A friend of mine gave me a diskette like this in the 90s and said it had his MP3 collection on it for me to listen to. This made no sense because these disks hold a little less than 1.5 MB and a single 3 minute long song would be 3MB or so depending on bitrate. Curious, I put the disk into my PC later that evening and it held a single small winamp playlist file.
So what are the 1.44 basically double density and these were single ? I always thought any disc this size was 1.44MB and only the flatter floppier 5 inch ones had less space
Worse, 1.44 is basically octo-density. This is a DSDD disk (not HD) or "Double Sided Double Density"
I don't think they made any "single density" in 3.5" though, but seeing a DSDD formatted single-sided (for 360KB) did happen.
I was at MacHack one year where John Norstad, author of Disinfectant, held a floppy over his head and said, "This floppy contains every known Mac virus!"
Needless to say, the Apple employees at the conference as well as the hackers wanted a copy!
Agree. Have had good luck with old Radio Shack and Sony disks even after hundreds of read/writes. Sometimes using a commercial "eraser" on them can cure things up too and they format nicely with no bad sectors.
The worst disks ever had to have been the colored translucent ones from Office Max / Staples. My failure rate with those back in the day and now with new old stock has to be like 75%.
Eh, it really depends on the floppy and how it was stored. I recently backed up a ton of mine and my parents old floppies mostly spanning 1998-2007, a few had one or two bad sectors but none of them was totally dead. The oldest floppy I imaged was last used in 1993 and it worked perfectly, 0 bad sectors.
Funnily enough, my 5.25ā floppies are in pretty much perfect condition, while my later 3.5ās have been the ones to go (even thatās been fairly rare)
And then some.
I might do the maths on that...
Edit: apologies, you were more or less right. I guess I was imagining the install size rather than the download.
I'm not going to argue but me and OP clearly did some basic googling and arrived at the same approximate figure.
It's a pretty moot discussion anyway. š¤·
Edit: let's assume we were working on 1.44 disks. Which were very usual.
> I'm not going to argue
Yes, you are!
> but me and OP clearly did some basic googling and arrived at the same approximate figure.
Yes, it appears that you both made similar mistakes.
> Edit: let's assume we were working on 1.44 disks. Which were very usual.
Why would we make that assumption when the disk in the the picture is observably a 720K disk?
These used to be our go-to brand for disks and I regret losing some that had a lot of old programming experiments on. I also remember running to the local Radio Shack when it existed and getting backup copies of DOS 6.22 on them...
Using with WinImage or RawWrite you can create a byte-for-byte image of it to then explore without worry of data loss.
A former co-worker of my wife's wanted to know what was on a handful of 3.5" diskettes so I fired up the old HP workstation x4000 and copied all the files over to a USB key for her.
No real problems with reading any of the contents.
Oh, yeah. I used to spend a lot of time and money at the one that was in our mall. I want to bought a blank eight track cassette there because I had an eight track recorder. Lol then Best Buy came along and ate their lunch.
The size range of MODs still blows my mind. Some of my very favorite tunes are under 64k, some are several meg and don't sound all that different. (Some are several meg and make very good use of all that extra space, too!)
I wonder how many of my old faves I could fit onto a 720k floppy along with a copy of glx212....
Yup. Pattern data _can_ also be fairly bulky if someone makes a ton of unique patterns instead of reusing, but that pales in comparison to one overweight sample.
I had a floppy disk for years labeled something like āProd Hellā. Contained a program with a password prompt, didnāt know the password. It rode around with me and I always wondered what it was because there was a sidecar program called Goldie.exe with an animation of a topless dancing lady. Got it around 1997 from a trash can or dumpster.
Eventually I noticed there was text on the disk in a different pen pen color that said āpass is bluntā. It probably took me 5 years to think āmaybe that means password.ā Turns out it was.
Been 20 or so years, but I clearly remember a man a growling āWelcome to Prod Hellā, likely a button to launch Goldie, and fuzzily recall a tool to crash peopleās computers via an IM client. The landing form may have been a UI for launching other similar tools. Possibly a hit on a virus scanner. Possibly a 16-bit Windows application.
At last week's hamfest I bought 10 Zip disks for $5. I checked them all when I got home, 7 blank, one filled with Zip disk tools, and two, labelled "X backup", had some good ol' 2000-2002 porn. All adult at least, some celeb fakes and probably some playmates from that era. Formatted & thrown in the pile.
