this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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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

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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 bug daddy in the picture is 8", first type I used, with COBOL)

... and now you kids know where the "save" button icon came from.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I still have a bunch of zip disks that I want to examine. Think they're still good?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Felt like we could store the whole world on 100mb zip disks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I still have a working zip drive.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year 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] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have the original floppy set for MS Office 4.3 for Windows 3.11.

Fourty-three 3.5" disks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hahaha, mfw the last few disks is the same face the morning after a spicy burrito.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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] 1 points 1 year ago

You can get a 128GB pendrive for like 15€...

That's crazy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That’s it! Ha ha wow haven’t seen that since elementary school.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros

The box is from some fancy Apple software from long before most of you were born.

The contents are just the skeletal remains of assorted species of the Save Icon.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

My heart aches for those floppies’ demise.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That looks like a floppy disk with the protective casing removed...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Beagle Bros was a software company that developed useful quirky software for the Apple ][ computer. They had a schtick that all of their manuals and promotional materials were styled like flyers from "old West" salesmen. They were actually pretty funny if you were in on the joke.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As everyone else said, they’re floppy disks with the plastic case removed.

Since you found them in a church, could they have belonged to a church bell system? I’ve seen other church bell systems in the past where the songs came on weird mediums.

This is just a random guess, I don’t know why anyone would remove the casing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

either that or the porn is hidden there

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At 1.44mb max capacity the only porn it'd contain is Ascii or erotic stories lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What? You can fit a bunch of naughty jpgs on 1.44mb

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hahaha, true, you could fit 2 or 3 jpg photos on a floppy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

There were even digital cameras that used floppies to store the photos they took.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

might be a floppy disk, but without the case

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

12 megabytes of RAM, 500 megabyte hard drive, built-in spreadhseet capabilities and a modem that transmits it over 28,000 bps

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Well, I feel old.

3.5” floppy discs which have been removed from their plastic shells.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks, everyone. I thought that's what they were, but thought there was maybe something I didn't know. I think we'll probably just trash them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Looks like floppy disks without the shell. How big are they?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

old floppy disks of different sizes. the bottom looks like 5 1/4" the ones on top with the metal centers are all 3 1/2". Both standards needed sleeves to be read. Many of these are likely trash now but that wouldn't stop me from trying to load them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Both standards needed sleeves to be read.

For 3.5", yes. 5.25" disks could be removed from their protective enclosures, inserted into a drive, and used as normal. At least until the exposed medium was damaged by fingerprints or other debris. Not something you would normally do though. Source: Did it myself a few times mostly out of curiosity.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

This. When my favourite floppies started to have a worn sleeve (especially 3.5", where that metal protective covers started to bend out a bit, threatening to jam in the drive), I usually transplanted the disk itself over to a new sleeve.

[–] Sami 2 points 1 year ago
[–] vatw 1 points 1 year ago

You learn something new every day....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_Bros

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Buffalo bill works there

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting they look like three and a half inch floppies out of their sleeves

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, floppy without the case was my immediate guess too. Not sure why they would have been stored this way though. It's a bit weird.