OT: Need some 5 1/4 inch floppies

Barry · January 23, 2004 12:11AM

Anyone have any 5 1/4 inch floppies left over from the old days? For this application, they must be never used, DS/DD, and unformatted (DS/HD and pre-formatted won't work here). If so, please PM me. Thanks.

LanLord · January 23, 2004 12:20AM

These will be found in the relic section.

Wow.

DHeath · January 23, 2004 12:36AM

Barry,

I have an unopened box of pre-formatted. Let me know if you can't find anything else.

Tootawl · January 23, 2004 12:40AM

All I have are used or preformatted ones. Let me know if you need these and I'll shake the dust off of them.

XpipedreamR · January 23, 2004 12:43AM

What do you need them for?

You can't leave us hanging like this

Tootawl · January 23, 2004 12:48AM

I still have a few 8 inch floppy disks somewhere (Yep, really showing my age on this one!).

tjkillian · January 23, 2004 12:53AM

<< <i>I still have a few 8 inch floppy disks somewhere (Yep, really showing my age on this one!). >>

I still have programs on paper tape! Now if this were a coin, it would still be considered modern. Funny how a forty year old coin is modern but a five year old computer is a relic.

Tom

dorkkarl · January 23, 2004 1:47AM

i'm sure i could find some punch cards somewhere!

K S

Tootawl · January 23, 2004 2:23AM

I still have a box of punch cards from my programming classes in college (early 80s). Anyone know where I can get my hands on IMB 360 model 44?

Barry · January 23, 2004 2:27AM

Thanks for the offers so far, but they have to be virgin, unformatted DSDD disks to work.

XpipedreamR - They are used in a machine in my office that tests peripheral vision. It's a proprietary format and a disk drive upgrade isn't available (though a new machine for $20K is!)

LanLord · January 23, 2004 2:31AM

Okay, for the relics people

I am certified to repair REMEX paper tape punchs and readers.

But I haven't even looked at these things since sometime in 1983.

baccaruda · January 23, 2004 2:38AM

I have an entire filebox full of them - probably in the garage somewhere. If you had a functional Commordore 64, you could have yourself a kickarse game of M.U.L.E.

solid · January 23, 2004 2:56AM

I tossed out a few sealed boxes of these a year or two ago thinking "Why would I ever need these?"

Sorry

Ken

dorkkarl · January 23, 2004 2:58AM

anybody else remember that old text-based game, rogue? must have wasted 2 months of my life playing that game.

how about ultima IV? ran on 5 floppies, as i recall.

K S

LAWMAN · January 23, 2004 3:49AM

Dude, my office mates finally made me throw out a whole bunch of them a few weeks ago! I never get rid of anything unless somebody holds a gun to my head. What are you going to do with them?

DeepCoin · January 23, 2004 4:17AM

Dorkkarl,

I have found the Amulet of Yendor.... LOL, one of my best friends in grad school knew the folks that built Rogue. It started on a mainframe at UC Berkley (sp?) and then was moved over to the "new" PCs that had just come out.

ElectricEye · January 23, 2004 4:22AM

it's time for you to advance to the 90's technology

oreville · January 23, 2004 4:32AM

Those old text games were the best!!!! I remember those old games on Compuserve! One was the one where you had to leave a house, go by a stream and it was always N S E or W direction wise, into the underground cave to find the gold and dig your way through the tunnels.

It was awesome! I wonder where that game can be found now?

I seem to recall it was called Quest or Castle or something like that! It really made the mind think!

Outhaul · January 23, 2004 5:01AM

5.25 FLOPPIES!?!?! What are you re-stocking your Commodore 64? Or are you upgrading to a Z-100?

dorkkarl · January 23, 2004 5:24AM

dude your talking about zork! 1 of THE GREATEST games ...... EVER.

thought about changing my name to "zorkkarl"

K S

dorkkarl · January 23, 2004 5:26AM

used to have a ti-99-4a, complete w/ connector to an external tape drive (which was 1 of those old zenith hand-held jobbies), plus the r-f adaptor so i could use it on my 13" color television. if i remember right, the computer was so advanced it could display 16 colors simultaneously. it also had a voice-synth which wasn't half bad....