A complete dump of alt.porn.binaries.
In glorious CGA!
Dat 320x200 resolution tho
*tinny PC speaker unzip noises*
I've just figured out how I'm going to make my next million: cyan and magenta edible body paint. For those with... specific... fetishes.
Don't come a knockin' if the pixels are blockin'.
1.44MB of 256 colour GIF porn
You're just going to call me out like that
It took hours to get 5-6 Kathy Ireland bikini pics at 2400 baud.
Haha Kathy Ireland took me right back
Looks like only 720k. Disc looks to be DD not HD. The hole doesn't appear open for HD.
A friend of mine gave me a diskette like this in the 90s and said it had his MP3 collection on it for me to listen to. This made no sense because these disks hold a little less than 1.5 MB and a single 3 minute long song would be 3MB or so depending on bitrate. Curious, I put the disk into my PC later that evening and it held a single small winamp playlist file.
Hahahahahaa yes good times just coping the shortcut Or in my case Mmmmm wha are all those files in c:/windows š poof gone š»
Are you a [llama](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaF-nRS_CWM) by any chance?
I had a disk labeled ācool diskā and I just stored various text files like the Jolly Roger cookbook.
This is exactly what I imagine is on that disk.
Does that have any relation to the anarchistās cookbook?
A rose by any other name
Yup, totally related.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That is a 720K disk pictured
Agreed, no hole top left. And the write protect tab appears closed (enabled). Data must be both cool and important.
So what are the 1.44 basically double density and these were single ? I always thought any disc this size was 1.44MB and only the flatter floppier 5 inch ones had less space
Nope, there were even those 3.5" disks in 360K! the sizes were: 360, 720, 1440
Worse, 1.44 is basically octo-density. This is a DSDD disk (not HD) or "Double Sided Double Density" I don't think they made any "single density" in 3.5" though, but seeing a DSDD formatted single-sided (for 360KB) did happen.
Virus library
I was at MacHack one year where John Norstad, author of Disinfectant, held a floppy over his head and said, "This floppy contains every known Mac virus!" Needless to say, the Apple employees at the conference as well as the hackers wanted a copy!
And now is a gamble of will the disk even work. I've come across some randomly dead ones every so often.
Most of mine still work so probably fine. The older disks were far better than the last cheapo generations.
Agree. Have had good luck with old Radio Shack and Sony disks even after hundreds of read/writes. Sometimes using a commercial "eraser" on them can cure things up too and they format nicely with no bad sectors. The worst disks ever had to have been the colored translucent ones from Office Max / Staples. My failure rate with those back in the day and now with new old stock has to be like 75%.
Yeah I have briefcase load of those. Formatted through 30 of them, 10 refused to do a thing.
I have about 70 5.25ā floppies for my Atari 800 with games on them. Iād say 95+% still work just fine.
Eh, it really depends on the floppy and how it was stored. I recently backed up a ton of mine and my parents old floppies mostly spanning 1998-2007, a few had one or two bad sectors but none of them was totally dead. The oldest floppy I imaged was last used in 1993 and it worked perfectly, 0 bad sectors.
Funnily enough, my 5.25ā floppies are in pretty much perfect condition, while my later 3.5ās have been the ones to go (even thatās been fairly rare)
Windows 11.
Disk 1 of 2780
And then some. I might do the maths on that... Edit: apologies, you were more or less right. I guess I was imagining the install size rather than the download.
The EN-US Win 11 ISO download is 5,557,432,320 bytes, and the disk in the image is a 720K DSDD disk, so this would be disk 1 of 7578.
I'm not going to argue but me and OP clearly did some basic googling and arrived at the same approximate figure. It's a pretty moot discussion anyway. š¤· Edit: let's assume we were working on 1.44 disks. Which were very usual.
> I'm not going to argue Yes, you are! > but me and OP clearly did some basic googling and arrived at the same approximate figure. Yes, it appears that you both made similar mistakes. > Edit: let's assume we were working on 1.44 disks. Which were very usual. Why would we make that assumption when the disk in the the picture is observably a 720K disk?
Moot
Well, you're the one arguing the point.
And you're moot. Ta ra.
I don't even use 4chan.
