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Geoj posted:There was a definite dropoff after 2005 in the "quality" of floppies being sold. I also noticed they started getting advertised as "2.0 MB*" at some point. OS/2 warp's install diskettes had 2.0MB on them, but that may have been an illusion for the sake of copy protection. * 1.44 MB after formatting
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# ? Jan 23, 2015 18:20 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 07:07 |
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Elephant 5 1/4" floppies actually shed their magnetic coating after about a month. At my lab in the late 70s we used to say 'Elephants always forget'. Don't judge us. We had no sense of humor.
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# ? Jan 23, 2015 18:55 |
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Stick Insect posted:I also noticed they started getting advertised as "2.0 MB*" at some point. Nah, they genuinely held more data.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 00:23 |
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They were still 1.44MB formatted under MS DOS.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 00:32 |
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The floppy sucked after AOL stopped coming on them and you couldn't just reformat and use those for whatever
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 00:39 |
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ElwoodCuse posted:The floppy sucked after AOL stopped coming on them and you couldn't just reformat and use those for whatever But with an AOL CD, a Leatherman (or other multitool), a steady hand, and a laser pointer, you can perform the double-split experiment, proving wave-particle duality.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 00:50 |
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Funnily, a lot of promotional floppies were better quality than the blank floppies you could buy.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 00:52 |
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Flipperwaldt posted:They were still 1.44MB formatted under MS DOS. Oh, sure. They did genuinely hold more than that when formatted as install disks, though - and there were dos tools and drivers that let you squeeze up towards 2MB onto floppies, too. (I believe the Amiga people routinely did the same.)
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 02:23 |
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Distribution Media Format:quote:Distribution Media Format (DMF) is a format for floppy disks that Microsoft used to distribute software.[1][2] It allowed the disk to contain 1680 kB of data on a 3½-inch disk, instead of the standard 1440 kB. If you ever installed Windows95 from floppies, this is what you were using, I think
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 03:22 |
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I had an extensive sneakernet going with diskettes... One PC writing, the other reading and me running up and down the stairs between the two. The Win 95 computer was slightly faster at moving 1.44 mb. As long as it was a single file, loads of tiny small files would take forever due to needing to do extra FAT writes. I also used PC-Tools for DOS to format the diskettes. It would be fast because it moved at a consistent speed. Formatting in DOS or Windows would begin nice and fast, and then slow down as it got closer to 100%, and take longer on the whole.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 04:00 |
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Flipperwaldt posted:They were still 1.44MB formatted under MS DOS. I remember getting a special formatting program from somewhere (fdformat I think?) that let you format floppies beyond 1.44 megs on DOS and it seemed awesome at the time.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 04:23 |
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Do people still use ram disks?
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 05:41 |
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Available for purchase on Steam, no less. http://store.steampowered.com/app/337070/
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 05:47 |
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Last Chance posted:Do people still use ram disks? Yes, but with SSD's being way cheaper than ram there's no loving reason to do it.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 06:18 |
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Computer viking posted:Nah, they genuinely held more data.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 06:29 |
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Elliotw2 posted:Yes, but with SSD's being way cheaper than ram there's no loving reason to do it.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 09:32 |
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Last Chance posted:Do people still use ram disks? I have 16GB of RAM, with up to 10GB of it allocated as scratch space if needed. It's pretty cool for working on stuff with lots of tiny write actions, and it saves wear on my SSD. Linux makes it very easy with tmpfs. I also have my browser profile and cache directories in RAM, for those same reasons.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 10:43 |
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The Classic Mac OS actually had the ability to boot from a RAM Disk, although I'm not sure why you would want to. I guess if you absolutely needed to conserve battery life at all costs it could come in handy.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 14:36 |
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Konstantin posted:The Classic Mac OS actually had the ability to boot from a RAM Disk, although I'm not sure why you would want to. I guess if you absolutely needed to conserve battery life at all costs it could come in handy. Yep, I had an old duo that I'd copy a barebones system software and a few applications over to the RAM disk, and then spin down the hard drive for awesome battery life.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 16:45 |
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I use a RAM disk in combination with Fraps, which is still too retarded to just keep a 60 second loop buffer in memory on its own instead of writing to disk nonstop.
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# ? Jan 24, 2015 17:00 |
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KozmoNaut posted:I have 16GB of RAM, with up to 10GB of it allocated as scratch space if needed. It's pretty cool for working on stuff with lots of tiny write actions, and it saves wear on my SSD. That's pretty cool.
