ExtremeDullard
@ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
- Comment on Low-level floppy operations with native floppy controller on older PC with modern Linux distribution 16 hours ago:
I am just curious, what were you using the floppies for? Configuration of some older piece of hardware? Retro gaming? Older backups?
Just backing them up. My company was throwing a bunch away - as well as this PC with perfectly working drives which was hours away from being landfilled - and something in me told me to save them and image them for others who might need whatever was on them. See here.
- Low-level floppy operations with native floppy controller on older PC with modern Linux distributionSubmitted 16 hours ago to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org | 7 comments
- Comment on Born to ride Donald Trump 1 day ago:
Good luck saddling that fat orange horse…
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 1 day ago:
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 1 day ago:
And just for follow up, I talked to my boss and it’s okay with it.
- Comment on DOGE uncovers over 4M government credit cards responsible for 90M transactions 1 day ago:
$90M? Wow… That’s like the annual budget of the city of Ithaca, NY.
Phew! With savings that like, we’re well on our way to recovering those $2tn Musk promised.
- Submitted 2 days ago to conservative@sh.itjust.works | 0 comments
- Submitted 2 days ago to conservative@lemmy.world | 4 comments
- Comment on Stephen Miller Embarrasses CNN Over Absurd Trump-Musk DOGE Question | Headline USA 2 days ago:
Yeah that much is obvious even when read through that MAGA-tainted article.
- Comment on Amazon boss Jeff Bezos could face prison over knife sales to children 2 days ago:
Billionaires don’t go to prison, silly. Billionaires are above the law.
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 2 days ago:
Some of the companies are still around and the serial is probably registered to my company’s name. The last thing I want is them finding the serial on the internet archive and calling my boss, even if the software is ancient.
My plan is to ask my boss whether he’s okay for me to upload all the anonymous stuff - driver and such - and to let me contact the companies in question to ask them permission to upload their old stuff with the serial. I don’t expect my boss refuse the former (he’s cool) and probably not the latter either. As for the individual software vendors, worst case, they refuse and I’ll simply post the software without the serial.
I want to do everything cleanly and above the radar. A bunch of old DOS programs aren’t worth getting in trouble for.
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 2 days ago:
Yeah I know, I’ve use other people’s disk dumps to save the day too. That’s kind of why I’m doing this.
I’m really amazed at how well they all read. I’ve only had one bad sector on a disk I have a duplicate of. Other than that, everything read perfectly. The oldest disk I dumped goes all the way back to 1985 and it read like a champ. The write protect sticker’s glue fared less well…
Oh well… 39 disks dumped. That’ll do for today. I didn’t even make a dent in the pile 🙂
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 2 days ago:
You’re welcome 🙂
No games here though. It’s all drivers, business stuff and software for scopes and other measurement equipment.
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 2 days ago:
At any rate, it’s super-weird to be handling 5"1/4 disks in 2025. After all these years… And what’s even weirder is, both the 3"1/2 and the 5"1/4 in that computer I salvaged are buttery smooth, like if they were totally new. They’re probably working smoother than any actual drive I owned when drives were a thing people had to use every day 🙂
- Comment on Where should I put diskette images? 2 days ago:
The problem is, I have no idea what’s on most of them. The content needs to be reviewed otherwise it’ll just disappear as unlabeled disk image with unknown content in the bowels of the internet archive.
Also, I really should make a pass on them because some of them have licensed software and serials…
- Submitted 2 days ago to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org | 11 comments
- Comment on DOGE Discovers $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Payments ‘Almost Impossible’ to Trace 2 days ago:
Breitbart is a fringe far-right conspiracy-theory-peddling organization. Nobody is correcting them because nobody takes them seriously, they don’t matter and they’re not worth the effort.
But you know that. I’m just leaving this here for those who might wonder if this new Breitbart lie is an actual thing.
