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Recycle – Floppydisks

floppydisk.com

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Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#11

Post by qiqitori »

vunderba wrote: post #4

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…

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.)

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#12

Post by ColdStream »

vunderba wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#13

Post by fuzzfactor »

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 ;)

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#14

Post by vunderba »

ColdStream wrote: post #12
vunderba wrote: post #4

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…

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.”

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#16

Post by ayaros »

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.

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#18

Post by userbinator »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #13

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-inflatin…

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.

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#19

Post by hs586 »

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?”

Re: Recycle – Floppydisks

#20

Post by kstenerud »

vunderba wrote: post #4

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…

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...

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