Phantom of the Floppera

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I spotted this video at Engadget today and thought I would share. Those of you that don't remember the days when we all used floppy disks may not appreciate this as much as us "old timers." ;)
 
Even in my most recent build (Which is in my sig) I still have my 1.44 floppy drive in there. I have never had the nerve to retire it.
 
That was badass! I like that. Glad i used a machine with audio to watch this.
 
that was awesome though to be honest someone has WAY too much time on their hands :D
 
Elf_Boy said:
Old system. Must be murder on the stepping motor.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I wouldn't run Norton backup expecting anything reliable after that, then again, if those were Sony drives or TEAC, they'll probably survive just fine.

Man, do any of you remember having to backup to floppy? That was a PITA.

Pretty awesome stuff.
 
I was only mildly amused until I saw the guy with the floppy stuck to his face. That really made me LOL.

I remember my first floppy drive like it was 30 years ago.
It was a 5.25" floppy drive for my Atari 400 8 bit computer.
It was very, very, very cool. The coolest thing was NOW, I could MAIL ORDER shareware.
You younger guys got to realize. Before floppies drive (hard drives were very, very, expensive for computer hobbyist as we were known then). we had to use very unreliable cassette tape storage. YES, cassette tape like the ones that you played in a boom box.
 
The 5.25" floppies were before my time, but I can't ever remember a 3.5" drive being audible above the click of sliding the metal tab back. I take it this guy has all the motors way out of spec...?
 
That was cool. I remember when the 3.5 was new. First time I used one was with an original Mac (the square ones that came with a mouse), before that it was 5 1/4 drives on the apple IIe's and on my friends commadore 64 systems. I remember you could take a cheaper single sided floppy and punch a hole on the side to make it a double sided floppy.

Man, how times have changed. From 5 1/4's to 3.5 to cd to dvd and external hard drives to usb drives. Whats really sad is comparing the storage of these devices to their earlier predecessors. A 3.5 floppy only held 1.44 megs of data and I forget what the 5 1/4 floppies held. A 16gig usb drive would hold more storage that over 11,000 3.5 in floppy disks. Thats insane.
 
Nothing better than some 1.44mb 3.5" and 1.2mb 5.25" disks to start my Exchange admin day!

"Oh man, I can't put my 20 pages worth of powerpoint 2.0 slides on either of these floppy disks. I really could use some double density disks right about now."
 
Tanis143 said:
I remember you could take a cheaper single sided floppy and punch a hole on the side to make it a double sided floppy.
Click to expand...

You forgot to mention that you had to flip the disk over to use the other side :)

My old RadioShack (color computer) only supported single sided floppies. I put 2 double sided 1/2 height drives in a single full height drive case, and built my own circuit to make them look like 4 seperate floppies.
No need to flip the floppies over and I had an amazing 1.4MB of storage available :)
 
i must be getting old. while I'm still under 30, i remember the good old days of running dosshell from a 5.25"

I still remember my apple II that i had to load games off a 5.25" and these things were double sided. monochrome loderunner was epic.
 
Last time I used a 5.25 I was playing Number Munchers in like the 3rd grade. I did get an prerelease of quake 1 that I had to zip span across like 15 3.5 floppy for back up lol. My 202 meg hard drive couldn't take all that gaming goodness lol.
 
Tanis143 said:
From 5 1/4's to 3.5 to cd to dvd and external hard drives to usb drives. Whats really sad is comparing the storage of these devices to their earlier predecessors. A 3.5 floppy only held 1.44 megs of data and I forget what the 5 1/4 floppies held.
Click to expand...

Original PC 5 1/4 floppy drives were single sided 160KB (this was on the PC's that used 16KB ram and maxed out with 64KB on the motherboard).
These where soon replaced by dual sided drives with 320KB.
Dos 2.0 they changed the format from 8 sectors to 9 sectors per track resulting in 360KB.
There where also 720KB 5 1/4 floppy drives (80 tracks instead of 40) but they where never used by any major PC vendor.

The high density 5 1/4 floppies where 1.2MB. 80 tracks and a higher rotational speed for better performance.

When IBM brought out the PS2 line they used a 720KB 3.5" floppy on lower end models, and the 1.44MB 3.5" floppy on the higher end systems.

Later there was a 2.88 3.5" floppy, but it never caught on.

