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View Full Version : what is your favorite old school storage media (like zip drives, 3.25 floppies, etc.)



billdotson
March 3rd, 2007, 06:32 AM
So what is your favorite old school storage media. Personally I like the 3.25 floppies because it just feels cool to pop the disk into the floppy drive. With CDs and DVDs you have to just gently place them in there.

So what is your favorite old school storage media? (it has got to be something that you would've used.. not like a 16 year old saying a magnetic drum was the coolest)

SunnyRabbiera
March 3rd, 2007, 06:35 AM
I liked the 5 1/4 floppy, I used to love popping them into my old mac :D

billdotson
March 3rd, 2007, 06:45 AM
I mean ZIP drives, 3.25 and 5.25 floppies are so cool just because they pop into the drive. You can also walk around with them and feel like you are carrying some important information or something. I have not used a ZIP drive more than once and it has been so long since I have used a 5.25 floppy I don't remember. Although I do remember playing educational games on the school computers and those were on 5.25 floppies. That was the greatest fun-time for a class ever and absolutely the best way to end the school day.

I wonder what it would be like to be around when the punch cards, punch tape, magnetic drums, cassette tapes, laser discs and such were around.

phossal
March 3rd, 2007, 06:52 AM
I wonder what it would be like to be around when the punch cards, punch tape, magnetic drums, cassette tapes, laser discs and such were around.

I was around for some of those. Horrible, horribe times those were. In the words of Hobbes, "...Nasty, Brutish and Short!"

fuscia
March 3rd, 2007, 08:52 AM
ye olde noggin.

yabbadabbadont
March 3rd, 2007, 08:59 AM
IBM 80-column cards. They last forever. Now, if only people could still read EBCDIC... ;)

I learned how to read punched cards before I learned how to type. My dad was a terrible typist and the college only had one keypunch machine that printed what was punched onto the card. So he taught me how to read EBCDIC so that I could write what was punched on the top of the cards. I thought that it was the greatest game ever... noisy machines, fast moving cards, massive line printers, and even a secret code to decipher. What more can a kid ask for? :lol:

My second choice would be 5-1/4" floppies. If you throw them right, they will sail right around corners and hit the other guys in the computer room. ;)

slimdog360
March 3rd, 2007, 09:33 AM
Id have to say the 1.5" floppies, I used to love playing games on the old pre pentium computer (I think it was a 486 but not sure) from these. My favs were ms links, prince of persia, lesuire suit larry, monkey island, and of course the hugo games like hugos house of horrors etc. Great stuff.

PatrickMay16
March 3rd, 2007, 09:44 AM
I recently bought a Zip250 USB drive, and a couple boxes of zip disks. I wrote a backup script that puts together my collections of small files (text files, midi files, saved webpages, emulator savestates, etc) into a couple of archives, in a folder on my desktop. Then I copy the folder to a zip disk.
That is my weekly backup.

So, my favorite is zip disks. Though they're old, they're still useful.

Vipercat
March 3rd, 2007, 09:58 AM
I would have to say the 5.25 inch floppy is my favorite, I still have a few 5.25 drives, also 3.5 floppies are okay... I also have a external 250mb Serial Zip drive... Nothing beats old school cartridges though...

karellen
March 3rd, 2007, 10:20 AM
5 1.4 floppy disk. just love the sound

Quillz
March 3rd, 2007, 10:23 AM
Probably the floppy, since it was the only medium I had access to back in the MS-DOS/Windows 95 days.

happy-and-lost
March 3rd, 2007, 11:02 AM
It's not really a computer, but I love the satisfying "clunk" of loading a cartridge into a SNES; it's much more satisfying than fiddling around with those tiny 1.5" GameCube disks.

azkehmm
March 3rd, 2007, 12:00 PM
Nothing beats the coffee-grinder like sound of my old 3.5" floppy drive... or maybe it was the hardrive that made the sound... don't really remember...

3rdalbum
March 3rd, 2007, 12:00 PM
Definately 100 meg Zip disks. It was very satisfying to put one into the drive, and have it come up on the desktop with an album in MP3 format ready for you to listen to during class :-)

Does anyone else remember Syquest 44 (and 80) megabyte cartridges? I think they were sorta a Mac thing, but those were such fun things to take out. You pushed the button, waited for the disk to spin down, then pull the lever and the cartridge would come out. It was like playing the One Armed Bandit!

billdotson
March 3rd, 2007, 06:41 PM
they should make new storage media fun, although I do like being able to store all the documents I use on a 64MB USB thumb drive.

barney_1
March 3rd, 2007, 07:25 PM
I'm a fan of the Stone Tablet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tablets).

They take a really long time to copy and there's no fast getaway if you want to steal them. Two really nice security features.

hellmet
March 3rd, 2007, 07:41 PM
i f****ng hate any kind of magnetic storage. (I've not used tape, so can't say). They are terribly unreliable. You just buy a floppy to load a boot loader, and discover that it doesn't work!!

