An age test???

[BryanFazekas]

Rick York wrote:

Apparently he found a functional floppy disk drive though.

My last 2 or 3 motherboards lacked a floppy drive connector, so I couldn't install a non-USB drive if I wanted to. First time it happened I was disappointed -- I had a floppy drive that included a 8-in-1 card reader (drive had USB cable as well as EIDE), and I wanted to install it for the card reader. But stick-type SD-card readers are so common these days -- I have 5 or 6 sitting on my desk at home. I have an unopened box of 3.5" floppy disks on my desk -- found it in the back of a supply cabinet. It's a novelty. It's bizarre to think of 1.44 MB of storage compared to the the idea that 16 to 64 GB flash drives are so inexpensive.

[Herbie Mountjoy]

That wasn't a good idea. Those little paper discs were actually quite dangerous. We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.

[Gary Wheeler]

Back when my daughter lived at home, it was great fun having two women shrieking at me at 2:00 a.m.

Software Zen: delete this;

[DumpsterJuice]

"You need to move your mouse driver into XMS "

Where there's smoke, there's a Blue Screen of death.

[carlospc1970]

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

[Slow Eddie]

Bat your sweet donkey I am.

If you're lucky one day you will get old too.

[matblue25]

I remember booting VAX/VMS 11/780 from an 8-inch floppy.

[Thornik]

That's funny! :) What?

[Thornik]

I started from booting IBM XT with 5.25" :) But I'm happy with that! Now I know that Windows 95 is Windows 3.1 inserted to autoexec.bat :)

[agolddog]

Ancient. It's not funny.

[Matt McGuire]

made me smirk

[cmkrnl]

Yea, well, that's nothin'. Back in my day, before the 1 was discovered, we had to write all our programs using only 0s!! :-O

[kalberts]

I guess the rice could be said to be dangerous as well.

[Richard Deeming]

Ah, the original Ghost script. :-D 👻 000000000000000! 👻

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"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

[Rick York]

Very true. I have lots and lots of files that one fit on a floppy. They are virtually useless today.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

[Richard Deeming]

Are you sure you're not thinking of Mark Felt[^]? :)

---

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer

[kalberts]

Geee ... Linda, I haven't heard a word from her for more than 25 years. I had almost forgotten her completely. Or for that sake, that Lovelace girl. She's been quiet for a number of years as well.

[darktrick544]

Himem.sys Pick your C++ application memory model - small, medium, large, mixed. Spending hours with the order of loading drivers in config.sys to get them all in there. 640K!!!!

[kalberts]

My first paid job with computers: A summer job before I started my C.Sci studies, fall of 1978, one of my tasks was to puch paper (or rather: mylar) tapes for software distribution to customers. We even used tape made from aluminum with plastic coating on both sides - edges were sharp as a knife, and if you were in need of a rope, you could be helped by that material. I guess it could withstand most acids as well. My superior bictched about this silly semiconductor memory that lost its contents when you turn off the power. No, that technology will not last long! Every serious computer has ferrite memory that can survive a power down! Punched tape was produced on one of the modern machines, no ferrite memory. So every morning I turned it on, flipped the 16 switches, deposit, flipped again, deposit, ... a mini-bootstrap of about a dozen instructions, enabling it to read the in the "real" bootstrapper from a meter long paper tape. That bootstrapper was so fancy that it could read the reel of tape containing the tape copy program (or a compiler, or software for a welding robot or A0 size pen plotter). And then it was ready for reading in the tape to be copied... We didn't have a dedicated machine for tape duplication; then we could have left it on overnight. There was no simple way to see which program was loaded - a compiler, a control program or the tape copier - so flipping in the mini-bootstrap to read the bootstrap tape to read the tape copy program became a routine operation you did without thinking of it. Even though I like to think back to those days, it would be a lie to say that I long back to those days!

[User 8413112]

Anyone remember using a hole punch to turn a single sided floppy into a double sided one?

It's a hard life, but somebody's got to live it if only to act as an inspiration to others. Dan Best