DIY Floppy Autoloader

I like how it's elaborate and automated yet it just dumps the discs into a pile on the ground. :p

Also, yeah...not a lot of use for this these days methinks.
 
And the point of this is? Seems fairly useless to me since floppy disks went the way of the buffalo a long time ago.
 
Sounds like he is making images of the floppy so he will probably just throw them away when done.

Sad part is where it said he has done this to over 1000 so far. what the hell does he have on that many floppies that he still needs.
 
I like the Amiga in the background. Give it up dude. Two platforms that are most definitely dead.
 
7 to 10? You still used a floppy drive in 2002 on any kind of regular basis? I mean I was still putting them in my builds basically for emergency bootup / HW diags / bios update options. But install or use software from a floppy? You're talking like 1993 man. So 19-20 years.

Wow. Flashback to 1993. 486 DX2-66 with 4MB of ram, Western Digital VESA video card, Sound Blaster AWE32. 15" CRT monitor. And that rig was the bomb. Hell that AWE32 cost me $300 I think.
Ohhhh how I loved Tie Fighter. Come to think of it, that computer was worth more than MY CAR.
 
Oh on a side note I still have a few hundred 3.5" floppies if anyone wants them.
 
Burticus said:
7 to 10? You still used a floppy drive in 2002 on any kind of regular basis? I mean I was still putting them in my builds basically for emergency bootup / HW diags / bios update options. But install or use software from a floppy? You're talking like 1993 man. So 19-20 years.

Wow. Flashback to 1993. 486 DX2-66 with 4MB of ram, Western Digital VESA video card, Sound Blaster AWE32. 15" CRT monitor. And that rig was the bomb. Hell that AWE32 cost me $300 I think.
Ohhhh how I loved Tie Fighter. Come to think of it, that computer was worth more than MY CAR.
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Good times, I remember those days as well. Back when a fairly standard desktop was around $2000-3000.
 
It wasn't that long ago for me. Company I worked for around 2005 or so sent floppies out with their product, but they made upgrades for ANCIENT computers. They had a couple of these that were standalone duplicators. Give it a floppy, it reads the image, then feed it a stack of blanks and it wrote them out at about 3x normal floppy write speeds. Looks like this guy took the mechanism from one of those and worked some real magic on it. :)

I still have a few stacks of disks I'd like to archive on something like this, but not near enough to build a contraption like that.
 
FndTheRver said:
And the point of this is? Seems fairly useless to me since floppy disks went the way of the buffalo a long time ago.
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From the Youtube description:

I had thousands of old floppy disks to read, and it would have taken
forever to process them all by hand..

This is the result, a Copypro CP-2000 wired to an arduino, a motor controller, and a kryoflux. Will automatically work its way through a hundred or so disks at a time..
Click to expand...

He just wanted to retrieve his data in a more efficient manner.
 
Burticus said:
7 to 10? You still used a floppy drive in 2002 on any kind of regular basis? I mean I was still putting them in my builds basically for emergency bootup / HW diags / bios update options. But install or use software from a floppy? You're talking like 1993 man. So 19-20 years.
.
Click to expand...

I would just like to point out that when the iMac appeared in 1998, it was the first computer that I had seen that didn't have a floppy drive built-in (Aside from earlier computers like C64, Apple, etc that used external drives). That was one of the main critisims by the PC guys, "What, no floppy!?!?!?!, it's going to be a failure!". LOL..

"The original iMac was the first legacy-free PC.[9] It was the first Macintosh computer to have a USB port but no floppy disk drive."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac
 
timta2 said:
I would just like to point out that when the iMac appeared in 1998, it was the first computer that I had seen that didn't have a floppy drive built-in (Aside from earlier computers like C64, Apple, etc that used external drives). That was one of the main critisims by the PC guys, "What, no floppy!?!?!?!, it's going to be a failure!". LOL..

"The original iMac was the first legacy-free PC.[9] It was the first Macintosh computer to have a USB port but no floppy disk drive."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac
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Well Apple did almost collapse around 1998. Now much have times changed.
 