RandomJoe
March 3rd, 2007, 09:46 PM
I'd have to say the 3.5" floppies too. Rigid (I had some people in the computer lab I worked for who called them the "hard drive") and as you said, the satisfying feel/sound when inserting/ejecting them. And relatively indestructible - worst case was the little slider might get bent up, just yank it off and you could still retrieve data. That is, until they got so utterly cheap and worthless that I don't trust them to last more than 10 minutes now! (Not to mention too small capacity nowadays...)

Not really "old school", but following close on the floppy would be the mini CDs/DVDs. Small enough to again fit in a shirt pocket, and certainly plenty more storage space. Too bad they never really took off. I've not tried the mini DVDs, but the mini CDs were relatively tough too. Sure, they wouldn't take too much scratching but they came in handy. There just weren't enough systems with burners at the time. Now that everyone seems to have burners, the network or a USB drive is much simpler.

Mateo
March 3rd, 2007, 09:53 PM
5.25 floppies were great. I remember you would have to pull down the arm so that they stayed in the drive. I also think their storage capacity was something like 300kb.

yabbadabbadont
March 4th, 2007, 03:12 AM
5.25 floppies were great. I remember you would have to pull down the arm so that they stayed in the drive. I also think their storage capacity was something like 300kb.

The first one's I used where 120kb disks. Single sided, low density. Then there were 180kb, 320kb, 360kb, and 1.2mb finally.

kko1
March 4th, 2007, 05:13 PM
I'm a fan of the Stone Tablet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_tablets).

:)

I'll write a list of old school (computer age) storage media in a least favorite to favorite -order. Here goes:

Least favorites (a common factor with all these is the impractical shape and size):
5. CD-R, DVD-R, (eventual Blu-Ray/HD-DVD-R). Write once, and then they're junk. Moreso if you store junk on these. ;)
4. CD, DVD, Blu-Ray/HD-DVD. At least these are still useful for distributing stuff.
3. CD-RW, DVD-RW, (eventual Blu-Ray/HD-DVD-RW). At least you can re-use these.
2. DVD-RAM. Most practical of these, useful for backups. On linux, you can write to these as if they were a hard disk drive. They also take more re-writes than RW discs.

Favorite:
1. A magnetical, mechanically-operated storage device = a hard disk drive.

I mean these things are old as anything, when talking about computing, and yet they, in various shapes and sizes, have generally managed to keep my data safe and sound. Any time I've been at danger of data loss, it's been due either to user error, program error, or, the latest, me inadvertently kicking the box at a bad time. Never has it been a spontaneous hardware failure. (Besides, you're supposed to guard yourself against those with backups, see number 2.)

machoo02
March 4th, 2007, 10:43 PM
Papyrus scrolls.

Trebuchet
March 4th, 2007, 11:08 PM
SuperDisk. Holds 100 Mb of data, but the reader can read and write to standard floppies also. Media cost $10 each, so I bought exactly 3 of them.

I've never used it as anything but a floppy reader, so in retrospect it was probably the stupidest computer purchase I ever made. Seemed like a good idea at the time. :oops:

LookTJ
March 4th, 2007, 11:10 PM
I don't have a favorite but zip drives are good.

Rumor
March 5th, 2007, 12:05 AM
This isn't terribly "old school" but I loved Castlewood's Orb Drive.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3644

I had two, one in my office PC and one in my home PC and used it to transport work files back and forth. They were quite expensive when I bought them, now you can get one for a buck on eBay.

rudeboyskunk
June 22nd, 2007, 09:14 PM
I'd have to say my Syquest Sparq drive with the 1GB cartridge. Although I can't find a driver for it in Linux!!

Atreus12
June 22nd, 2007, 09:25 PM
What about Jaz drives?

yabbadabbadont
June 22nd, 2007, 09:35 PM
I'd have to say my Syquest Sparq drive with the 1GB cartridge. Although I can't find a driver for it in Linux!!

I have the parallel port version of that drive. You need the epat and/or epatz modules (I think they are called) as well as the (I think) pd module. (parallel disk) I don't know if the Ubuntu kernel includes them. I'll check my kernel config to see if the correct options were used when it was built and then post back here. (I know the correct options from my Gentoo days when I built my own kernels all the time ;))

Edit: For the parallel port version of the drive, you need to load the epat and paride modules. I haven't tested it yet, but I found those modules listed in /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/modules.dep

Bungo Pony
June 22nd, 2007, 09:37 PM
I was always a fan of 5 1/4" floppies. They were a hell of a lot more reliable than the 3 1/2". If I drop a 3 1/2 floppies, the data pretty much bounces off it and it's crap. But with 5 1/4" floppies, you could fold one into four, put it in your pocket for the day, unfold it, and the data would still be good.

