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 went around brandishing 3.5" floppies like a weird gun, "cocking them" by pulling back the shutter and letting it go with a satisfying snap?

• kstenerud

  today at 6:34 AM

  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...

• qiqitori

  today at 5:01 AM

  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.)

• mister_mort

  today at 4:43 AM

  I definitely remember doing that as a kid, and I remember bending the thin metal off some broken ones. Whatever brand I was using allowed that metal to work a bit like a spring, you could launch it by compressing it. (Sorta like the frogs you find in Christmas bonbons.)

• ColdStream

  today at 5:15 AM

  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.

  • vunderba

    today at 5:24 AM

    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.”

• Waterluvian

  today at 3:37 AM

  If you loosen the metal cover just right you can make it go absolutely sailing across a computer lab (or any room, I bet).

• recursive

  today at 4:31 AM

  Definitely can still feel the spring sensation.

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.

These used to be 50 cents a piece at my high school library. What a joy it was to have a tiny simple way to transport essays (and pixel art and other fun things) to and from school and amongst all the school computers.

• mrkpdl

  today at 4:23 AM

  Yes! But beware the one computer in the second row that wrecks your disk, learned one by one, the hard way.

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?”

My son told be today that he wants to buy a floppy disk drive because one of the bands he likes started releasing singles on 3.5" floppies.

What a time to be alive.

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 ;)

• userbinator

  today at 6:04 AM

  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.

With 46 of them you can make a nice bag https://www.instructables.com/Floppy-Disk-Bag/

"Add to cart" does nothing. Wonder if they actually sell floppies, or just shred them to keep pushing us towards modern technology.

• JK-Swizzle

  today at 6:54 AM

  If losing floppies pushes you towards modern technology, I don’t think you have to worry. You are still 4+ generations behind. If you think those Zip disks are great, just wait until you hear about DVD-RW!

• Joel_Mckay

  today at 4:42 AM

  For old equipment, there are very good alternative methods =3

  https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy

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