111–120 of 363 posts
Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.
A few years ago, the last man standing in the punched paper tape business, "westnc.com", finally gave it up. There were still some numerically controlled machine tools running off paper tape. In 2019, NSA punched a crypto key into paper tape for the last time. As far as I can tell, nobody in the US still sells punched paper tape. Although if you really need it, you could get it made. I restore old Teletype machines,…
Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.
Not even a modem handshake noise?
I miss the physicality of floppy disks. Picking up a caddy of disks, thumbing through reading the labels, sliding them into the drive and hearing the motor whirr. Nowadays, my caddy has been replaced with a small plastic bag full of chips and thumbdrives. Even though my small bag can easily hold millions of times more data, the little chips aren't a joy to use. None of them have labels telling their contents. All of…
You haven't lived until you installed an operating system from 38 floppy disks. Slackware and OS/2 for example My lord those were fun days. Especially fun when you got to OS/2 Disk 21 and it died, or Slackware Xwindows Floppy 4 and you started hearing that disk drive kurchunking and you just knew you were dead in the water.
Windows 10 Floppy Install... Please Insert Disk 1 of 4166
"Over time, the total number of floppy users has gone down. However, the number of people who provided the product went down even faster. If you look at those two curves, you see that there is a growing market share for the last man standing in the business, and that man is me."
My floppy story is: In the late 90s 3.5" floppies were ubiquitous and the Zip disk was the new kid on the block. 5.25" was a thing of the past and I'd never ever seen a 8" floppy and I did not expect to see one either.
This was until I interned at a Siemens research lab where they still had 8" floppies. Why? Because the room-sized, several floors below ground housed electron microscopes used them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least of the 3 examples on that webpage it seems like you made remakes of existing simple games (tetris, sokoban, pong) - did you try making new designs of your own and if not, why not?
Sure. In 2007 I started up a new label at http://doomlaser.com . Made a bunch of indie stuff as that scene was really starting to bloom. Helped build some big franchises like Tap Tap Revenge, the iOS game for The Hunger Games, alongside irreverent stuff like https://kotaku.com/ultimate-shovelware-shit-game-5032364 , and personal stuff like https://doomlaser.itch.io/standardbits (a game named after the Mac's low-level…
I miss the physicality of floppy disks. Picking up a caddy of disks, thumbing through reading the labels, sliding them into the drive and hearing the motor whirr. Nowadays, my caddy has been replaced with a small plastic bag full of chips and thumbdrives. Even though my small bag can easily hold millions of times more data, the little chips aren't a joy to use. None of them have labels telling their contents. All of…
Or who am I kidding, I still use my A500 so I can't really say I miss it.
You haven't lived until you installed an operating system from 38 floppy disks. Slackware and OS/2 for example My lord those were fun days. Especially fun when you got to OS/2 Disk 21 and it died, or Slackware Xwindows Floppy 4 and you started hearing that disk drive kurchunking and you just knew you were dead in the water.