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
Interesting they look like three and a half inch floppies out of their sleeves
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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That's definitely what it is, but why was it removed from the plastic housing? It would never last long without the protection, and even if it was being bulk-written to, you wouldn't do it outside the housing.
Very strange.
Someone probably had no idea what they were doing. Like, at all.
I would rip em up as a kid all the time.
Nobody ever asks why it's the C:\
Pour one out for A:\ and B:\
Originally, personal computers only had a floppy disk drive, which got letter A, and later models could have two floppy drives, so A and B. When hard disk drives appeared they got assigned to letter C (and typically D for a secondary HDD). E then became customary for optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM etc.)
Me, an average Linux enjoyer: "What's a drive letter?"
sda, sdb
hda, hdb
old.gif
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0
older.fli
My heart aches for those floppies’ demise.
Yeah, as others have said, floppies without cases.
Just to be clear, floppy cases were never meant to be removed. They were glued together in such a way that it wasn't possible to take the case off without breaking the case. And these disks can't be read without the cases. Basically, the cases were considered part of the disk (just like the plastic casing of a an audio cassette or VHS is integral to the functioning of the medium.) I have to imagine whoever took these out of their cases had a misunderstanding about how computers on the order of thinking a CD-ROM tray is a drink holder or trying to print a document by laying the monitor face-down on the bed of a copy machine.
If you wanted to read the 3.5" disks, you might be able to do so if you can procure a proper floppy drive and some sacrificial floppy disks. It'd probably take some finesse and careful gluing skills.
But that all assumes that these disks haven't lost their data already. Floppies tend to just plain old degrade over time. So the data very is very likely heavily corrupted.
I have heard of really specialized hardware to read data off of degraded disks, but that's probably "you have to know a guy/gal" level of specialization. If you really wanted to go that route, I think you'd probably want to know if what you have there is "valuable" (basically not already available on Archive.org and also interesting like unreleased source code or something.) But if you thought you had something like that and wanted to pursue it, you could @ Jason Scott (@textfiles@mastodon.archive.org) on Mastodon. If anybody has a lead on how to read those, it's him.
They were probably disassembled for showcase. They weren't the most resilient of things and eventually enough area of the disk would degrade as to make the disk unusable. Eventually as in, really fast. Every office had a pile of defective floppies marked as corrupted to prevent people from losing their data to them. Essentially you could format and write on them but reading was impossible or returned garbled data. They were comonly disassembled to showcase how they worked and to experiment as they were a cheap source of ferromagnetic coated cellulose.
or arts and grafts. someone might had an idea for either the cases or the discs themselves and the dics wouldnt work so they saved them for later. and now he we are at a later date...
@TootSweet @TheScribbler what monster did this
Jason Scott! I can't express how honored I am that your apparently first post on Lemmy is a response to me!
Also, yes, monstrous. ;)
We can thank the beauty of ActivityPub to let people reply across multiple platforms.
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Hope this is just a Boomer hating shit post. Pretty sure it is.
Let's just believe it is because the alternative makes me sad.
Yeah. Btw, wtf is this thing??
It's an ear-heater.
might be a floppy disk, but without the case
Well, I feel old.
3.5” floppy discs which have been removed from their plastic shells.
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.
either that or the porn is hidden there
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.
12 megabytes of RAM, 500 megabyte hard drive, built-in spreadhseet capabilities and a modem that transmits it over 28,000 bps
Wow this makes me feel old
Looks like floppy disks without the shell. How big are they?
Looks like the physical storage medium of a 3 1/2 inch diskette. Which is usually called a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk, except with this one it's a bit of a misnomer, since this iteration has a rigid case, unlike the older 8 inch and 5 1/4 inch versions. Or should have, it appears to be removed in OP's case.
The disk itself is flexible, hence the floppy disk. In contrast a hard disk had rigid platters, hence hard. The outer casing has nothing to do with it.
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the disk that lies inside a floppy disk (a 5.25 floppy disk judging by the size)
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.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if you could pull data off them, but data recovery pros never cease to amaze me
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.
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.
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Trash now.
Buffalo bill works there
From Beagle Bros - Wikipedia:
Beagle Bros was an American software company that specialized in creating personal computing products. Their primary focus was on the Apple II family of computers. Although they ceased business in 1991, owner Mark Simonsen permitted the Beagle Bros name and logo to be included on the 30th anniversary reboot of I. O. Silver, released on December 12, 2014 by former Beagle programmer Randy Brandt.
Found via reverse image search:
I know they're floppies but when I see them like this it always reminds me of the first intern role I had at datacard/gemplus UK, I had to change the disk stacks in the main frame at specific times with specific access codes, lift the lid and pull out the disk stacks, put them on a specific numbered trolly and insert the next stack.
Was all very precise and I saw someone screw it once, glad it was a perm staffer and not me, I took so many notes on that process I dreamt of them for years.
Copy A: . B:\
floppy disk days long and gone
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