I found this old software on a medium I don’t recognize at my church. Does anyone know if this has value to anybody? this

  • jsveiga
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    11 months ago

    It’s the guts of 3.5" floppies, like these, they usually stored 720kB, then 1.44MB, but the latest versions (double sided) were 2.88MB.

    The larger one at the bottom is from a 5 1/4" (orange in this picture, the big daddy in the picture is 8", first type I used, with COBOL)

    … and now you kids know where the “save” button icon came from.

    They were not meant to be removed from their protective envelopes, they’re probably damaged now.

    • redimk
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      3311 months ago

      This reminds me of when I got a new PC when I was younger and I was shocked… “WHAT?! THEY COME WITH 128MB RAM NOW!!! AND THEY HAVE A DVD TRAY??? No more floppy disks!!!”

      Fuck, those were nice times (except for dial-up internet).

      • @[email protected]
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        2411 months ago

        I remember having a CD burner, dvd burner, floppy drive, and Zip drive for those rare occasions.

      • @[email protected]
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        811 months ago

        There’s nothing quite like passing around copies of games that are eight-diskettes large and finding out that disk #8 is unreadable after a 30min install. Good times.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        The part that’s wild to me is I have an SD card in a computer in my pocket that cost $10 or so and is basically disposable but it’s larger than the hard drive in my first computer from 25 years ago

      • @[email protected]
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        211 months ago

        I remember upgrading my Macintosh computer from 512kB to A FULL MEGABYTE! Wow, what a difference, suddenly I could run two programs at once - even three small ones.

        Ah, the eighties… Those were the days.

    • @[email protected]
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      1411 months ago

      Started with the 8" bastards on a dedicated word processor (with a 12" CRT, green phospher glow, and typwriter style printer built right into the top of the unit!) that my dad had for medical filekeeping at his office.

      It’s been amazing watching storage tech from those to zip drives, and now, floppies of any kind are dying.

      • jsveiga
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        1611 months ago

        My daughter found a 3.5" floppy in a drawer a couple of years ago (she was 20) and went “What is this? It looks just like a ‘Save’ button!” :)

      • @[email protected]
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        911 months ago

        My parents first computer was 3 feet tall and cost $30,000. I liked to play frogger on it lmao.

    • jungle
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      911 months ago

      Don’t forget the cassettes before that. (Sinclair 1000 / ZX-81)

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)
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        711 months ago

        Having worked in a datacenter somewhat recently, I can assure you that cassettes are still in use. Now, they manage to fit tens of TB in a 4"x4" square.

      • @[email protected]
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        311 months ago

        Oregon Trail, on cassette, on a RadioShack TRS-80 in the school library.

        Gaming heaven.

    • @[email protected]
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      811 months ago

      First game I ever played was on those 8” floppies. It was a turtle game where you would type in DOS commands and make it move. I can’t remember the command prompts but it was fun enter like forward 1000 and it would blast across the screen.

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      If you play them backwards a satanic message is heard before the media bursts into flames.