Floppy disks

[Fnaar]

Floppy disks! Ah ha ha ha ha! Just found some old ones lurking at the back of a cupboard. When I started my current job, about 8yrs ago, one of the new things on my desk was a box for floppies. I had a whole bunch of them, for various reasons.... about 30 or so... now it all fits on a memory stick with room for so much more that it almost beggars belief!

And years ago I lived abroad for a bit. Took with me a huge heavy bag with about 150 cassettes of music in. Now all of that and more can fit on my phone!

I love technological advances, me!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I've got a shrink wrapped box of the old 5" discs in the office here, used to use them on our Olivetti M24s, late 1980s I guess - powerful kit.

 

[beanzontoast]

Funny how the 3 1/2" floppy in its turn seemed such an advance over the 5 1/4" truly 'floppy' floppies (I loved using them with my old BBC B).

It's the way of all things technological. Memory sticks will go the same way soon, I expect...

 

[Fnaar]

Aye, a lot of my stuff is already 'in the cloud' as it were. Though I have all of my work going back about 12 yrs on a memory stick too (backed up on 2PCs and also in the cloud)

 

[Dan B]

Weirdest thing about floppy disks was how long they did last, and without much advance in capacity.

The early machines to use 3.5" floppies (STs, Amigas) were released in 1985, with 720k capacity (ok, nearer 800k for the amiga). The IBM-compatibles caught up a couple of years later when the PS/2 was introduced. The last computer I used that had a floppy drive as standard was bought in 2004 or thereabouts, and in that almost twenty year period the capacity had doubled to 1.44MB. In the meantime, CPU, hard disk and RAM capacity had all increased by closer to a thousandfold.

Yes, I know there were Zip disks (which hardly anyone used) and software distribution shifted to CD then DVD, but in terms of a writable removeable media device that you could be sure everyone had, the 1.44MB floppy was the de facto standard for much longer than anyone sane would have expected

 

[numbnuts]

my laptop has a floppy disk and I still have a lot of stuff stored on them

 

[dan_bo]

Weirdest thing about floppy disks was how long they did last, and without much advance in capacity.

The early machines to use 3.5" floppies (STs, Amigas) were released in 1985, with 720k capacity (ok, nearer 800k for the amiga). The IBM-compatibles caught up a couple of years later when the PS/2 was introduced. The last computer I used that had a floppy drive as standard was bought in 2004 or thereabouts, and in that almost twenty year period the capacity had doubled to 1.44MB. In the meantime, CPU, hard disk and RAM capacity had all increased by closer to a thousandfold.

Yes, I know there were Zip disks (which hardly anyone used) and software distribution shifted to CD then DVD, but in terms of a writable removeable media device that you could be sure everyone had, the 1.44MB floppy was the de facto standard for much longer than anyone sane would have expected

Because they were bloody expensive.


I still get palipatations about having to configure SCSI Drives into old Compaqs at 10PM on a friday night in a lab in Japan when I was flying home at 8 AM the next morning......two days before Chrimbo. All for........wait for it........an extra 8 Gig of hard drive space.

 

[mark barker]

I've got the old discs dotted around my house to put cups on. They work really well!

 

[benb]

What's the difference between a computer and a woman?

A computer can take a 3½" floppy.

 

[Carwash]

I use mine as coasters for my coffee at work.

 

[Midnight]

I've got a box of around 200 along with my old Amiga 1200 somewhere. I used to love the Amigas. 'Tis a shame they weren't able to keep up with the market. I keep it in the hope that it might come in useful someday... <long sigh, still waiting...>

 

[Plax]

I've still got all mine with my university coursework on etc. I purposefully put a floppy drive in my PC I built, not that I've ever used it as such. I'll have to transfer my floppies onto my PC or something!

 

[2Loose]

A friend recently asked about how to use a usb stick because she had just gone 'back to skool' and hadn't used a computer since secondary school 20+ years ago. A modern PC was fairly unfamiliar to her.

After a long drawn out response from a colleague she still looked non-plused.

As I walked past I said 'they are modern floppy disks...' and she went 'ah, thanks, I get it now', lol.

While taking a walk through some nearby fields, I saw quite a few 8inch floppies sticking out of the furrows. I have no idea why they were so close to the surface...

 

[661-Pete]

I still use floppies. At work.

Why?

Because I have an elderly PC on the test bench with Win 98 on it. It needs to be Win 98 so as to allow some old-ish DOS applications to run.
The *****s who run IT won't allow me to plug it into the LAN. They say, because it hasn't got the up-to-date virus checker on it (all the software on it is yonks old), connecting it to the network for as much as a millisecond is a crime no less heinous than stealing the Crown Jewels. So there!
Although this ancient PC has a USB slot, it won't even recognise any of the memory sticks I have. It says I have to download the application from the internet. Without the LAN connection I can't get on to the internet of course.
So I use floppies to move data to and from this PC, across to another PC which is on the network. Luckily the files I work with are quite small.
Excuse me, need to adjust the steam regulator on my PC now.....

 

[Jezston]

Anyone notice how poor quality floppy disks became? I have old 720k Atari ST formatted disks that still read today (well, they still read a couple of years ago when I last tried it!) that would be 20 years old.

I seem to recall in the last few years of using floppies on a PC before everyone got CD writers, maybe 2000-2003 or so, you'd be lucky if you got home from work/uni with the contents of the disk still intact. I doubt ANY of my PC-formatted disks would be readable nowadays. If I had a floppy drive that is.

Also, why do computer manufacturers STILL put floppy drives on new computers?!?