Laugh of the Day - 5.25" Floppy

[Steve R.]

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]

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]

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.]

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]

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

 

[The_Doc_Man]

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.]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[Bladerunner]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.]

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]

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!