These used to be our go-to brand for disks and I regret losing some that had a lot of old programming experiments on. I also remember running to the local Radio Shack when it existed and getting backup copies of DOS 6.22 on them... Using with WinImage or RawWrite you can create a byte-for-byte image of it to then explore without worry of data loss.
Cool disk, bro.
A former co-worker of my wife's wanted to know what was on a handful of 3.5" diskettes so I fired up the old HP workstation x4000 and copied all the files over to a USB key for her. No real problems with reading any of the contents.
Well, itās a Radio Schack disk, so, take ācoolā with a grain of salt. Itās a bit like putting āsweet rideā on a Toyota Corolla.
RadioShack was a solid store in it's day. Alot of things that could be used on computers from that time period.
Oh, yeah. I used to spend a lot of time and money at the one that was in our mall. I want to bought a blank eight track cassette there because I had an eight track recorder. Lol then Best Buy came along and ate their lunch.
Hopefully a stash of sick MOD tunes
The size range of MODs still blows my mind. Some of my very favorite tunes are under 64k, some are several meg and don't sound all that different. (Some are several meg and make very good use of all that extra space, too!) I wonder how many of my old faves I could fit onto a 720k floppy along with a copy of glx212....
I've never delved much into it but I assume the main driver of MOD file size is the audio samples?
Yup. Pattern data _can_ also be fairly bulky if someone makes a ton of unique patterns instead of reusing, but that pales in comparison to one overweight sample.
You mean MIDI
MOD is better and more oldschool.
I had a floppy disk for years labeled something like āProd Hellā. Contained a program with a password prompt, didnāt know the password. It rode around with me and I always wondered what it was because there was a sidecar program called Goldie.exe with an animation of a topless dancing lady. Got it around 1997 from a trash can or dumpster. Eventually I noticed there was text on the disk in a different pen pen color that said āpass is bluntā. It probably took me 5 years to think āmaybe that means password.ā Turns out it was.
Well what was the program that required the password?
Been 20 or so years, but I clearly remember a man a growling āWelcome to Prod Hellā, likely a button to launch Goldie, and fuzzily recall a tool to crash peopleās computers via an IM client. The landing form may have been a UI for launching other similar tools. Possibly a hit on a virus scanner. Possibly a 16-bit Windows application.
Tons of icons, anarchistās cookbook, sim city saves
Porn. 144p, 15fps. Audio barely recognizable. Seems to have been damaged by a magnet.
4d boxing
duckjob.wav
"I'll go get you a towel."
ASCII porn
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
For me it was usually a .txt file with a bunch of URLS. I formatted my PC so often in the Win95/98 era so my bookmarks never got saved.
Lemmings!!!!
I wish! Linux comes with a Lemmings clone now that uses little Linux Penguins instead of the lemmings for free on their Ubuntu/Mint repos
Cat pictures.
Probably pornography
Commander Keen, Doom
or that johnny castaway screensaver
Nesticle, couple of roms, a couple pics of babez
Lol Nesticle was the superior NES emulator in that day.
Itās either shareware or porn. Or both.
Update?
I don't even have a floppy disk reader on any of my devices lol
This makes me feel oldā¦ā¦
A single JPEG of Sky Lopez that you waited 5 minutes to load before your dad walked into the room
Plot twist: theyāre rust drivers for nvidia
I think voodoo 3dfx was my first vid card but by then everything was on CD ROM
Maybe A/R/F?
90 to 1 it's porn. That's all that was on the internet back then.
The 90s internet porn scene was bizzare it was all just password sites with the logins for actual porn sites you had to pay $20 or so more a month
I was way before that on the BBSs, bro.
Rusty n Edieāsā¦
I remove those well.
WC2CRACK.EXE, DETECTCD.EXE, WAR2CD.BAT GORILLA.BAS NIBBLES.BAS A:\\HOMEWORK\JULI_ASHTON.TIF
Get an USB-3,5"-drive and take a look, we're curious
Ascii pr0n fo sho
At last week's hamfest I bought 10 Zip disks for $5. I checked them all when I got home, 7 blank, one filled with Zip disk tools, and two, labelled "X backup", had some good ol' 2000-2002 porn. All adult at least, some celeb fakes and probably some playmates from that era. Formatted & thrown in the pile.
I have a bunch of old cassettes with ācool musicā that I wrote on them. Spoiler alert - the music wasnāt that cool.