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Submitted by WerewolfCyote
Remember how awesome floppy disks were? Storing your data was so easy. Remember you could go to the flea market and get bootlegged software like Zork and Leisure Suit Larry that your parents would never agree to buying. And who could forget when The Geek bets a stack of Floppies for Sam’s panties on Sixteen Candles?
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It was so awesome when they came in the translucent colors…and came with games with MS Flight Simulator! I could also write tons of stories and save them and take them everywhere without messy paper! I had to remember though, don’t slide the metal part back and touch the disc inside!
I had a bunch of really good stories on one, and I was working on them at work, and the drive fuzzed up and made the disk completely unreadable, and I lost everything I’d saved! ‘=~(
Oh my YES!!!!
Anyone from this era remember the joy of no memory system whatsoever except punch cards….. and when all software on a computer had to be created by specialist because there was hardly any pre- built programs for sale over the counter?
Or how about the advance technology of the cassette tape? Remember putting the data cassette accidently into your music machine and getting EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKSSSSKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK down your spine?
Heck the first time I saw 3.5 floppies my first though was, wow its those brightly colored little star trek cartridges!!!!!
Sure, they are pretty lame compared to todays hardware based storage in capacity and safety of data, but they were a really great development at the time.
Yes, I remember being the big kid on the block because *GASP* I had a 1200 baud modem. And my Tandy 1000 with it’s amazing 128k had been updated to the astonishing level of 384k. Ha ha hah! I laugh at you Vic 20 with it’s puny 16k. And MY modem doesn’t have to have the phone handset laid in the cradle. Wah HAH HA HAH! {Please ignore the TI-99 4a in the closet}
Um, don’t some PC’s still come w/floppy drives?
I haven’t had a floppy in any of my PCs since 2002. And frankly, good riddance!
I ALWAYS make sure my pc’s have a floppy drive. i still use data. its good you can use it for personal things that you dont want anyone else to see. as no 1 else has a floppy drive =) like keeping a diray or something on one =)
These are NOT floppy disks. Floppies were, well, floppy. They originally came in 8 inch size, then for years were 5 1/4 inch. And some of us even remember loading BASIC from cassette. The TRS-80 actually loaded it’s OS from cassette. And I also remember connecting my TI-99 4a to my television. Yes, one that had actual knobs on it, no remote control! (Parsec anyone?)
I’m too young to remember the 8″ ones, but I think I may still have some 5.25″ ones in the garage and I know I have 3.5″ ones. (I’ve got a machine kicking around that doesn’t boot off CDs, so I need to keep boot diskettes)
Either way, the 3.5″ ones are floppy disks. If you crack them open, the data layer is floppy plastic. By contrast, hard drive platters are solid metal.
I have a still-sealed box of 8″ disks in my office – I use them to remind the intro to computer class about digital storage problems…
Yes, yes, I know the physics. Your Star Trek Data tapes have a floppy core. But they don’t flop! This is nostalgia! *Flings a few at doubters* *thump* *whap* *pow* (Screaming doubters run away)
{Shouting} I TOLD YOU THEY WERE NOT FLOPPY
Argh, you took my response.
Thank you, i was looking at this post like ‘that’s not a floppy disk’ that was what came and REPLACED floppy disks. The disk in the picture is like the new hotness of floppy disks. This “nostalgic” post just made me feel really old. FAIL.
Yep. Nuttin’s floppy about those disks.
THIS is a floppy disk.
[img]http://oldcomputers.net/pics/floppy8.gif[/img]
Yes, true floppy disks were actually floppy. We had notebook upon notebook of them for the Commodore 64, because my mom and I spent hours upon hours typing code into the C64 for games.
Gods!!! O still have my commodore 64 AND 8″ floppies. Still have an old original Apple computer around here some ware. . . New technology id sooo much better but, “Oh, for the good old days!”
Well I didn’t spell check that to well, did I? I & is. sorry about that folks!
Hmm, I am having flashbacks of the startup boot sound of the Apple IIe’s the school made us use to learn BASIC on. Too bad that Apple BASIC was different than everyone else’s.
I still use my IIc from time to time. Works like a champ. I even have the crappy stock green screen for extra authenticity.