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# ? Jan 27, 2015 00:54 |
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I saw this book at the local goodwill the other day: The internet was a very different beast 20 years ago.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 01:50 |
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cyberia posted:I saw this book at the local goodwill the other day: I remember using Dogpile to search like 10 different search engines at the same time. Altavista, askjeeves, Yahoo, jeeze that feels like a lifetime ago. Google has delivered us all.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 02:06 |
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I still have an email address on excite.com that I check once a year when i remember i have it
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 03:14 |
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Basticle posted:I still have an email address on excite.com that I check once a year when i remember i have it I recently discovered my old AOL address from 1995 (that I stopped using in 2001) is still active. So much spam....
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 03:43 |
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cyberia posted:I saw this book at the local goodwill the other day: Someone see if the author's email still works.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 04:17 |
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Nckdictator posted:Someone see if the author's email still works. I just did.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 04:33 |
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Mister Kingdom posted:I recently discovered my old AOL address from 1995 (that I stopped using in 2001) is still active. I know someone that still uses AOL. Like honest to goodness "you've got mail" searches with keywords, AOL. They're only 40. They're a loving Gen-X'er, they grew up with this poo poo! The worst thing is they're so close to being technologically relevant, but still so far. Like, they get the whole "internet = thing, but at the same time, they still use loving Kazaa. Kazaa.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 04:59 |
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Zaphod42 posted:I remember using Dogpile to search like 10 different search engines at the same time. Altavista, askjeeves, Yahoo, jeeze that feels like a lifetime ago. They brought goto.com back
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 05:08 |
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poo poo, that internet book reminded me that I used to buy MAZAGINES that were essentially internet directories. A monthly installment based Yellow Pages if you will.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 13:13 |
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Oh god, I had completely forgotten all about those. But how else were you supposed to find out about cool or useful sites? I even remember the really old computer magazines, before the internet even became a thing, which had twenty or so pages at the back of each edition filled with code you could type out yourself, line by line, into your computer for games and poo poo. And you'd always gently caress up somewhere with a comma instead of a period or just a wrong line call and getting anything good to work took about a week of endlessly peering back and forth between the magazine and your screen trying to find where you hosed up.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 15:44 |
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Internet Underground magazine was my go to for a long time. I also remember reading Byte and Popular Computing back in the mid 70s.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 16:46 |
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Gorilla Salad posted:Oh god, I had completely forgotten all about those. But how else were you supposed to find out about cool or useful sites? I remember my parents typing in the code for Taco Man (iirc...it was like Pac Man or Munch Man) in 81 or so for our TI-99/4A. I think it was then recorded to cassette for loading later. I also had books with tons of basic code and my favorite was one that made R2D2 sounds for about 10 seconds. Kirk Vikernes has a new favorite as of 17:39 on Feb 7, 2015 |
# ? Feb 7, 2015 17:33 |
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I typed in the Mad program and made one mistake in the data so there was an errant line e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf1lQE7LeGI
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 18:11 |
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I went through a period where I used all of my free time keying BASIC games from computer magazines and books.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:26 |
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Flipperwaldt posted:They were still 1.44MB formatted under MS DOS. Floppy drives could actually format disks, i.e. rewrite the magnetic tracks and sectors, unlike hard disks. "Formatting" a hard disk actually just overwrites the data, the disk's firmware lacks the code to format-format (what you may have heard of as "low-level format") the disk So, with the right program, you could redraw the magnetic layout of a floppy disk as you wished, making tracks and sectors as narrow as the physical limits of the disk and drive allowed. This was only useful as long as you had a driver for your OS that could read the format back
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 19:27 |
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Goober Peas posted:I went through a period where I used all of my free time keying BASIC games from computer magazines and books. I had a subscription to Compute! Magazine that included the disc with the programs on it.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 21:03 |
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I loved PC mags. Before they died out here, one of the publishers decided to put hardcore porn on their software CDs, with a very (not) sophisticated age gate. That was weird, but 15 year old me decided it was a great move. Oh yeah, it was from a guide on overclocking that I learned how to make my motherboard produce blue smoke. Good times. old bean factory has a new favorite as of 21:50 on Feb 7, 2015 |
# ? Feb 7, 2015 21:47 |
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Goober Peas posted:I went through a period where I used all of my free time keying BASIC games from computer magazines and books. This was a fixture of a sizable segment of my childhood.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 22:07 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 07:07 |
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SaintFu posted:
Oh wooooooow, I haven't seen this in ages.
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# ? Feb 7, 2015 22:15 |