Comment on I saved a bunch of floppies and drives from the landfill: what's it worth?
thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
if a 3.5 floppy drive hasnt been accessed in 10 years, chances are the data is corrupted
if they were kept in a really good stable environment, they might still be good. But a fridge magnet can ruin the data, they are fragile beasts when they don’t get their magnetic field reset every so often.
ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
Yeah that’s kind of what I figured.
I know some professionals pay a pretty penny to buy floppies to keep old equipment going - like old CNC machine tools - but they don’t pay more than actual pretty pennies.
Oh well… I’ll install DOS on the beige box and keep it around in case we ever have to access old media. And when the boxes of floppies get in my way, I’ll toss them too I guess.
SanguineBrah@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
I disagree with this. New old stock blank floppies that have been stored properly are becoming increasingly difficult to find, especially 5.25" media. There are a lot of hobbyists out there that would love to get a hold of them for use with their retro systems. You should sell them on, not throw them away.
ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org 4 days ago
That’s not my intention. But my office is only this big and my employer doesn’t really approve of the clutter I have in here. And I’m not bringing that stuff home. If I need to clear the place, I will. But I won’t throw them away: I’ll probably give them to some local retro-computing enthusiast, provided they come get the disks.
I’ve read two dozen disks and they read just fine. A lot of them have obscure drivers and stuff. I’ll upload them somewhere. I think this Youtuber Tech Tangent has some sort of archive going. Maybe I can upload that stuff there.
Meanwhile, I’m installing 32-bit Debian on that P4 machine I salvaged: it’s quite loaded for its time, with two 160G HDDs and 2G of RAM, a nice graphics card and all 🙂
pupbiru@aussie.zone 3 days ago
you can still buy brand new floppies for this purpose. anyone that’s doing this is just going to fork out for brand new products because they need a stable supply chain, and a guaranteed quality