Did you use Floppy Disk/Diskettes?

[Marc_LFD]

Back in my day, I and others would use floppy disk drives to save homework assignments, game roms, and so on, it was like the USB sticks of that era and really handy, too. I doubt anyone still uses since it had such little storage (1.44 megabytes), unless they'd do it for nostalgia.

I still have a bunch of them lying around because what else am I gonna do with it, throw it away? Maybe someday I'll load them up and see what I archived on them as that could be cool.

And if you're too young to know what a floppy disk is...

Who knew that we'd now have tiny memory cards that can hold 1TB+, people in the 90's and early 2000's wouldn't believe that!

 

[SylverReZ]

I have, yes. Used them for old computers to transfer drivers and programs. Another is to backup Amiga floppy disks and write my own, mainly sound trackers and games.

 

[linuxares]

uhm yes, the cd rom didn't come viable for the average joe until like 93-95

 

[rahcchi]

-

 

[SylverReZ]

uhm yes, the cd rom didn't come viable for the average joe until like 93-95

Most people couldn't afford a CD-ROM burner because they were super expensive, and were more so for professional industries. Not until the first affordable consumer burner that HP produced in 1995/96-ish.

 

[Ligeia]

Even back then I had no use for them because you can't even store one song on one disk.

I don't see why anyone would wanna use them nowadays given the tiny storage, let alone the fact that floppy disks readers basically don't exist anymore.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Most people couldn't afford a CD-ROM burner because they were super expensive, and were more so for professional industries. Not until the first affordable consumer burner that HP produced in 1995/96-ish.

I used to burn Dreamcast games to CDs and OSes (WIndows XP/7) to CDs/DVDs, but now... It's either "burn" to a USB or use an emulator to play those games.

Of course, there's also the possibility of loading DC games via an SD card to play on the console itself (an add-on, I've seen).

Kinda sad we've left that behind. Blu-ray is probably next.

 

[SylverReZ]

I used to burn Dreamcast games to CDs and OSes (WIndows XP/7) to CDs/DVDs, but now... It's either "burn" to a USB or use an emulator to play those games.

Of course, there's also the possibility of loading DC games via an SD card to play on the console itself (an add-on, I've seen).

Kinda sad we've left that behind. Blu-ray is probably next.

Loading DC games off an SD card is kinda a mixed bag for me. With Dreamshell sometimes the game doesn't work at all, or that the settings need tweaking to get it to run. I've burned quite a bit of homebrew and self-bootable DC games onto CD-R media, only downside is that in order to fit a full-game onto a 700MB CD, stuff needs to be cut out like music or video to fit. And in many cases like with Sonic Adventure 2, it has anti-piracy measures that would glitch out the boss fight with Dr. Eggman if it detects it as a copy.

Unlucky for American and Japanese owners of DC, is that they shipped out VA2 mobos after the Mil-CD vulnerability was discovered, disabling the use of CD-R copies. Unless you were in Europe, only VA0 and VA1 mobos were around.

 

[Smoker1]

When I was in the Army, they still had Tape Cassette Drives to make Backups, along with 3.25 Floppy Disks. Still remember the 5.25 Floppy Disks from Elementary School.

 

[SylverReZ]

Even back then I had no use for them because you can't even store one song on one disk.

I don't see why anyone would wanna use them nowadays given the tiny storage, let alone the fact that floppy disks readers basically don't exist anymore.

Remember when floppy disk boomboxes were a thing? They were often used for practicing music rather than something for a consumer to use.

 

[AncientBoi]

5" Floppy with the OS on it to run the PC

Then the Diskette

 

[DaFixer]

For me yes, first on the Commodore 64 at school later at home.
Those where 5 inch floppys disks, later on I got a Amiga 500. on that machine I used diskettes.
When we got a PC at home, it was a Commodore PC III for that one I used mosly dikettes.
Till around 2000 I used diskettes, then it was mosly cdr/dvdr's.

I still use floppy's and diskette's nowdays on my C64 and Amiga 500.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Remember when floppy disk boomboxes were a thing? They were often used for practicing music rather than something for a consumer to use.

What was the bitrate? 64? lol

 

[SylverReZ]

What was the bitrate? 64? lol

It plays MIDI files, nothing like MP3s.

 

[DinohScene]

I still have a pile of HD and DD diskettes.

 

[Ligeia]

Remember when floppy disk boomboxes were a thing? They were often used for practicing music rather than something for a consumer to use.

Wow never even heard about this thing ! lol I got my first computer around 2000, I guess this is older ?

Who knew that we'd now have tiny memory cards that can hold 1TB+, people in the 90's and early 2000's wouldn't believe that!

lol 1Tb was the total storage size of my first computer It was harsh because I had to delete my mp3 on regular basis to get new ones, I didn't have a CD burner.

 

[SylverReZ]

Wow never even heard about this thing ! lol I got my first computer around 2000, I guess this is older ?

Made around the 1990's.

lol 1Tb was the total storage size of my first computer It was harsh because I had to delete my mp3 on regular basis to get new ones, I didn't have a CD burner.

SuperDisk was a failed format which can hold up to 120MB on a single disk, it was also cross-compatible with regular 3.5" floppy drives.

 

[Minox]

I did and still do. Not very useful when compared to microSDs or newer USB drives but I very much doubt anyone in my vicinity would bother getting a floppy drive just to find out what's on my disks

 

[tech3475]

Excluding retro stuff e.g. Amiga, DOS, etc. I was reliant on them until the early-mid 00s for file transfers because they were a near universal standard.

It wasn't until I got USB flash drives and broadband/LAN that switching away became practical.

Funnily enough though, the oldest from new piece of computer hardware I still own and use is the FDD from my family's original 486 PC.

That said, even for my retro stuff I've started to shift over to Goteks.

When I was in the Army, they still had Tape Cassette Drives to make Backups, along with 3.25 Floppy Disks. Still remember the 5.25 Floppy Disks from Elementary School.

Tape is still in use, at least in some commercial environments, an LTO 6 tape can potentially hold 6TB of compressed data and only cost £40.....unfortunately the drives cost allot more so ROI does play a part.

I considered going down this route for offline backups, but I decided against because of the potential issues e.g. reliability, ensuring I do backups, etc.

Fun fact though, back in the mid 00s I knew of one company which was contractually/legally required to keep a library of open reel tapes. You know those vertical column drives you see in old TV shows/films/museums? They were only just getting rid of them....having replaced them with newer tray loading ones.

They even had multiple silos filled with tapes because they were used for site to site backups, because their dedicated fibre connection was too slow compared to these 1TB tapes driven their by courier.

At my retail job, we only ditched daily backups to DAT tape about 4 years ago (some ancient POS UNIX software).

Who knew that we'd now have tiny memory cards that can hold 1TB+, people in the 90's and early 2000's wouldn't believe that!

Want to know why the Windows Format Utility is limited to 32GB for FAT32? Because the guy who wrote it only had a 16MB memory card and figured it was enough for NT 4.0's lifetime.

 

[hippy dave]

I used the 3 inch, the 3.5 inch and the 5.25 inch, I never used the 8 inch, they were before my time.