Got Floppies?

[MikalE]

I just bought the first ten-pack of floppy discs for my A31p in 30 years.

I haven't had a floppy disc since my last Aptiva desktop so an order was placed with New Egg for a ten-pack of Verbatim IBM formatted discs so I can start regular backups on my A31p. I understand XP Pro will request a disc during the backup for a rescue or recovery disc.

[olex126]

MikalE you're not alone!

I still regularly purchase and use 3.5" floppies, since I have a lot of older Thinkpads as well as an ancient Epson Equity 2 desktop which use them. Just yesterday I purchased 3 used locking floppy disk holders, so now I can get more of them out of the dog-food boxes that they're stored in!

Still have my original 3.5" DOS versions of Lotus 1-2-3 and a ton of floppy disks with various DOS programs like Norton Utilities, Xtree Gold, Laplink, a ton of Corel programs etc, and a horde of others including many games.

(Wordperfect 5.1 and dBase 3+ are on 5.25" disks, which I can still use on the Epson desktop).

(I still love that extra satisfying step of locking down a 5.25" disk in the drive with the lever.... but then, I'm a Luddite )

My WFW 3.11, Win95 and OS/2 O/S's (up to Warp 3) are on 3.5 floppy disks, as well as CD-ROM versions of the Win95 & Warp 3 & 4.

Regards.

Dave

P.S. Does anyone know if the IBM "Loaddskf" program can convert programs from different disk formats? I've read somewhere that it can, but can't find the reference now.. I'd like to convert my dBase 3+ disks (or their disk image) from 5.25" to 3.5". Thanks. Dave

[Shredder11]

I still use them although less frequently now, but they certainly have their uses plus I love the sound of them etc. Plenty of nostalgia for them and I remember using them when they were actually floppy.

[UMPC2024]

Used to use them in lab when the computers interfaced to equipment could only run Windows 95 and we never had funds to upgrade. Have a pack laying around just for laughs.

[kfzhu1229]

I had just picked up a pack of 10 floppies (actually I only got 7, but the box says 10) from a 70 year old man who's self isolating due to the danger of Coronavirus from them (locally some 10KM away from Toronto). There are only 7 left in the box but still they are all new!

[atagunov]

I just bought the first ten-pack of floppy discs ... in 30 years.

Wow, just wow. I still remember having a pack of perhaps 7 or 8 3.5" floppies to install Windows 8.. What was it? 8.10? 8.13?.. And at a later point a similar pack with some flavour of BSD.. I remember going on a different occasion to shop.. probably some 100 meters from Kremlin for a fresh new box of Verbatim.. Those were the days! Going by tube, was getting dark early, probably some snow around (Moscow winters had snow back then!.. Much less now) And being so young I then for a long time had a special box with all kinds of drivers on floppies, I did accumulate a number of them.. First PC was 386 then 486.. And before that some other machines at our Liceum 1533.. Think those floppies got thrown away after I moved out..

I did use 5.25" floppies too earlier as a kid but these were not my computers then.. IBM XT or AT And the only way to boot and play Prince of Persia or some kind of racing game was to insert the right floppy.. Turbo Pascal would also start from floppies.. Was very handy to have two 5.25" drives, A: and B: one for DOS one for Turbo Pascal.. I still have the habit of periodically saving in text editors from those days.. Rest button was more often used back then was it not? Heh you guys obviously know all that but I couldn't stop myself indulging in some nostalgia

[SAIYAN48]

I have a small collection of both 3.5'' and 5.25'' disks. I don't have a floppy drive Thinkpad, but I do have a Pentium-MMX machine with FDD drives for whenever I find a new disk.

[RealBlackStuff]

Unfortunately I have no memorabilia from my IBM 1401 days.
But I still have some 8" floppy disks from the likes of PDP-8 and ICL-25, that I worked on.
They contain Assembler programs that I wrote myself back then.
All my 5.25" floppies were converted to 3.5", and then thrown away (can't remember why).
I still have a couple of hundred 3.5" with all sorts of programs (and a few games) for DOS, OS/2, W3.0/W3.1/W95/W98/W2K/XP.

[atagunov]

I kind of wish my mom had kept her a magnetic tape rolls that I had seen as a child (was it 1987?)
Perforated cards were already a useless relic so she gave me a box to make cards to learn English.

[cadillacmike68]

I still have cases and stacks of both 5.25 and 3.5 diskettes. I need to find an easy way to use my old combo floppy drive with a T60 / 500 series ThinkPad.