The Adam Coleco "data packs" were interesting too. It was nothing more than a high speed cassette drive, but it was neat to watch. I used to make my own data packs out of regular cassettes although many of them didn't work worth a damn at higher speeds and would jam up a lot. I think they held 512k of data (might be 640k though).

yabbadabbadont
June 22nd, 2007, 09:49 PM
But with 5 1/4" floppies, you could fold one into four, put it in your pocket for the day, unfold it, and the data would still be good.

I was once able to recover the data from a damaged 5-1/4" floppy by cutting the disk out of the sleeve and then carefully centering it in the drive.... You can't do that with the 3-1/2" disks. ;)

Ebuntor
June 22nd, 2007, 10:19 PM
I love my old floppies. Slamming them in the drive (sometimes a bit too hard) while playing King's and Space Quest on my old Atari ST (with one of the first window interfaces :)). The good old gaming days, waiting 2 minutes before a new screen was loaded. ;)



2. DVD-RAM. Most practical of these, useful for backups. On linux, you can write to these as if they were a hard disk drive. They also take more re-writes than RW discs.


Sorry but what is a DVD-RAM? Is it different from a DVD-R or DVD+R? :confused:
EDIT: stupid question, forgot about wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM)

urukrama
June 22nd, 2007, 10:21 PM
I used Jaz drives, and was fond of them, until I switched to Ubuntu. I've never been able to get my old jaz drive and disks (1 GB) working with Ubuntu. Has anyone been succesful with this?

init1
June 22nd, 2007, 10:36 PM
I have a VIC 20 and tape drive. Not very practical, but still cool.

Al Fairclough
June 22nd, 2007, 11:56 PM
Punch cards, all the way. Unless you happened to drop your batch. ;)

yabbadabbadont
June 23rd, 2007, 01:18 AM
Punch cards, all the way. Unless you happened to drop your batch. ;)

I was the only kid in my grade school who could read IBM 80 column cards. (EBCDIC) My dad taught me because the lab he used only had one keypunch machine that printed what was punched onto the top of the card. (and he was a lousy typist) He would punch them and I would write what was punched on them so that he could check for typos. I once saw a guy drop three full trays in the parking lot when we were leaving. He literally sat down and cried. I said, "Dad, why is that man crying?" "You know those numbers I always punch on the right end of the cards?" "Yes", I said. "He didn't put any on his....." :D

If you did use the sequence number field, you could always submit your batch to an operator to be sorted for you.

kamaboko
June 23rd, 2007, 01:55 AM
my favorite old school media storage device: my brain.

Stew2
June 23rd, 2007, 02:22 AM
My brain frequently loses or corrupts data so my favorite old school storage media is a pen and paper :D.

Biochem
June 23rd, 2007, 03:21 AM
A layer of beta-glucose with beta (1-4) glycosidic bond homopolymer and a rod of graphein. It event work during power outage.

Stew2
June 23rd, 2007, 03:28 AM
A layer of beta-glucose with beta (1-4) glycosidic bond homopolymer and a rod of graphein. It event work during power outage.

Is that paper and a pencil? :D

gnomeuser
June 23rd, 2007, 03:35 AM
Oh.. hard, I do like a 5 1/4" floppy since I spend most of my first years on a computer using them.. I had the largest box of games, so much fun was had. But the sound of my Amiga 500 doing nibble copy from the internal to the external drive also was good.

I think I'll go with the spinning up of my massive 20MB HD from back when we got one of the first i386 machines in Denmark in our house, that thing had a mighty roar to it. The machine ran for at least 15 years and only quit being in use because we threw it out.. that was a sad day, I learned English playing Leisure Suit Larry on that thing.

Ah the memories.

zero244
June 23rd, 2007, 03:38 AM
3.25 Floppies they have saved my bacon uncountable times. I rarely use them anymore but they got the job done.

yabbadabbadont
June 23rd, 2007, 04:07 AM
I learned English playing Leisure Suit Larry on that thing.

Ah the memories.

I can't remember how many hours I spent playing that game. I did manage to get within two points (I think, it might have been 3) of the maximum possible score eventually. (no cheats or walk throughs either) I never did find out what I missed. :lol:

kamaboko
June 23rd, 2007, 04:16 AM
Leisure Suit Larry on that thing.

Ah the memories.

Yeah, old Larry! I forgot about him. He was around during my Mac days.

bchaffin72
June 23rd, 2007, 04:18 AM
I keep my GRUB on a 3.5" floppy. Also still find them useful for transferring files to my older laptop. My current PC has a floppy drive that I boot from and the system I am building now will have one as well.

wolfen69
June 23rd, 2007, 05:09 AM
i like no old media, someday our cd's and dvd's will be sh**. it's all relative.