I actually miss that artillery game. That and it was my first experience with Lemonade stand and Oregon Trail. My Tandy 1000 had 16 colors and 3 voice sound, and all kids of cool graphics games. Yet I wanted those games for my Tandy. Us Dos guys only had Zork. (Suddenly hearing the theme song to Kings Quest in my head) How many of you remember the Batman easter egg hidden in that game?
The only thing my C64 and it’s 5 1/4″ floppies ran well was pac-man…
I’m sorry… but Floppies are epic FAIL. Nothing like putting all your really important files on a floppy, then when you go to check up on it a year later, it was all gone! Not to mention how little they held. Anybody remember installing windows with a dozen floppies, and making sure you have every single one. Please insert disk 4 of 12 to continue…. BLEH!
Yes, well, 12 floppies to install DOS is better than having to code the boot instructions on the toggles on the main panel… Personally if you’re going to get all misty about the ‘good old days’ here, I’d rather go for the homemade Z-80 chip hooked up to your black and white television
I would venture a guess that you used post-2000 floppies. Those things had a shelf life of about 6-9 months and they were done. Floppies sold (for home use) in the eighties lasted many years, even with the kind of abuse that I gave them as a kid.
Well mine are good since the 80s (5 1/4″ – C64). Its a matter of storage… store your CDs in the bright light and you’ll have the same issues.
So the fail’s on you.
Oh em GEE, I thought that said something else….*just woke up*
I have a camera that uses floppy disks and my sister, who has a mega-dollar camera can’t get her pictures downloaded, yet I’m sending mine to everyone in emails minutes after I take them.
I have two floppy drives on my computer, and one external, for when I’m traveling and want to send pictures.
I’m gonna DIE when this camera does.
I have a gazillion unused floppies, and many with data on them–just in case. As long as the camera holds out, I’m good.
Sounds like you need to buy a 3.5″ internal all-in-one USB flash card reader. They cost about the same as a diskette drive these days and they make using flash memory cards as easy as using diskettes. Heck, most brand-name computers these days now come with them built into the case to save you a drive bay.
how does a camera use a floppy?!?
Old Sony Mavicas had a floppy slot in them. You inserted a PC formatted disk, and when you took pictures, it recorded them to the floppy, which you could eject and put into your PC.
Now, since even a cheap, low quality camera today takes at least 2MP photos, you’d be able to fit about 3 pictures on a floppy, at extremely high JPEG compression. Then you’d have to hunt for a PC that still has a (working) floppy drive.
It’s not hard to see why they fell out of use for more standard memory cards.
Incidentally, to the OP, if you friend can’t get her pictures off her camera, she’s doing something wrong. Worst case scenario, you plug it in, it shows up as a drive, you copy your pictures off it. If it’s a goofy camera, set it to UMS or Disk mode instead of PTPP camera mode.
yeah, i would think that 5 1/4 floppys would be the win for nostalgia sake..my biggest memory about them was that you couldn’t touch ANYTHING while the red light was on…..when the computer was reading the disk…and it had a little locking mechanism thing to make sure it stayed in…that was awesome.
and you could fan yourself with them….
My first experience with a 5.25 disk? I opened the Dos instruction book to a list of commands, just randomly picked one, and tried it. I knew BASIC already, it couldn’t be that hard. Oh, the command? Format.
Yep, back to Radio Shack, and I couldn’t convince my dad that only the disk needed to be recopied. He made me pack the entire thing back in the box.
Lol
for those of you that don’t know what format does, it deletes everything (and I mean EVERYTHING!)
The crunch sound they made when you were destroying them was cool. Also, they were great weapons for attacking little brothers with.
I still have a few of these, one of which has MIDIs of some lame music I wrote myself. The problem is finding someone who still has a floppy drive…lol :/
In my country, they still sell this in supermarkets
Can you believe it?
Yep, Im fact, I always keep a box or two handy. One of my PCs has 2 3.25″ drives on it, it’s surprising how often I still find uses for these.
Hey my country too! (USA) LOL!
You can usually find 1 or 2 dusty packs in some dark corner of the home office section of supermarkets/drug stores.
I remember when they switched from the giant square floppies to the little squares.
Yes, these ARE floppy disks because the media inside is flexible, just like your 5.25″ and 8″ disks. Also, any computer tech that installs RAID on an XP or Server2003 machine still uses these heavily. Not so much nostalgia for us.
