About Sector Disk!
=============================================================================
Sector Disk is an online community where users (up to 2880 on a single disk!)
can write to and read from the individual, physical sectors on a REAL 1.44mb
floppy disk hooked up to a good ol' fashioned Unix server.

Users can request sectors (512 bytes) on the disk and then they're theirs to do
whatever they want: self-advertise, joke around, create some pixel art, or just
say hi. Occasionally everyone'll even get together for a big floppy disk party
and view the floppy disk in action LIVE on video and chat together via IRC or
the stream chat! It's one heck of a way to party - a new way with an old medium
at the heart.

If you'd like to join, just head on over to the 'Join' page[0] for more
information. It's just an e-mail and a short wait* away from being online with
other Sector Disk users! Make your mark on the disk**!

Sector Disk was created and is maintained by Jesse Downing (jebug29). You can
contact me at `jebug29@sectordisk.pw` or find me over on the SDF Mastodon[1].

* Not too long but please be patient. Shell accounts are created manually!

** Some shell knowledge required, but not a lot, and there are plenty of help
and tutorials here for experienced and inexperienced users alike! This may even
be a great way to learn!

The Original Idea (and what it became)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
At some point in March or April 2020, my obsession with floppy disks began
flaring up again, and I got to thinking about what kind of interesting or flat
out ridiculous project I could come up with using this dated (but never dead!)
medium. One of my favorite floppy projects is the Floppotron[2], a huge array
of floppy disk drives, hard drives, and even an old scanner used as instruments
in a sort of stepper-motor orchestra. I began imagining what it might be like
to have that same huge array of disk drives all together in RAID, and allowing
users to log in to a public FTP server and deposit whatever they'd like (within
a given size limitation) for the world to see.

As desperately as I wanted to create something as insane as that, I simply
didn't have the number of drives (nor the money for the number of drives and
cables) needed to make it happen, so I set the idea on the backburner. It kept
coming back and itching me, though, and after meddling around with some disk
drive tools on my Altair 8800, it hit me: _sectors_.

I could assign each user a sector (or multiple sectors) on a floppy disk!
(Specifically, a 3.5", 1.44MB disk, considering I had plenty lying around and a
couple of USB floppy drives). That would give me a whole 2880 sectors to work
with, which would be plenty for a decently-sized user base (and probably about
the largest I could handle working out of my home). It would be awesome! A
message board on a floppy!

At first I actually considered simply creating some-odd number of files
on a formatted disk just to allow users to write to, but this had its
limitations considering file system overhead and general lack of control
over filesize and whatnot. Plus, I wanted users to actually be able to
write to the physically-aligned sectors on a disk and to *see* that, so
I knew simple file-sharing wouldn't be enough. I got to work, creating
several rudimentary tools using Linux's built-in `dd` command (and
learning how to use it to do exactly what I wanted to do) and meddling
around with some hexdump/hexedit programs, eventually evolving my basic,
only-root-should-ever-use-this-and-use-it-right tools into user-friendly tools.
I built up a working Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine and recruited a few friends
to beta test it as I added features and prepared it for use, and I even put a
decent bit of work into a website to really tie everything together and set
up the floppy for display. I'm still working on it as I type this, readying
more and more tools and getting the website, shell, and gopher holes ready for
public use, and readying myself to enter the world of sector retail, sectors
for sale, Sector Disk. I hope 2800 people out there will be just as excited for
this project as I am - excited to see a floppy disk come to life.

>__Read more:__ Sectors and Tracks and Bytes (Oh my!)[3]

[0] gopher://sectordisk.pw/0/join
[1] https://mastodon.sdf.org/@jebug29
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fvOwFuy8rQ
[3] gopher://sectordisk.pw/0/doc/sectorstracksbytes