Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The last person standing in the floppy disk business

eyeondesign.aiga.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 363 posts

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#201

Post by downrightmike »

asciimov wrote: post #30

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…

Could make one of these https://i.pinimg.com/originals/94/2a/c3/942ac3e79c35b0e4d9e3...

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#202

Post by jszymborski »

asciimov wrote: post #30

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…

There's always the floppy thumbdrive

https://www.wired.com/2009/06/floppy-disk-as-usb-thumb-drive...

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#203

Post by TacticalCoder »

I found "NIUB" (New In Unopened Box) floppies at home: 5"1/4 floppies, never used. I've got no idea: are they still as good as new even though they're something like 35 years old?

I found more than that: I found my "time capsule" C128 (safely stored for 30 years+, still working, non polluted by anything modern). I found a "copier" software (Fast Hack'Em II IIRC) still working and managed to use it to copy a still working copy of Commando (chiptune sountrack by Rob Hubbard, the god of SID music back in the days).

But I have no idea: are these NIUB floppies as good as new or do they decay as years passes by?

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#204

Post by themagician »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #203

I found "NIUB" (New In Unopened Box) floppies at home: 5"1/4 floppies, never used. I've got no idea: are they still as good as new even though they're something like 35 years old? I found more than that: I found my "time capsule" C128 (safely stored for 30 years+, still working, non polluted by anything modern). I found a "copier" software (Fast Hack'Em II IIRC) still working and managed to use it to copy a still wor…

Completely depends on the make/model/manufacture date.

Older floppies are actually much better made than newer ones. Disks from 1994 or earlier tend to be better than those made after.

Many floppies are good for 30+ years.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#205

Post by dugmartin »

Centmo wrote: post #159
blamarvt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And nothing makes your heart sink faster than the rhythmic sound of trying over and over to read the same bad disk.

Especially when you're on floppy #25 of OS/2 Warp.

Thanks, that brought back a vivid memory I didn't even know was still knocking around my brain!

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#206

Post by jacobr1 »

gambiting wrote: post #186
taftster wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still hate the removal of the headphone jack. Bluetooth is overrated.

The worst thing about it is that I now have to carry 3 pairs of shitty Bluetooth headphones instead of one good pair because switching connected devices is such a pain that this is literally much easier to live with. I hate it. Bring the headphone jack back.

AirPods solved this for me. I'm not sure exactly what apple did that is different from the regular bluetooth audio spec, but the seemless integration and transition between devices is fantastic

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#207

Post by bluedino »

forinti wrote: post #167
Centmo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when you're on floppy #25 of OS/2 Warp.

A friend of mine had his first job installing Oracle from floppies. I'm not sure what the actual count was, but we would joke about him installing disk 1 of 99...

First job I had was installing SCO off tapes and that was the year 2000

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#209

Post by daveslash »

vardump wrote: post #65
nine_k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wisdom of 1990s was that if you have one copy of data on your disk, you may as well have zero copies. It became more pronounced in late 1990s when disks became more ubiquitous and the race for the lower price likely made them less reliable. After that the idea of backing things up, no matter where they are recorded initially, feels very natural.

> The wisdom of 1990s was that if you have one copy of data on your disk, you may as well have zero copies. Still true.

Along similar lines: If you haven't tested or dry-run your restore procedures, you may as well not have backups either.

That applies more for things like SQL databases and the like, more than personal files on disk. But yeah.... if you haven't tried to restore your database or other data repository from a backup file that you've squirreled away, then you effectively don't have a backup either.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#210

Post by rajlego »

doomlaser wrote: post #176
bartread wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's what sloppydisk.com looked like in its heyday, for those interested: http://web.archive.org/web/20070921170305/http://www.sloppyd ... Blimey: the download page for Descender still works. I mean, I've downloaded it on Windows, so that's not going to end well, and I guess it won't actually run on my Mac because 32-bit, but I was pretty impressed that I could download it at all. Nice site as well: very nostalgi…

Sales from Descender meant I didn't need to do other work during college (it plays perfectly fine in SheepShaver, if you'd like to give it a try), and it probably helped secure me an internship at Apple working on their internal game development team. I helped work on games for clickwheel iPods. Funnily, I'm one of the full motion video characters in Apple's Texas Hold'em ! In 2007, after the release of Intel Macs, I…

Wow, haven't thought about tap tap revenge in a long time but loved it as a kid. Thanks for your work!
Post reply on HN