BTW, leave a floppy drive unused long enough and it can get magnetized, erasing whatever you put in it.
Aye, nothing annoyed me more than people calling these “Hard disks”… I have a old hard drive that I used for demo purposes. Smack the hard disc platters against the desk and wiggle a floppy disk around the air..
*opens floppy* see FLLLLOOOOOPPPPPY!!!
*opens Hard disk) see *CLANG CLANG CLANG* Hard!
Nice. They are probably the same people who brought in their monitor for virus removal. “Tadaaa! Your monitor is now virus free. That’ll be 85 bucks.”
*Flings a handful at P* *zing* *pew* *whap* *splot*
SEE THEY ARE HARD. Sorry about the black eye.
Careful, P might start flinging some old Quantum Bigfoot drives at you! Those will give you more than a black eye!
Sorry, but the ‘floppy’ only refers to the actual recording medium. You could pack the disk into a steel shell (cool, but not recommended for use) and guess what? it will still be ‘floppy’!
I still have a couple of those Quantum Bigfoots lying around. Those things were ridiculous. I think they are 2.1 or 2.5 Gb’s. Can’t remember. I actually fired them up and had them running about 3 or 4 years ago.
Yup, these are 3.5″ floppy disks, despite the fact that they aren’t floppy, and people who referred to these as “hard drives” were pretty hard to deal with.
I’ve still got a bunch that I can’t bear to part with, though I know I’ll never own another computer that can use them.
A former coworker of mine passed away several years ago. His wife asked us to remove all of the work-related stuff from their house. When we got it all back to the office we discovered over 1,000 3.5″ floppies in his stash, all of which had confidential (from our organization’s viewpoint) information on them. This guy had 3 or 4 level backups.
The entire staff spent 2 weeks cracking open 3.5″ carriers and pulling out the disks, then ripping the metal drive centers out of the media, just so we could deliver the floppy bits themselves to a bonded shredder. The office Band-Aids budget peaked that quarter.
That said, even with today’s advances, I will not update a motherboard BIOS by anything other than the old-fashioned floppy method.
Hey, I remember the Amstrad 3 inch discs! Anyone else?
How I miss the days when programmers pretty much had to make software less than 1.5 megabytes. Tight coding – it’s a lost art.
Before we had an actual “computer”, we had an Amstad Word Processor with a 3 inch floppy drive – no hard drive.
It used a two sided floppy disk – the word processing program was on one side. You inserted it in the disk drive to load the program into memory, then you turned it over to Side Two, where you could store your documents.
I remember when the only way to transfer media from my mom’s computer to my dad’s (I didn’t have my own, I was 10) was to use these. My mom had spare ones, and I couldn’t afford CD-ROMs, and I didn’t have any email. I was heartbroken when I had something that went over the capacity of those pathetic little floppies. Yes, they aren’t really floppy, but I don’t want to call them “stiffies”.
Only about 1.5MB didn’t get very far with music (certainly not video) but I could at least carry around my written work. Nowadays, only a decade or so later, I carry around a pair of 2GB flash sticks, and thinking that I now have the capacity of over 2700 flopy disks it’s… well… a bit surreal.
EVERYBODY! READ AND LEARN:
The floppy disk is inside the “stiffie” square plastic case. Its called a FLOPPY because the media is FLOPPY!
So following your logic, CD’s are floppy because the thin piece of aluminum but it’s laid on hard plastic, thus CD’s are floppy as well.
I did not name them floppy disks. I am only pointing out that they weren’t called floppy disks by accident, but by design.
even flash sticks..
i remember when i bought mine only what, 5 years ago.
128mb for $50(australian)
my most recent one was $30 for 8gb
..
and i feel your pain. floppys where only good for word documents
Aww, come on. Floppies? Win?
I guess the were fun to mess around with and throw (I especially loved the huge ones that didn’t have the hard case), but once the USB thumb drive came around I was glad to leave floppies behind for good.
Get mack to me when you do one on the old IBM M-series keyboard (clacky + indestructible = awesome).
