Laugh of the Day - 5.25" Floppy (1 Viewer)

Steve R. · Jul 30, 2013

I was going through some old files at work. Out fell a 5.25" floppy.

Showed it to the Secretary, her response: "What's that?"

Mihail · Jul 30, 2013

You have been happy to meet a smart (clever) secretary.
From my experience, every secretary know "what is this" before the device's inventor has been born.

scott-atkinson · Jul 30, 2013

It's a good job you didn't tell her that it was called a 5.25" Floppy... you may have got a very unexpected answer...

Steve R. · Jul 30, 2013

I told her it was a CD before the CD was invented. With that she remembered what they were. It is quite amazing how something that used to be virtually universal can vanish from common knowledge. I wonder if any museums need this artifact?

Not to mention that with all our technological progress you can't even fit a "small" file on these disks anymore. But even the CD is now a "dying" medium considering the advent of USB flash drives.

As a trivia challenge: When did computers stop coming with 5.25" drives installed?

Mihail · Jul 30, 2013

From what I remember, in Romania, maybe in 1985 I saw the last one.
Not very sure.

The_Doc_Man · Jul 31, 2013

I had a Zenith 166 MHz model from about 1994 or 1995 that had a dual 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 in a single bay. That's the last time I remember seeing one.

Steve R. · Jul 31, 2013

Mihail said:
From what I remember, in Romania, maybe in 1985 I saw the last one.

The file the floppy dropped out of was circa 1990.

Bladerunner · Aug 7, 2013

I rem the first computers I programmed on use the punch card system. Then in the mid 70's I use one that had a whopping 4K ram, 8" floppy with 75K of memory. It worked. Then came 3.5 inch disk (in a hard shell). The battle between IBM, Tandy(Radio Shack), HP and Microsoft. Ah,,, Those were the days.

Have a nice day

Bladerunner

kevlray · Aug 7, 2013

Starting in college in the mid 70's. Punch cards, punch tape, reel to reel, cassette tape, 8'' floppies, 5.25'' floppies, 3.25" floppies, CD's, DVD's, flash drives. Of course I will not even start on the various methods of transferring data from one computer to another electronically.

Bladerunner · Aug 7, 2013

kevlray said:
Starting in college in the mid 70's. Punch cards, punch tape, reel to reel, cassette tape, 8'' floppies, 5.25'' floppies, 3.25" floppies, CD's, DVD's, flash drives. Of course I will not even start on the various methods of transferring data from one computer to another electronically.

you better believe it... I can say this,, it was really a wild ride back then!!!!!!!

Vassago · Aug 7, 2013

I still have an old Tandy. One day, it will be an artifact lol.

I also still have a mint Com64 with disk drive.

Bladerunner · Aug 7, 2013

Vassago said:
I still have an old Tandy. One day, it will be an artifact lol.

I also still have a mint Com64 with disk drive.

What kind of Tandy.

kevlray · Aug 7, 2013

I wrote a lot of assembly code on the Com64. It is a wonder it ever worked properly.

Bladerunner · Aug 8, 2013

rem the networking Zenix programming language from Tandy. It was a fight to the finish with IBM, Bill Gates and Tandy. HP was in there but they kind of stood by the sidelines.

Vassago · Aug 8, 2013

Bladerunner said:
What kind of Tandy.

Honestly, I don't remember. I'll have to check. I believe it's on of the 1000s. I had a TRS-80 when I was a kid which I used to write my first program from scratch. It's because of this that I was able to easily adapt to visual basic as I grew older.

Bladerunner · Aug 8, 2013

Vassago said:
Honestly, I don't remember. I'll have to check. I believe it's on of the 1000s. I had a TRS-80 when I was a kid which I used to write my first program from scratch. It's because of this that I was able to easily adapt to visual basic as I grew older.

Probably the 1000,,, it was one of their best ones.. It has been so long ago, I have a hard time rem. every little detail as well.

Bladerunner · Aug 8, 2013

Bladerunner said:
Probably the 1000,,, it was one of their best ones.. It has been so long ago, I have a hard time rem. every little detail as well.

Basic and Basic A were predecessors to VB. Xenix was also a Basic type program language only for networks. I say networks loosely because back then networks were not the same as they are now. lol

I rem. with that 4K ram and 75K 8"disk, I wrote an inventory program using basic. it worked fine but you had to chain everything together because the ram was not big enough. Also you had to be very careful in the non-essential programming because of 75Kdisk limit. Up until windows came along, my programs were miniscule in comparison to todays programs.When they came out with 2 disk bays, you could at least have double the space but you would have to split the program between the two and be sure to place each disk in it proper bay or it would not work. You can imagine what a relief it was when they came out with the 250k 31/2" (500,750,1.4K came later) WOW---we were in hog heaven then. Of course by then, windows (GUI) programming was just getting started and would eventually become the standard. Although VB and VBA still exist. Not sure if VB still exist. There was one for Windows and one for MS.Dos. Now Ms.Dos---that was another story in itself.

Have a nice day

Sometimes it is good to reminiscence , kinda of keeps your feet on the ground.

Bladerunner

Alc · Aug 9, 2013

I learned my first simple programming in 97-98 and all our coursework was submitted on floppy disks. Maybe the Uni was just woefully out of date?

Steve R. · Aug 10, 2013

Technological (audio) evolution is finally coming to cars proclaimed some pundits this morning on the news. The last cassette, as a standard feature, ended circa 2011. The pundits went on to say that the CD player, as a standard feature, is now obsolete and rapidly disappearing; being replaced by the USB drive, AUX in, and other hi-tech features.

We replaced the radio in our car a couple of several ago so that we could use a USB drive. Our CD collection was getting mangled and otherwise destroyed. I made a bare-bones MS Access program that randomly selects songs to "load-up" the USB drive. Copying MP3 Files to a USB Drive.

Attached is a "new" version of the MS Access program. It turns out that the USB device could only have (upper limit) 255 songs per folder. The manual gets you every time! So the USB flash drive has four folders, each with at least 254 songs.

Bladerunner · Aug 10, 2013

Steve R. said:
Technological (audio) evolution is finally coming to cars proclaimed some pundits this morning on the news. The last cassette, as a standard feature, ended circa 2011. The pundits went on to say that the CD player, as a standard feature, is now obsolete and rapidly disappearing; being replaced by the USB drive, AUX in, and other hi-tech features.

We replaced the radio in our car a couple of several ago so that we could use a USB drive. Our CD collection was getting mangled and otherwise destroyed. I made a bare-bones MS Access program that randomly selects songs to "load-up" the USB drive. Copying MP3 Files to a USB Drive.

Attached is a "new" version of the MS Access program. It turns out that the USB device could only have (upper limit) 255 songs per folder. The manual gets you every time! So the USB flash drive has four folders, each with at least 254 songs.

You said: "No matter how fast the computer is, it is too slow. " It had and will continue to be slower than the human brain in some things. Don't think I want to be around when it (computer) catches up!

Laugh of the Day - 5.25" Floppy (1 Viewer)

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