- Comment on DOGE Discovers $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Payments ‘Almost Impossible’ to Trace 3 days ago:
Of course it isn’t 🙂 It’s Breitbart, so the assumption is that it’s far-right propaganda absent evidence of the contrary.
Like I said, if they produce evidence - and pretty convincing evidence too, because extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof - I’ll believe them. Until then, I’ll take Breitbart news like all Breitbart news should be taken: damn lies for MAGA hicks who believe anything far-right.
- Comment on DOGE Discovers $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Payments ‘Almost Impossible’ to Trace 3 days ago:
Only $4.7tn? Coming from Breitbart, I’m disappointed. It’s almost believable.
- Comment on I saved a bunch of floppies and drives from the landfill: what's it worth? 3 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 🙂
- Comment on I saved a bunch of floppies and drives from the landfill: what's it worth? 3 days ago:
I took a closer look at the nondescript beige box I rescued yesterday before leaving work and it’s not that nondescript after all: it a Pentium4 running XP Pro, it has some sort of Adapter SCSI card in it and it has a DAT drive:
- Comment on I saved a bunch of floppies and drives from the landfill: what's it worth? 3 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.
- Comment on I saved a bunch of floppies and drives from the landfill: what's it worth? 3 days ago:
There were two problems:
- I didn’t have the space to store all that stuff while I catalog it. There was 3 roomfuls of it, honestly.
- I’m not interested in sifting through old computer stuff, much less taking photos of the items, pricing them, listing them on eBay, then packaging them and shipping them. Someone who enjoys old computers would already find this tedious benedictine work and I don’t.
I did tell my company they should hire a college student in the summer to do it, but here’s the thing: only people my age know what most of those things were, and all the people my age I know - including me - have much higher paying jobs and don’t want to be doing that.
So in the end, my company decided to reclaim the space and get rid of it all.
- Submitted 4 days ago to retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org | 12 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 4 days ago:
Spank her when she does something stupid. If she wants to live old school, she’s gotta go all the way.
- Comment on Fans Cheer as Trump’s ‘Beast’ Limo Leads Drivers Around the Track at Daytona 500 5 days ago:
The first sitting president to attend the Daytona 500 was George W. Bush in 2004. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, attended in 1978, just before he took office as president. Thus far, no Democrats have attended the race.
To nobody’s surprised, the most moronic presidents are the ones showing off at the most important redneck motorsport event.
- Comment on New MAGA acronym interpretation 5 days ago:
MAGA Attracts Gullible Asswipes
Yes, it’s a recursive acronym.
- Comment on Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents 5 days ago:
We tend to distrust “free”.
I don’t think so. Most people understand that free stuff offered by for-profits is sketchy and deceitful, while free public services are just another way of saying taxpayer-supported.
Everybody knows - or at least should know - that a free Google account means Google is going to invade your privacy, while enrolling for free at the local community college or attending school is their right because they paid for it with the taxes.
At least outside the US, that’s the deal most taxpayers understand they have with the state. In the US, people would like free public services but refuse to pay for it because communism or some equally stupid non-sequitur.
- Comment on Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents 5 days ago:
Oh come on, you know what I mean: completely free as in you’re free to dump stuff in public trashcans but someone still has to pay for trash collection, and that someone is the taxpayer.
If a bus fare costs. say, $4, and $3.50 are subsidized so the apparent cost to the bus riders is 50c, someone pays for the $3.50 and that’s everybody, including those who don’t ride the bus. Just like everybody pays for road maintenance in equal parts even if they don’t drive a lot.
If policymakers decided to make everybody pay for 88% of a few people’s bus fare, they might as well make everybody pay 100% and safe the cost of printing bus tickets, programming bus cards and paying ticket controllers to catch fare dodgers.
- Comment on Here’s why some people still evade public transport fares – even when they’re 50 cents 5 days ago:
The zero price effect: “If something is free, you are the product”.
Not in this case. It’s not really free: people pay for public transport in their taxes.