Yes, the only keyboard that you could literally beat someone to death with and still have it working so you could blog about it! (that is if you have such violent tendencies, if so, seek help)
Oh my god… I still have a bunch of 3 1/2″ kicking around in my closet somewhere- not that they’ll do me any good; most machines don’t come equipped with A:\ drives anymore unless you have then specially built in. I can remember back in grade school/early high school (late 90’s/early 2000’s) just surfing the ‘net looking for pictures of cute boys (celebrities, that is; I was obsessed with boybands haha) to download and save to my floppy collection.. I had hundreds of disks, it was awful!
It’s shocking to think that at one point, 1.44MB was all you needed. I’ve got a 1TB external drive now, and it makes me think- will these end up going obsolete someday, too, for pocket-sized petabyte drives? Exabyte? *aye yi, yi!*
I have a computer that is older than you, and was probably programming on it while you were in diapers. I have no problem calling these things floppy disks, because THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE. A floppy disk is defined as “…a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible (“floppy”) magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell.”
Anyways, if its not a nostalgic win unless its the absolute original, then why don’t we just post the discovery of fire as the ultimate nostalgic win, and call it quits. Or maybe rocks.
I still use 3.5″ disks, but for booting Norton Ghost for DOS.
i have one as tattoo
http://frupic.frubar.net/shots/8037.png
Ha! I learned BASIC on a TTY teletype hooked to a PDP-40. There was NO storage at all–you typed the program in, ran it once and it was gone. We all went ga-ga a year later when our equipment was upgraded to include a paper-tape puncher and reader device. With those, you could actually “store” your program and run it over and over without retyping it. The original BASIC Star Trek game took a week to type in ad created at 20-odd foot roll of tape that took a good two minutes to read.
Man… And I still have working 5.25″ floppy disks!
Ah, I remember the days when my computer games came on the big floppy disks and the little floppy diskettes.
It was usually more of the big ones than the smaller ones.
I remember that at the dollar store by my house, they would always sell floppy disk games. Most of them were shareware, and all were like this, and not the true floppies. Xargon, Pickle Wars, and a bunch of others… Hopy-One was one i think. loved that game.
Wow, I’m surprised at how many people here are saying “But these aren’t floppy disks, they’re hard!” Did none of you ever take off the bright yellow plastic shell to look at the actual disk on the inside?
Or did they ever look at the package when they bought them?
I remeber when floppy disks used to actually be floppy!
i came in towards the end of floppy disks..
and eventually upgraded to a computer without a floppy drive.
…had bout ten left over blank floppys.
so i offer them to my cousin.
“what are floppy disks??”
damn 1990’s born kids.
Anyone wanna see my 3 1/2″ floppy? It grows up into a 5 1/4″!! Only if your hot and under 16 though.
It’s funny, really, when you think about it. Tragic, but funny!
The best was poking a little hole in the corner of a low density floppy to make it high density. Lost clusters all over the disc!!!
As I recall, the 5 1/4″ disks were called “floppy disks” and the little 3 1/2″ ones were called “diskettes” in order to differentiate between the two for those of us that used both. Maybe some of you called them all floppy disks but not anyone I knew back in the day did. Just sayin’.
I have never used CD’S to store ANYTHING personal, they scratch up, and everyone with these new-fangly ‘00 computers can use em. i have at least 200 3 1/4 diskettes (thats what the small hard ones were called) and 10 or so 5 1/2 floppy ones.
We still use these where I work… And it’s a city office…
ohhh yes the old floppy disk brings back many memories. I remember using them until 2002 or so when the USB sticks and MP3 players came along. At the thhird school I went to (from 2000 – 2003), we’d be handed a new floppy disk each at the beginning of the school year for storing homework etc. unless we had a USB pen of our own. This stopped in 2002 or so, when fewer and fewer had a floppy drive and more turned to using their USB pens or MP3 players.
For me, the floppy ain’t dead, oh no. I still use a few for transferring small files and older drivers to old computers that don’t have USB or a CDROM drive. Also I use real 5 1/4 floppies for my C64 which I use for small programming ventures etc.
Recently I was temporarily hired by the company my mom works for to clean out their archives. And guess what, a box in very good condition with UNUSED 8-inch floppy disks from back when they still used terminals connected to an IBM System/36 (which I also found a few manuals and program disks for).
nice find…wish i could lay hands on some old PC equipment
good ole floppy disks…i still use them here and again…they make a good quick boot disk…gotta love em