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Relatedly, I was recently digging through the attic at my family’s home and came across a 3.5" disk containing a bunch of QBASIC programs I’d written in the early ’90s. Despite sitting for decades in a non–climate-controlled attic, it loaded up just fine when I plugged it into a USB floppy drive. Honestly, looking back at code from 30+ years ago felt more like an archaeology expedition.
Also how many other kids also went around brandishing 3.5" floppies like a weird gun, "cocking them" by pulling back the shutter and letting it go with a satisfying snap?
I was pissed when I discovered that the cassette tape containing all of my c64 programs was gone. Most of them were crappy, but there was a D&D character generator I wrote when I was 8 that I'd made extensive use of for quickly generating randos for us to play one-offs with.
The oldest publicly released code of mine is SLIPShuttle, which provided pushbutton connecting to the internet on an Amiga (the cmdline interface was terrible). Written in AREXX https://aminet.net/comm/tcp/SLIPShuttle.lha
The second oldest was ringconnectd, which allows you to "ring knock" your (POTS connected) modem to make it connect to the internet and mail you your IP address. It was VERY handy while I was in college, and apparently it took off in Africa a few years later as their internet connectivity grew. https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/rin...
Out of curiosity, what's the use case for ringconnectd? Just to find out what your IP is? What would you need that for back in the day?
Dialup systems typically spent most of their time offline. If you wanted to connect to one over IP you'd need some way to get it to dial back up to the ISP, and then some way to get the new address it'd ended up on.
Yup, and phoning a number wouldn't incur charges unless the other side picked up.
ringconnectd never answered a call, but rather listened for a ring pattern that you could specify. So what I'd typically do is go to a payphone, dial my line at home, let it ring twice, hang up, get my money back, dial again letting it ring twice again, hang up, get my money back again, then go to the computer lab to wait. My system at home was configured to connect after the ring pattern [ring, ring, delay, ring, ring]. It would then wait 30s, connect to its ISP, and email me its current IP address.
I did it this way because I was already using the terminal for pretty much everything, and we didn't get dedicated machines on campus. So it was better to just hold my work on my Linux machine at home and connect to it from the lab.
I definitely remember doing that as a kid, and I remember bending the thin metal off some broken ones. Whatever brand I was using allowed that metal to work a bit like a spring, you could launch it by compressing it. (Sorta like the frogs you find in Christmas bonbons.)
A while ago I learned that very early versions of 3.5" floppies didn't have the auto shutter mechanism and you had to open and close the shutter manually. (I think that was probably just used on some Japanese Sony machines.)
Interesting! I tried to find a demonstration of the manual shutter. This is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. Apparently, it was one of the earliest Sony models to feature a semi-automatic shutter.
I used to use them, and 8" disks, daily with some of the first CAD/CAM engraving machines I used at work in the early 90's.
If you loosen the metal cover just right you can make it go absolutely sailing across a computer lab (or any room, I bet).
Looking back over any code older than 12 months is always like archaeology, at least if it is my poorly documented tech-debt ridden nonsense.
haha true.
My favorite part is when I start cursing loudly "what hipster doofus wrote this pile of steaming horse crap?" as my eyes bleed Ark of the Covenant style from unblinkingly debugging poorly documented code in a company with a huge codebase only to realize a few seconds later that it’s mine from several years back, when I first started. The old “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
Definitely can still feel the spring sensation.
These used to be 50 cents a piece at my high school library. What a joy it was to have a tiny simple way to transport essays (and pixel art and other fun things) to and from school and amongst all the school computers.
Yes! But beware the one computer in the second row that wrecks your disk, learned one by one, the hard way.
“thip…thip…ERRNT ERRNT ERRNT”
Hey, I know that sound. Hah!
This is definitely not recommended but when I was a kid we also used floppy disk films to look at solar eclipses. That was far from the most dangerous thing we did in 90s in a post-Soviet country.
To this day, when I read or think about a solar eclipse, I have a visual image of floppies! My first instinct seeing this on HN was “is this because there is a solar eclipse tomorrow?”
Now I've got a pack of old floppies that are outgassing :0
I have no other explanation.
This is an almost-full box of miscellaneous floppies in one of the original cardboard trays of 30 from Office Depot.
I've got kilos more floppies in different closets but these are good ones I selected a few years ago that all passed SCANDISK.
Now this one little box is in an old ziploc bag in the office and it keeps self-inflating. At first I thought it was unusually low barometric pressure one day but I keep squeezing out the air rain or shine and it keeps on puffing back out by itself.
Something I really didn't expect.
If I did still own my own laboratory, I'd tell you what kind of gas it was by now though ;)
Are you sure it's not just the bag attempting to return to its original shape? They are also not truly airtight, so there might be some sort of osmosis effect too.
The possibility of mold growth may also be considered.
These do seem all within the range of possibilities.
The bag is old and imperfect, and I don't think it is completely airtight either. Not as much from permeability of the polymer but phyical wear & tear too.