By the mid-90s, the CD made multiple floppies obsolete.

If anyone still has floppies, your data is degraded and dead.
 
Stone Cold said:
If anyone still has floppies, your data is degraded and dead.
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Don't kid yourself, I still have 5.25" floppies from the early 80's that still retain all of their original data and still work to this day.

Equipment and data storage from the 80's and 90's lasts far longer than anything we have these days, with the exception of tapes.
 
Red Falcon said:
Don't kid yourself, I still have 5.25" floppies from the early 80's that still retain all of their original data and still work to this day.

Equipment and data storage from the 80's and 90's lasts far longer than anything we have these days, with the exception of tapes.
Click to expand...

You're high. Magnetic media degrades magnitudes faster than optical. Tapes last longer than floppies, I will agree with you on that. But the media density is totally different. I suppose if you kept your 5.25 floppies in a magnetically shielded box... but I don't know.

I still have 3.5 floppies in my closet that I bust out occassionally (like for memtest and ancient stuff with a usb floppy drive). Half of them will not read anymore.

The last practical thing I used floppy for was at work building servers, up to 2007 or so. Had to use the floppy for the scsi raid drivers and the autoinstall SIF files, and for firmware updates. Finally someone figured out how to build those into the bootable cd image and we could chunk them.
 
heatlesssun said:
Well Apple did almost collapse around 1998. Now much have times changed.
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Actually they nearly collapsed before that. The iMac was when things started to turn around for Apple (several years after Jobs came back).
 
I remember *ahem* "backing up" RoTT from my friend's machine on like 10 floppies. Good times.
 
I actually read out my last floppies not too long ago, only had about 20 left, only about 14 of those worked, the media is deteriorating, if anybody still has anything on them get it off now!
 
Imagine if he hooked the cable up backwards and it formatted them without him realizing. Hahaha.
 
cute video omg :D i still (like everybody) have some floppies laying around (for novelty reasons)...
 
You're high. Magnetic media degrades magnitudes faster than optical.
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Well, I can't force you to believe that I still have working media with complete data from the early 80's, so I'll leave that one up to you. I know I know, pics or shens. :p

I never said optical degrades faster, but I do agree with you that generally, optical will outlast modern magnetic media (within last 12 years or so).
 
Few years ago one of my friends responded to a CL ad to pull data off 5.25 inch discs and archive it on a optical discs + a HDD. The company said no one was responding to the ad and they couldn't find anyone with a working 5.25 inch drive in a modern system :eek: They paid him $50 a disc, he made a few grand.
 
Burticus said:
You're high. Magnetic media degrades magnitudes faster than optical. Tapes last longer than floppies, I will agree with you on that. But the media density is totally different. I suppose if you kept your 5.25 floppies in a magnetically shielded box... but I don't know.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity I just pulled out my original copy of King's Quest IV and an old desktop. These floppies are literally as old as I am and the game installed just fine. :)

The floppy disk drives themselves do have a tendency to die, but if you keep them from getting dusty they work fine.
 
I tossed my last floppies a few years ago. While I do packrat some things, I tend to throw away "useless" technology and that's bitten me in the ass several times. I wish I still had the Amiga 500 we used to own, or all my old 3D cards like my original Diamond Monster 3D (4MB 3DFX Voodoo chip onboard). I used to keep all kinds of computer spare parts and what not. If my current video card died, i'd be without my desktop until i bought another. I do have a decent laptop though.
 
The software for my video toaster card for my Amiga came on something like 60 floppies.
Was a pain in the ass to re-install.

I think windows NT 3.51 came on 25 floppies. I gave my little sister like $10 to feed the NT floppies into my 486 back in the day.
 
Exavior said:
Sounds like he is making images of the floppy so he will probably just throw them away when done.

Sad part is where it said he has done this to over 1000 so far. what the hell does he have on that many floppies that he still needs.
Click to expand...

His old MP3 collection. 3+ floppies per MP3.
 
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