I opened the drawer, and when my eyes fell on what was inside, I cried out in shock and fear!

[krispos42]

Inside the drawer, of what is now my desk, in a company that makes sophisticated scientific measuring equipment, was... was...


A PILE OF 3½" floppy disks!


Trembling, I picked them up, sorted them, wrapped them in a rubber band, and put them in the cardboard box.


Underneath them were some miscellaneous papers, but underneath those...


A BIN OF 5¼" FLOPPY DISKS!!!




What kind of cursed place am I working at? What will I find next? PUNCH CARDS?










Oh, by the way, I got a new job. Started this week, and LOVING IT. I'm just born to be around engineers!

[sammytko]

1. More Like hoarders

[krispos42]

4. What was a bit scary was...

...that one of the desk's residents went to some chemist's conference every year in Pittsburgh, and brought back some kind of book.

These were from as recently as 2004, and they still gave away a floppy disk containing some sort of information. It was in a sleeve in the back cover of the book!

[Quartermass]

33. You've got yourself a real piece of museum history there. Savor it.

[Downwinder]

2. What, no 8" floppies?

[hobbit709]

3. That's what I was thinking.

Or ferrite bead memory.

[krispos42]

6. How about a book of US zip codes, circa 1994?

Yeah, that was there.

And what's truly scary is that the secretary approached me today looking for it.

[krispos42]

8. They were under a couple of stone tablets

And above John McCain's birth certificate.

[Downwinder]

15. Look at those stone tablets closely.

Might be a TRS 80 or S100. Maybe even a Kaypro lugable.

[47of74]

5. At my work...

...we're still using 3.5 inch disks for some of our backups.

[krispos42]

7. Must be fun using WinZip...

"Insert disk 3 of 149 into Drive A:"

[47of74]

22. It's for some very old computers

We use modern means for most but there's an old networking monitoring system there that we still use. It's a 486-33 running on DOS 6.2. And we use PKZIP to create zip files for that disk.

[krispos42]

26. Oh, jeez... PKZip and PZUnzip

I'd forgotten all about that!

Where's my cane? Where's my cane? Get off my lawn!

[47of74]

28. And I think the computer has a 170 megabyte hard drive

That's right ladies and gentlemen - a 170 megabyte hard drive.

[madinmaryland]

9. Ahh. Someone who knows Assembly language and Fortran77.

Have you worked with Cobol or Pascal?

[krispos42]

10. I had to take a Fortran77 course for my course of study.

And I took a TurboPascal class... that I failed. :-/


I still have the books around, actually.

[OriginalGeek]

11. I have a programmer friend

who has a cat named Pascal.

[denbot]

16. I took a basic programming class using Basic and Pascal

Man that was a while back..

[Grantuspeace]

44. I had to take Pascal too. Good grief!

[Major Nikon]

12. I have some punch cards packed away somewhere if you're interested

A few years ago inside a locker at work I found a really nice slide rule in a leather case.

[krispos42]

13. I expect to find an original abacus around someplace...

Hell, one of the rooms has a phonograph in it with an 8-track player. No cassette... just an 8-track.


And yet, my computer is a quad-core 3 GHz with 6 gigs of RAM.

[BootinUp]

14. Magnetic data might last 10 years if you're lucky. I doubt too much longer. nt

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

17. Punched paper tape might be a valuable find

Especially if the data is encoded in the original Sumerian.

[krispos42]

23. I was talking with one of the guys about this...

and he said "We actually have a box of punch cards over there-" points "-someplace."

Yikes.

[Burma Jones]

18. If you find tubes, you've hit the Jackpot..........

[krispos42]

24. We have tubes that emit specific wavelenghts of light.

For chemical analysis.

Want to check for lead? Just pop in a lead-wavelength tube and tune the receiver!

[wyldwolf]

19. And in the closet - a box of Iomega Zip disks

[LynneSin]

20. Congrats! BTW those 5 1/4 floppies make nice coffee coasters

The 3 1/2 are just a tad too wobbily to do the job.

[krispos42]

27. Thanks... it was a nice Christmas present! n/t

[HopeHoops]

21. I have a USB 3 1/2" floppy drive. Thumb drives have sort of taken over now.

But it is still good to be able to get at the old floppies and ZIP disks just to see if there are any Lounge funnies lurking on them.

[barbtries]

39. oh cool, this is useful information

i'll have to pick up one of those, didn't even know they were available.

