Blast from the past.

tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
I was digging through a box here at work and found some very futuristic storage.

Who here remembers "flopticals?"

the 230 Megabyte 3.5" disk is exactly like its fully magnetic counterpart, but thicker. The 1 Gigabyte 5.25" one is double-sided, and permanently mounted in the "caddy"
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How times have changed...

edit: I'm bad at fractions.
 
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tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
Oh, man. Don't get me started on Laserdiscs. I've got most of the X-Files, Blues Brothers, Top Gun, Tombstone.... :D
 
A

Austin

New member
I've got the Collector's Edition Star Wars Trilogy. In widescreen nonetheless. That's all I'll ever need.
 
tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
Only one closet for that? I've got a whole house! Those who came to Minnesota MarkFest 2k12 can attest...
 
mlschultz

mlschultz

Boost King
tixer said:
I was digging through a box here at work and found some very futuristic storage.

Who here remembers "flopticals?"

the 230 Megabyte 3.5" disk is exactly like its fully magnetic counterpart, but thicker. The 1 Gigabyte 5.25" one is double-sided, and permanently mounted in the "caddy"
View attachment 7733

View attachment 7734

How times have changed...

edit: I'm bad at fractions.
Click to expand...

lol That is new technology. When I started out with IBM back in the day, current technology magnetic media was tape drives, mag cards, 8" floppy disk - single and double sided. Old tech was 80 column key punch cards and selectric typewriters. :)

I was part of the IBM pc rollout and was formatting and loading DOS & IBM programs to those tiny 5.25" and later the 3.5" diskettes. Yes, times sure have changed...
 
tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
That means that your work had a significant influence on my life. :)

My first computer was an 8088 XT (clone) dual 360K 5.25 drives, CGA, 640k of RAM, a 1200 baud modem, and a clock board. Eventually, I got a 31MB RLL drive. I was in heaven. Oh, and a Northgate OmniKey 101. That machine was a monster. The 8Mhz Turbo made Sopwith unplayable.

You probably loaded the originals of the DOS disks the guy at the computer store gave me copies of.. :D I think I started at 3.0, and eventually worked my way up to 6.22 on that machine before I eventually replaced it with a 486DX2/66

Now I'm typing this on a quad-core Xeon, with 8 gig of ram and a 120 gig SSD. Dual 24" screens, and... an IBM Model M (blue logo) keyboard. :D I loves me some clicky keyboards..
 
tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
Those Com ports were a valuable resource. You really only had COM 1 and 2, because IRQ conflicts on ports 3 and 4 were a nightmare...
 
S

steve

With "LOD" Since 1997
tixer said:
Those Com ports were a valuable resource. You really only had COM 1 and 2, because IRQ conflicts on ports 3 and 4 were a nightmare...
Click to expand...
The good old days before USB and plug and play, had to go in the BIOS and then move jumpers on your cards and mobo to get stuff to work.
 
driller

driller

El Presidente
Tandy TRS-80 with cassette deck, Commodore 64, Commodore SX64 "portable", Commodore 128's and numerous programmable calculators preceded my first PC which I think was a 286 clone. :fart
 
SCTBIRD1173

SCTBIRD1173

Mark my Bird!
tixer said:
I was digging through a box here at work and found some very futuristic storage.

Who here remembers "flopticals?"

the 230 Megabyte 3.5" disk is exactly like its fully magnetic counterpart, but thicker. The 1 Gigabyte 5.25" one is double-sided, and permanently mounted in the "caddy"
View attachment 7733

View attachment 7734

How times have changed...

edit: I'm bad at fractions.
Click to expand...
tixer said:
That means that your work had a significant influence on my life. :)

My first computer was an 8088 XT (clone) dual 360K 5.25 drives, CGA, 640k of RAM, a 1200 baud modem, and a clock board. Eventually, I got a 31MB RLL drive. I was in heaven. Oh, and a Northgate OmniKey 101. That machine was a monster. The 8Mhz Turbo made Sopwith unplayable.

You probably loaded the originals of the DOS disks the guy at the computer store gave me copies of.. :D I think I started at 3.0, and eventually worked my way up to 6.22 on that machine before I eventually replaced it with a 486DX2/66

Now I'm typing this on a quad-core Xeon, with 8 gig of ram and a 120 gig SSD. Dual 24" screens, and... an IBM Model M (blue logo) keyboard. :D I loves me some clicky keyboards..
Click to expand...
I know a decent amount about late 80's/early 90's PC technology but I can't say I ever heard of a flopical! :) Remember ZIP drives... haha

Our first actual PC in 1991 was a 486 DX-33 that was the second most expensive machine the company built when we bought it. The most expensive had a CD-ROM and the guy told my Dad that it may be a fad and never catch on... LOL A couple years later I installed a multimedia kit (remember them?) which upgraded us to a 2X CD-ROM and a SoundBlaster sound card. :) Over the years we had the PC I upgraded from 4mb RAM to the max 8mb and swapped out the CPU to the max 486 DX2-66. I still have this machine in my basement and tried booting it up maybe 6 months ago. Since the CMOS battery has been dead for probably 10+ years I need to make some changes in the BIOS to get it past POST... one day. :D
 
tixer

tixer

Lincoln Evangelist
So awesome. I remember that it was so important that I got the DX2/66 that I opted for one without sound and an optical drive, and added one of those SB16/2x CD kits myself. If your drive had a "spring" release instead of a motor, we had the exact same kit. I custom painted the case, too. Way before "case modding" was a thing. :D

That was about the era ('93, '94) where I got into the demo scene, and acquired my current taste for electronic music. Also where the 66 Mhz proc came in handy. It could play stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3GUfM7qkCw and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_aUxbbqWU smoothly. Nevermind that I had to have a totally custom config.sys and autoexec.bat to swap in for each demo (or game) because they all had very specific memory and driver requirements..

Keep in mind that this was a time before 3D accelerated graphics. Most of that stuff was rendered realtime, and optimized to fit within a very small space. (3 MB or so for both of those, if memory serves.) Talk about some mind-blowing stuff. Also worth noting is that the actual demo ran at a much higher frame rate than the youtube videos do. They don't really do (second) reality justice. (heh. nerd jokes..) My 486 had a VESA video card with a whopping 1MB of ram.. I still remember dad saying "why would anyone ever need more than 16 colors??"
 
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