(FLASHBACK) Remember Both Soft And Hard Floppy Disks?

[oldgamerz]

Before there were CD's in PC gaming their were this thing called a Floppy Disk and it required at least some sort of windows command prompt command in order to install or even play the games every single time you wanted to play it. It was not like modern PC games where all you have to do is click on the icon. instead you had to type into a command prompt called MS/Dos

There are 2 types of floppy disk. the original floppy disks or the late 1980's were big, flat, and square and flimsy and could not hold much data, at all, compared to today data standards,

Then there were the harder, smaller, less flimsy  floppy disks of the early 1990's and they worked vary similar to the old, larger, and flimsy floppy disks. the newer harder and smaller floppy disk and held more data a little over 1 megabyte, I think.

however both floppy disks and floppy disk drives drives ended up on both Apple and Windows PC's of the 1980's and 1990's.

Does anyone remember the buzzing sound difference the big and smaller floppy disk drives? if not then I'll tell you my larger floppy disk drive had a vary low pitch buzz almost like a fart while my smaller newer floppy disk drives still had the buzz but it was louder and more high pitch. this was back in early 1990's

[stealthrush]

Great topic oldgamerz, yes I very much remember soft & and hard floppy disks! My parents owned a computer at the time. I vaguely remember going to the electronics store buying soft floppy disc software, when it comes to the specific software my memory is hazy. Although I do remember buying & using hard floppy disks especially MS-DOS games as a kid- from Lode Runner, Pit-Fighter, Fairy Godmother, Warcraft II, Educational software, I owned a ton growing up. Good times for sure.

[mastafafik]

I remember both and I'm still using floppy disks on my Atari and C64

[tripredacus]

There are 2 types of floppy disk

There are way more than 2 types, but I've only owned 3 types. Currently only have the 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks. In the past I did used to have some of the 8" floppy disks, but I never had a drive to use them.

Here is a picture on Wikipedia showing the size comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Floppy_disk_2009_G1.jpg

Another well known disk (in Europe) is the 3" disk which was used with the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC.

[Agozer]

I had a 5.25" floppy drive along with the obligatory tape drive hooked to my Commodore 128. If my memory serves me correctly, that C128 succumbed to a virus (perhaps from an infected floppy).

[betelgeuse]

There are 2 types of floppy disk

There are way more than 2 types, but I've only owned 3 types. Currently only have the 5.25" and 3.5" floppy disks. In the past I did used to have some of the 8" floppy disks, but I never had a drive to use them.

Here is a picture on Wikipedia showing the size comparison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Floppy_disk_2009_G1.jpg

Those monster size discs like Matthew Broderick used in War Games!! Nice

[rayne315]

so I am too young to actually have ever started them myself but I do remember them around all the time (I think it was around 4 or 5 that we got rid of our floppy drived computer for a higher tech one). from what I remember of them they had gotten to the point where you didn't have to run a command prompt to get them to play but they did have pop up windows that were the start prompt to boot them up.

I do have something that I have never used before and will never get the chance to use. I have old punch card programs that are supposedly capable of either lazering or flame cutting out a sheet of parts for a model D series tractor. but I take that claim with a grain of salt. either way its a strip of paper with punchouts that is about 8-10 feet long.

[Flashback2012]

Yes I do...why are you asking me specifically?!     

Jokes aside, my first exposure to computers was when they had the 5.25" disks. Eventually the 3.5" disks became the norm and the 5.25" disks disappeared. I remember iomega being the big name is disk storage with their 100MB ZipDisks and the last iteration of disks being the 120MB SuperDisks. I remember so badly wanting a drive for my PC that I was trying to build at the time and my friend at the time calling me a dumbass for wanting one because CD was set to/already starting to take over. 

My current computer has a 3.5" disk drive in place though it's not connected to the motherboard. 

[kypherion]

I'm not from that early but I still own some hard disks and a usb hard disk reader!

[burningdoom]

Yep, used the old 5s on Apple IIs and Commodore 64s at school. And the 3.5s were all through the 90s for me. CD-ROM wasn't common on computers I used until the late 90s.

[instantreplay]

Soft floppy discs were before my time XD

I do remember hard floppy discs and I didn't know what they were as a kid but they were a blast to play with. God I would literally sit in front of our old mac computer and just put a floppy disc in, eject it, then put it back in lol

[shfan]

When I was something like 9-12 or 13 we had an old Trigem 88 PC which had a 5.25" floppy drive, had a handful of games for that, good times. Then we had a 486 with a 3.5" drive, which was eventually upgraded to a quad-speed CD-ROM (wow! lightning fast!) We also had an external ZIP drive at some point and then it was CD/DVD-ROMs, increasing hard drive usage and now we even have USB drives. Christ I'm old.