PS: Anyone who remembers all this must be as old as I am :)
 
Atheist said:
The 5.25" floppies were before my time, but I can't ever remember a 3.5" drive being audible above the click of sliding the metal tab back. I take it this guy has all the motors way out of spec...?
Click to expand...

not at all. they made a LOT of noise esp the faster ones (in earlier times) but yes is he is probably running them way out of spec.

and quit rubbing our age in you whippersnapper :mad: so what if I can remember a tape cassette drive. :eek:
 
tlc4tvm said:
Or DAT the lost technology that never really made sence anyways.
Click to expand...

You mean DAT tapes?

There are still people using DAT tapes for backup. While the original tapes only stored 2GB,
I believe the latest version supports up to 160GB (uncompressed) per tape.

DAT would be way to small for my office, as I use LTO-3 tapes (400GB uncompressed) in a 24 tape changer.
 
Floppies were so much better than cassette tape. I remember dad always tinkering with the volume when trying to read them on his Tandy Model I. We still have it wrapped in plastic.
 
Probably the only way to fit three minutes of music on only four floppy disks.
 
Tanis143 said:
That was cool. I remember when the 3.5 was new. First time I used one was with an original Mac (the square ones that came with a mouse), before that it was 5 1/4 drives on the apple IIe's and on my friends commadore 64 systems. I remember you could take a cheaper single sided floppy and punch a hole on the side to make it a double sided floppy.

Man, how times have changed. From 5 1/4's to 3.5 to cd to dvd and external hard drives to usb drives. Whats really sad is comparing the storage of these devices to their earlier predecessors. A 3.5 floppy only held 1.44 megs of data and I forget what the 5 1/4 floppies held. A 16gig usb drive would hold more storage that over 11,000 3.5 in floppy disks. Thats insane.
Click to expand...

Yes but if you could convert to, I thinkMS) .cab files you could get 1.88. Win 95 came on the floppies that size and up to that point the amount on a floppy was 1.37 after format. I was bewildered at how Microsoft could get so much on a floppy.
 
Uncle said:
Yes but if you could convert to, I thinkMS) .cab files you could get 1.88. Win 95 came on the floppies that size and up to that point the amount on a floppy was 1.37 after format. I was bewildered at how Microsoft could get so much on a floppy.
Click to expand...

The Microsoft DMF format allowed for a 1.44 MB floppy to be formatted out to 1.68'ish MB. I remember when I was the military and we got Office 4.something and the first floppy was in the DMF format, we couldn't copy it at the time LOL.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
You younger guys got to realize. Before floppies drive (hard drives were very, very, expensive for computer hobbyist as we were known then). we had to use very unreliable cassette tape storage. YES, cassette tape like the ones that you played in a boom box.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I got an uncle (he's in his 60s) that reminds me of this all of the time. I actually like hearing his stories about the old days of computing. His first computer was a Trash-80 and he told me it was a PITA loading in programs from cassette.
 
Hofy said:
What? No 8" floppy luvin'?
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking! I've got a new in box 10 pack of 8" Verbatim disks, still in the shrink wrap.

I also remember Windows 95b being on like 30 floppy disks... that takes awhile.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
Last time I used a 5.25 I was playing Number Munchers in like the 3rd grade. I did get an prerelease of quake 1 that I had to zip span across like 15 3.5 floppy for back up lol. My 202 meg hard drive couldn't take all that gaming goodness lol.
Click to expand...

HOLY SHIT, wow. Memories there. Now I actually remembered the first "video game" I ever played on PC. It was either that in elementary school or "Reader Rabbit" and I would print out my game on a dot matrix printer, the ones with the holes on both sides and the paper folded up as one connected piece into a box. :p

Wow, 20 years ago. No way.
 
Absolutely brilliant! File this one in the "super cool, but how does he have this much time on his hands" category...
 
Epic!

I'm 32 and I remember using both 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 floppies (why does everyone use decimals now?)

These drives, especially the 5 1/2, could get really loud, especially when formatting a floppy. Some drives were so loud I would wonder if they were really just grinding the surface off the floppy disk, instead of formatting it.

Judging by the crisp sound of the disks going in, there might be a violin mic mounted to the case, or even a mic on each drive.

This reminds me of a old video, Fur Elise on HP Scanjet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHcV8vZ96OM
 
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