What should I do with it?
localroger
Posts: 3,451
Well this surfaced out of nowhere as I was going through some old stuff.
Still in the original bag. Seems like a shame to just chuck it.
Still in the original bag. Seems like a shame to just chuck it.
1024 x 768 - 99K
Comments
John Abshier
Do you add a "Really" each time you rediscover it add decide to keep it for one more round?
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That's quite a find, Roger! Does anyone still have a PC with a 3.5" drive? I think my last one was on a desktop PC I got rid of about 7 years ago.
-Phil
http://www.amazon.com/Imation-3-5-Inch-DS-HD-IBM-Formatted/dp/B00004YKNF/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390112919&sr=8-1&keywords=floppy+diskettes
military surplus ammo cans ==> http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2053587.m570.l1311.R3.TR7.TRC1.A0.Xsurplus+ammo&_nkw=military+surplus+ammo+cans&_sacat=0&_from=R40
And then, put it in the box and add other items to create a 2014 time capsule to be placed in the cornerstone of a new building or in some other location to be discovered far into the future.
BTW, those same cans are great for Propeller projects that are going to be installed outside.
I used to keep an 8" floppy drive, "just in case".
OK, that's really going to throw historians for a loop when they dig up a time capsule marked 2014 that has a 3.5" floppy...unless it stays in erco's box marked "really old stuff"
I'm glad some of those ammo box sellers mark their listing as "EMPTY" - it avoids confusion with the people expecting to buy "FULL" .50 cal ammo boxes for $20!
Depends. Guys opening a time capsule in one or two thousand years time are not going to worry so much about how the floppy disc became extinct in ten years or so.
Pretty much nothing of our current civilization will exist by then anyway. We will only be known as a mass extinction event and the people who left all that radio active waste behind.
I'd seriously reconsider getting these. This buyer was not at all happy, and it appears he used the product as advertised:
http://www.amazon.com/Imation-3-5-Inch-DS-HD-IBM-Formatted/product-reviews/B00004YKNF/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0
I get the joke there. But really, I would be not expect decades old stock of floppy disks to actually work.
At worst you'd need to run a Format operation to rebuild the Track/Sector data.
Those reviews were not funny(well, maybe that single one star), and may actually cause problems for the seller.
Giving a 3 star rating when they're frustrated with using an old system that needs them?
Writing funny reviews on a crappy product is one thing, but this...
AAAAARGH!
BTW: My computer at the office has a 3.5" (nicked from my previous machine and transplanted), and it has been used maybe 3 or 4 times the last year. (other employees coming by with diskettes that showed up during a cleanup, and wanted to check that there wasn't anything important on them, mostly)
At home, though...
One of my machines has both 3.5" and 5.25" drives...
I also have Iomega Zip drives(100 and 250MB), Clik! and Jaz(both 1 and 2GB). I have an old SCSI-based Sony MD-player, SyQuest weirdos and lots of other stuff... No Iomega Bernoullis, though. *Sigh*
I was actually approached at the office about lending out a Jaz drive a few days ago, but as it was to help users to keep a system running, I turned it down. (Helping saving data from old media is one thing, but helping keep alive an old system that should have been updated or replaced years ago? They should have budgeted for that! )
My HP Agilent 16702A Logic Analyzer also has a 3.5" drive, but as that also has a network connection, it may not be used all that much.
The browser included in the onboard SW has a bit of trouble parsing this site, though. Maybe if I could upgrade it to the latest v2.9 SW?
(I need an external CD-ROM with a mini 50pin SCSI2 port though.)
I found an old floppy that I had marked "Windows 3.11 disk 1 of 8". The files are dated 11/11/93 and I can still open them with Notepad. Win7 gave me an option when formatting to "Create an MS-Dos startup disk ".
So I tried and Windows 7 locks up when starting to create startup disk. Oh-well.
I was thinking when the building was torn down in 50 or 100 years because urban commercial occupancy rates are at 35% and someone thinks the now empty buildings need to be modernized and the 2014 date on the building documents conflicts with the technology in the time capsule and several law firms get wealthier when multiple parties enter into litigation as to ownership right and potential code violations of the original structure.
Wow, you're not in a glass half-full/half empty mood, you're in that "glass exploded violently and wiped out everyone within 20 feet by impaling them with shards of glistening death!" kind of mood!
I seem to remember I was something like 14 years old in school, about 1970. We were learning about exponentials in maths and of course its relation to exponential growth of populations.
Immediately I realized the human race as I know it is doomed.
Nothing that has happened since has altered that view, it just happens faster and faster as the maths suggested.
That's a nope, you're a pessimist. On the other hand I must be an optimist. The birth rate in the developed world is less than that required to maintain the current population so I see it as hope that the same will be true for the rest of the world as it catches up. Then we just have to worry about the WalMart effect of ever increasing consumption and disposal of cheap Smile that consumes resources and pollutes the environment.
I'll be dead within 40 years, my daughter is going into a convent before she starts dating. It's way above my paygrade to worry about all of humanity and how the human race ends! WalMart, her we come!!!!
It's actually a lot more complicated than that. Are you familiar with the bifurcation fractal? Taking things like resource depletion into account it graphs the final population against the exponent as the exponent increases. At a certain point the "final" population splits -- it will oscillate between a high and low value. Then it splits again, and again and again with the highest and lowest values widening as the transitions become more chaotic. Finally the graph comes to an end as the lowest of the increasingly numerous semi-stable population values becomes zero, indicating extinction.
One can make a strong argument that our growth exponent is too high, but just having one greater than 1 is not an automatic species death sentence.
Heresy! I cry foul! REFORMAT a blessed PBASIC Editor disk? Not on my watch!
My first computer for programming BS2s was an old 286 laptop with a dead hard drive. But it booted fine from floppy & DOS, and I used just such a floppy disk for many moons. Ah, the good old days!
Put it on your VIC-20 tape drive...
-Tommy
PS: It's a bipedal humanoid.
That would be a ROLLER SKATING bipedal humanoid, now!
Never had an 8" Drive tho' - Did have 19" 6 platter 10MB Hard Discs and Drives of the washing machine size though
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/20864635/suns-slowdown-leaves-scientists-baffled/
Heater & Co: predictions of freezing temperatures for the higher lattitudes!
Maybe we better start burning those greenhouse gasses again - we need to heat the earth by other means!!!