Some Old Disks
by Pete Hindle
Uncovered during seasonal tidying, a small cache of 3.5 floppies, still sealed with their “license agreement” stickers.
Why do I blog this?
One of these disks has been left, unopened, for thirteen years. The other came in an eight-inch box, decorated with Alber’s trademark screenprints, that I used as decoration. Now, possibly six years after tossing the disk but keeping the box, it’s impossible for me to get the Albers font off the physical media that it came with. These objects have changed from useful, legally guarded tools to technological detritus.
Advertisement
I’ve got an original padded pack of System 7 floppies, and a slot-in zip drive for a Wall St Powerbook. Utterly useless.
That’s pretty impressive…. sealed in 1996 air… sweet (musty) smell of indie britpop…. all we have in defunct IT wears is a box of tapes for the ZX Spectrum…Including Dizzy’s Treasure Island. Classic.
Brings back memories from childhood. Dad used to go to Paris due to work. He’d usually, if we(moi and bro) were behaving, bring back some computer games – in french of course, which did create a problem or several during gameplay. Anyway, usually these games were in floppy disks or if things looked grim they came with in the older format – the black, broad and thinner – don’t know the English equivalent for it. Luckily daddy-o could copy cross formats at work, so we weren’t completely screwed and gaming could continue…
Btw. Hope you’re well now, gonna read forward now and see what has happened.
Those big, old disks are also called floppy disks… confusing, because they were floppy, and the smaller, newer ones weren’t actually floppy. Mmore sort of ‘solid’.
(And good to hear from you Arto! Are you still working in Ireland? Hopefully we can catch up when I make it back to Newcastle.)
Nah, that’s past now. World of game testing is so last year, I’m back at Simonside Terrace. Star and Shadow, A freelance gig and procrastination fills my days and nights at the moment…
Yea, when ever you roam yourself back up here then do make some smoke signals or similar so we can catch up. Get well man!
Thanks Arto – I thought of you when I read this comic, so I’m glad that you’ve busted free!