K S

Barry · January 23, 2004 5:55AM

barracuda wrote:
I have an entire filebox full of them - probably in the garage somewhere. If you had a functional Commordore 64, you could have yourself a kickarse game of M.U.L.E.

Actually, I do have a working C64 somewhere in the basement. I did some programming back in those days (and actually sold several thousand copies (part hardware, part software) of a wireless networking system for the C64. I was ahead of my time, wasn't I? I saved one working C64 in case I ever want to impress myself with what I used to be able to do

The million dollar question - do you have any blank disks, or are they all full of C64 programs?

Lawman wrote: Dude, my office mates finally made me throw out a whole bunch of them a few weeks ago! I never get rid of anything unless somebody holds a gun to my head. What are you going to do with them?
and
Outhaul wrote: 5.25 FLOPPIES!?!?! What are you re-stocking your Commodore 64? Or are you upgrading to a Z-100?

See my 9:27 AM post for the answer. Guess you guys missed it...

66Tbird · January 23, 2004 6:34AM

I just gave my VIC-20 to a radio group, I'll check with them on the 5-1/4's. I see them every so often, but here in Phx stuff doesn't last to many summers

Edit; Just thought of something. There is a program called "disk sweeper" or something like that and it is DOS based. It will do a federal wipe(all 0's) no tracks or partitions. Found the crack and prog for the pro ver. through google.

If needed PM me and I'll find the person I did that for and get his link(long story

)

Conder101 · January 23, 2004 11:49AM

If you hit the pre-formatted floppies with a bulk eraser that should work wouldn't it? They wouldn't be formatted anymore.

(And until the fire in my apartment back in 97 I was still using my old TRS-80 model I and Model II with 8 inch drive. Those 8 inch disks were a real pain to find.)

Dollars · January 23, 2004 12:41PM

Zork was the game. I lost alot of my life to it as well. Just tossed a bunch of old 5"ers but all were used.

Good luck on the search

DHeath · January 23, 2004 12:41PM

Condor,

I used to use the debugger on my old TRS-DOS machine to write assembler and stuff the hex into data arrays for BASIC programs.

The Amiga was the heat though, because it's operating system was re-entrant. Unheard of simplicity. I started writing code for an old System/34, and really enjoyed PC's when they became affordable. My first harddrive was a $1500 5 meg external for the TRS-80 II. That was back in the Mustang BBS days. I liked Compuserve and Genie, but the real fun came courtesy of Ward Christensen's Xmodem protocol. Elegant 128 bit packets with checksum that finally enabled simple file transfer. Long before the Windows InYourFace.

Coinosaurus · January 23, 2004 1:34PM

Mr Heath-

A man after my own heart - I had one of those trash-80 machines too - still have all those Z80 opcodes stored in my head

Maybe we should all start using ASCII codes when PCGS censors our post

DMWJR · January 23, 2004 2:12PM

I found some a couple of years ago stuck in Methusela's beard. Haven't seen any since . . .

baccaruda · January 23, 2004 2:42PM

Barry -

I will check to see if I can find the disks. If I find any blanks they're yours.

Myriads · January 23, 2004 3:07PM

Would five unopened boxes (still shrink sealed, 10 Per box) of Verbatim Double Sided Double Density help out? I got them right here. I'm sure we can work something out to get them to you.

Myriads

oreville · January 23, 2004 3:09PM

I still have 3 working AT&T 6300 computers that used the 5 1/4 inch floppy. They were used in my office from 1982 to 1987. They still work! But haven't really used them much lately. I just can't bear to throw them out! They still are good for doing 1981 to 1987 income tax returns!

I also have the original IBM model O typewrier. That was the first all electric typewriter IBM ever manufactured.

atarian · January 23, 2004 3:12PM

barry let me know i ahve about 40 or so if you need a drive i can help you there 2

OT: Need some 5 1/4 inch floppies

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