonder how fast the data transfer was.
November 20th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
This article should answer what you want to know:
Link
Diskfax: data transmission for people afraid of telecommunication 😉
November 20th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
A press release for this device was published exactly 17 years ago today:
Link
November 20th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_Fax
maybe this is what it is.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Actually I think it is used to copy a disk from one location to another. It needed to dial another diskfax. I guess you can say it was one of the first WAN file sharing apps or hardware.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Sorry Melina and Kyle. I missed your posts.
November 20th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Buad rate was a lightning fast 96bit/sec.
A certain Government agency used these devices until it was discovered that the Ruskies (and others) could easily intercept or even alter the signal. Encrypted versions were developed but rarely saw the light of day(that I know of).
November 20th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
http://strategytalk.typepad.com/public_strategy/2005/10/the-future-back.html
November 21st, 2007 at 3:21 am
Everybody who said it’s a file faxer is right. I can’t blame the people who thought it was a disk duplicator because it looks so similar, but the fact that the two drives were different size drives should have been a big tip-off, as well as the unnecessary number of buttons. Oh and the Diskfax logo. 😉
It would be so cool to hack these to use higher capacity drives and faster modems, and create a super-secret underground P2P network. ^__^
November 21st, 2007 at 12:10 pm
It was a joke in the spirit of Ulaf. 🙂 I noticed this article is filed under “humor”.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Yes, Ulaf. The not even remotely funny attempts at humour. I can’t wait for this crap to end. wish Benj would send out an email when this is over so we’ll all know when to starting visiting the site again. Or maybe we won’t bother…
November 21st, 2007 at 1:54 pm
ULAF SENDING BJORN NO PRESENTS FOR THE CHRISTMAS.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:45 am
The picture is the wrong way round.
The keypad unit should be on the right hand side.
The diskfax was used to send files from a floppy disk over a telephone line to another diskfax.
Later models used a 3inc drive and HD. The files were scrabled over the telephone system,so this device offered a very secure way of sending documents from one place to another.
March 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
It is indeed a diskfax. I used one when serving with HQ 1 Signal Brigade in Joint Headquarters Rheindahlen between 1996 and 1998. That one had two 1.44MB drives though.
Ours was encrypted and as far as I can remember, it was only used for sending urgent copies of classified documents between 4 or 5 other units.
It also had a high case of floppy failures, even on branded media, freshly out of the box.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I was briefly involved in the uk distribution of these devices; as far as I can remember they weren’t a huge success although they held their own in the marketplace for a brief period. Last time I looked I wasn’t a multimillionaire anyway!
Thanks for the memories though 🙂
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:57 am
I used one of these whilst serving in the Royal Air Force to send urgent documents to other units with a diskfax. Mainly larger ones which could not be sent by signal. Our hard drive filled up on ours as other staff were not downloading their data and I tried to get support for it but the comany would not answer. I think it got phased out as other means of delivery were brought in.
Good to see though, even if the picture is back to front…..
Cheers
September 12th, 2011 at 10:03 am
I was one of the people who helped invent this device. It was indeed for sending copies of disks between two places: there were three variants, one with two floppies, one with two floppies and a hard disk (otherwise you had to leave a blank floppy in it at all times in case someone sent you data), and one with tripleDES encryption so we could sell it to banks and other people who appreciated a little privacy.
Plenty of war stories behind it, especially the crypto version. There’s one at the NSA museum, and one at Bletchley Park.
October 11th, 2013 at 8:48 am
I’ve been using the Diskfax for a couple of years. It was in teh early nineties. We had to transfer adresses from Amsterdam to The Hague. We use this Diskfax. It was very high-standard for that time. Nice to see it again.