I smelled the exhaust when I deflated it the last few times and it is very faint but industrial. Doesn't smell like mold but organisms could still be hidden somewhere breaking down plastic or additives. Which may or may not consume oxygen.
Osmosis I have been considering too, if fairly high molecular weight breakdown products are gradually emerging into the gas phase, with the bag way more permeable to atmospheric gases, maybe the atmosphere is forcing its way in and builds slightly higher partial pressure than ambient as a molar dilutive effort.
This is a good time to put the floppies in a brand new bag and see what happens, the experiments never end ;)
Hm, if there's anything of note in the floppies, maybe archive them? There are some USB devices that will read and store the actual magnetic flux values, for max fidelity.
These had no special data on them to begin with, or things other than mainstream file storage.
No irreplaceable game floppies and probably nothing worth saving at all, but it was only about 10mb total on all the disks combined, might as well save it on a HDD when the web wastes more of my megabytes than that in five minutes now.
So the files were just backed up the regular way before testing a couple dozen disks for future use, and bagging them to keep out the dust.
I tried to pick clean ones but actually probably kept in a bit of vintage dust when you think about it :)
Looking through their website, it seems they are not recycling them in the usual sense of the word, but reusing them. That is, they reformat and resell them at a discount (66%) that of new ones. Which is fine, I guess, if they're just laying around your house, but it's not like they're making new things with the materials which is what the word recycling usually implies.
This is correct. I have bought some disks from him before (also he is tomdotstar on EBay) and they come as ordinary used disks with a new label stuck on top. Supposedly each one is tested; all the ones I got worked and looked to be in good condition, so I guess so. It is interesting to see some of the old labels underneath the new one - most of mine were driver disks or "setup disk 5 of 19" or similar.
"Reuse" ranks higher than "recycle" in terms of best things to do with an item, if it's reasonable to do so.
A couple years ago I got a bunch of recycled low density DS/DD disks here. It was a good deal; yeah I had to clean em off a bit, and I also re-labeled them with some newer labels. But a good deal nonetheless. I approve.
My son told be today that he wants to buy a floppy disk drive because one of the bands he likes started releasing singles on 3.5" floppies.
What a time to be alive.
What band is that? Also how do they do that? Just heavily compressed mp3?
Here's an example - https://remute.bandcamp.com/merch/limited-expansion-pack-35-...
I'd guess they use .mod files - instruments and tracks, rather than digitized audio.
I'm pretty sure this is the one he wants:
https://supercassetteband.bandcamp.com/merch/ouroboros-flopp...
For a brief period of time, CD ROMs were already a thing, and people still had 5.25" diskettes lying around. So someone came up with the idea to put a self-burned CD into the plastic shell of a floppy disk, and I actually found that quite cool.
Also: wow, this shop still has 8" floppy disks!
With 46 of them you can make a nice bag https://www.instructables.com/Floppy-Disk-Bag/
I had a huge stack of ancient mixed floppies and sold them for a dollar each on eBay.
Interestingly most buyers didn't care about HD, DD etc. I suspect they went into art projects.
In twenty years time, will there be a secondary market in random USB sticks?
I have a vast quantity of random USB sticks from clearing out my father's house, keeping them just in case something needed, nothing was. Rather than take the effort to dispose of them, I am thinking of holding on to them for the retro scene of 2050.
It's hard to say.
From a vintage computing perspective, possibly. The only question is whether they will work. Oddly, I have found USB sticks to be less reliable than floppy disks. (Odd because I would think that semi-conductor memory would last longer than a ferrous coating glued to a plastic substrate that is dragged along both the read/write head and the shell and is known to be susceptible to mould.)
Other uses, I just don't know. Floppy disks have a well defined appearance that means they are iconic. (Sometimes literally so!) USB sticks vary so much in size and appearance that it will be difficult to earn the iconic status. Floppies also have more to work with when it comes down to arts projects.
Sadly they don't sell Amsoft 3 inch disks, I enquired a few years ago.
I had a huge stack of ancient mixed floppies!
"Add to cart" does nothing. Wonder if they actually sell floppies, or just shred them to keep pushing us towards modern technology.
For old equipment, there are very good alternative methods =3
What do you mean? I was able to click "add to cart" on their website and was taken to a PayPal page to check out. I think the issue is on your end (some type of ad/tracking/cookie blocker messing up the page).
I've bought many floppy disks from these guys and I can say that they are 100% legit.
Also, destroying old technology is no way to progress into the future.
I wonder if they're having problems. This reminded me I need to get some 5.25" DS/DD 360KB floppies, so I ordered a pack of new ones. After paying at Paypal, it redirected me back and I got a 400 error. I hope I still get them!
I think they brag about being the only seller of floppies and it’s been a few years at least?
They do sell, I've bought from them before.
If losing floppies pushes you towards modern technology, I don’t think you have to worry. You are still 4+ generations behind. If you think those Zip disks are great, just wait until you hear about DVD-RW!
Mount Rainier DVD-RW! but here are so few of them...
There’s something uniquely painful about debugging your own old code. You remember the intent, but none of the decisions that led to the implementation. It really does feel like archaeology.