[HopeHoops]

40. It works great.

[HappyMe]

25. Could have been worse.

You could have found stone tablets and a chisel.

[shanti]

29. hee!

[bluesbassman]

30. If they were on top of a Thomas Guide you're really in trouble.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

49. I can't believe I used to navigate

with one of those. How did I do it?

[bluesbassman]

50. Yeah, and they worry about people texting while driving now.

Hell, I can't tell you how many accidents I barely escaped while trying to figure out where I was going using one those tools of the Devil.

[csziggy]

31. My Dad still has fifty or so 5.25" floppies on his desk

That were used with his Commodore computer. But he's 88 and hates to give up anything.

I've got the manual for the Wang computer he had in the 1960s. He didn't want to give it up, but I snuck it out of the house when he was looking. He hasn't realized it was gone.

Oh, and he is an engineer, too.

[krispos42]

34. Right next to his slide rule, rotary phone, and incandescent lightbulb?

[csziggy]

35. Slide rule - check; rotary phone is upstairs now; he's actually using fluorescent!

My sister gave him a phone that made it easier for his to hear with his hearing aids. That prolonged his use of the phone for several years, but now he's far too deaf and can't hear in person, much less on the phone. The same sister convinced him to try CFL bulbs and since he is cheap and they save him money, he uses them.

The old black rotary phone that was the only phone we had for my entire childhood is upstairs so if the phone rings while Mom is up there, she can answer it. I don't think you can dial out on it but it still works as an extension!

[krispos42]

36. See? Typical engineer

"It works fine; why would I get rid of it?"


This is why my Dad has a garage full of junk.

[quakerboy]

37. Oh dear lord

My dad is building extra structures to hold his. Ner-u-mind he has 3 more and they all have that slightly distressed rusty patina, and that he will not likely be doing any gardening as he lives in a forest and has no plans to move or plant or trim anything, a perfectly good scythe should not just be tossed out.

And that's not even touching the slide rules, extra electronic gadgets, or the oddities he finds to take home and disassemble in the name of engineering.

[csziggy]

41. It gets worse - HIS father was an engineer

And married into a family of packrats. Our family has stuff dating back well over 150 years. And not just good or nice stuff - old ledgers, snowshoes (they left Michigan for Florida in 1925!), letters, scraps of notes, pieces of posters, all kinds of stuff.

It's cool to see a family chart in my great-grandfather's writing on a piece of stationary from the Chicago Northwestern Railroad where he worked in the 1880! Or to read a letter from the brother of my great-???-grandmother as a response when she wrote home to Lincolnshire after the death of her husband in New York state. Or to hold the medical license of a cousin that was signed by Abraham Lincoln because he got it while serving in the Union Army.

Of course, it is golden from a historical or genealogical point of view, but still it is mountains of STUFF!

And none of this counts the stuff that Dad (and Mom) accumulated during their lifetimes. A whole garage of tools, closets of computers (there is still an unopened, never used Texas Instrument computer in there somewhere!), and MORE STUFF.

They moved after all us kids left home and it took 30 years for them to clear out the old house. It may take that long to clear out the "new" house once they are gone. And they are still going, collecting not as much stuff, at 88 and 90.

Is there a smilie for a hoarder?

[eppur_se_muova]

32. Someone leaves you free coasters, and you're complaining ? nt

[barbtries]

38. why yes.

punch cards followed by a pegboard system of accounting.

i still have all my old floppies as if there was a way i could access the date on them. i suppose i should just throw them away.

[a2liberal]

42. Just get a USB floppy drive

Or better yet, put an actual one in your computer (I still do for every computer I build :-D)

[barbtries]

46. i'm going to

just discovered in this thread that such was available.

[GoneOffShore]

43. Do you watch Big Bang Theory?

There was a gag on there about 5 1/4 floppies. I laughed and my wife didn't understand why.

[a2liberal]

47. Which episode?

I watch that show but don't remember that in particular... want to go back and see it again if you happen to remember the episode.

[GoneOffShore]

48. Something about the "enemies list" -

Don't watch the show regularly - this might have been an early episode.

[a2liberal]

51. Thanks! (n/t)

[progressoid]

52. Is this it?

[GoneOffShore]

53. That is the one -

My wife didn't really get it.

And she's younger than I am. But far less geeky.

[Yavin4]

45. For MLK Day, I Volunteered to Paint Murals at a High School's Computer Lab

One of the pics that I was painting was of a 5.25 floopy disk. The kids didn't know what it was.