Who the heck buys 5.25" floppies?

[slaapliedje]

In many ways I liked the 5.25" floppies better than the 3.5" floppies.

A friend once accidentally knocked a glass of coca-cola over and it spilled all over his favorite C-64 game disk (sorry it's been too many years, I can't seem to remember which game). Anyway, he slit the 5.25" disk jacket open with a razor blade, pulled the media out and rinsed the media off under the faucet. He then took a new blank 5.25" disk and slit the jacket open on that and pulled the media out. Next he took the washed and dried media and inserted it in to the new jacket. A little cellophane tape to seal the jacket back up and he was gaming again.

(This is also a good example of why you should always have a back-up.)

Regards,
AmigaEd

Reminds me of the time that we somehow managed to get Jam on a 5.25" floppy disk for our Atari 800xl.  Can't recall all the games on it, one was MS. Pacman.  We washed it with a dish rag and soap, and would try it, a game would work, then another wouldn't, so we'd wash it some more until all of them worked again.

The 3.5" disks would get a slight scratch on them from a spec of dust or something and would be useless afterward.

I always thought it had something to do with being able to fit 90k on a 5.25" disk rather than 360k, 720k or 1.44m on a 3.5" disk.  It just doesn't have as much fault tolerance due to cramming more data onto a smaller surface.  

Either way, some of those 5.25" disks were practically indestructible.  We stuck a pencil through another one and it still mostly worked.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Let's face it, the reason we enjoy the old computers like the Amiga, C64, Atari 8-bits, etc. is because they had some personality.  That's what I hate about most newer tech and operating systems.  They lack that personality.  Most Windows boxes are thought of more as a utility, like a toaster that you can browse the internet on.

One of the main reasons I use Linux more often than not is because it is very customizable, much like the Amiga.

Back in the day you could get full programming specs for everything.  Now you have to sign NDAs and such.

So hell yeah, I live in the past!  Back when being a nerd meant you were picked on rather than "Hey, I have a virus on my PC, could you come over and fix it?"  I can at least speak for myself here that I preferred to be called four eyes over having to deal with some moron who keeps getting porn flashed across his screen 'cause he once looked at bigbustyasianmidgets.com.

slaapliedje

Posted from my Nokia N900 which was recently connected to my big screen TV so I could play Golden Axe on my Genesis Emulator wtih a Playstation 3 controller!

[slaapliedje]

Can you correct the link ? It does not seem to work.


greets,
Staf.

Oddly, when I was typing that in, I somehow KNEW someone would have said something along those lines.

I actually had been watching Supernatural a few days before, and the one brother was yelling at the other for using his laptop.  He said he hadn't been, and so he said 'well, why was it frozen on bigbustyasians.com?'  I just added in the midgets, because midgets make everything funny.

slaapliedje