5 ms·

Back in High School I wanted to get a bit of IS experience, so I volunteered in the IS dept of a nearby hospital. Turned out, my job was to format all 10-20K of

Back in High School I wanted to get a bit of IS experience, so I volunteered in the IS dept of a nearby hospital. Turned out, my job was to format all 10-20K of the old Windows95 installation floppies they had sitting around (this was 2000-2001). At first I almost just left. But the guys in the IS dept were actually really nice and let me use the spare parts they had just sitting around. I ended up making a setup with 3 screens, 3 towers and each tower with 4 floppy drives. Plus an extra tower & screen to browse the internet while I would swap disks in and out of the other three. My hidden back corner behind all the ancient, noisy tape drive towers (it was a Hospital... need to be HIPPA compliant and anal about recouds) became the cool place to hang out and I ended up learning a mountain of information from those guys/gals.

joeyh 15y ago
One thing about those old windows 95 floppies is that they have surprisingly better quality than other floppies. I had to use some floppies in 2001, and had massive failure rates with newly bought ones, and near-zero with rewritten Windows 95 installation disks.
- wazoox 15y ago
  Same for me. I still use floppies with some of my synths (D-20, MV-30 -- no alternative, really), and the newest floppies (post 2000) are of terrible quality, while the old floppies (up to 23 years old) work perfectly and never failed me.
mirkules 15y ago
Hopefully, they weren't low density floppies that they made you punch holes in and reformat as high density.
- st0p 15y ago
  I did this all the time when I was 13, 14 years old.
- yuhong 15y ago
  They weren't, because they were Windows 95 installation floppies.
  - mirkules 15y ago
    I had a CD-ROM by then, so I don't know what the floppy installs looked like.
    - yuhong 15y ago
      But you know that Windows 95 was released in 1995.
      - mirkules 15y ago
        So what is your point? I used low density disks in '94, so it's not a stretch to imagine they were around in '95.
  - ordinary 15y ago
    It's weird. I was /there/ in 1995 and I have trouble even remembering Windows 95 came on floppies. I feel old.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  My Windows 95 installation floppies were high density floppies with a special disk format that gave them 1.6MB instead of 1.44MB.
  - yuhong 15y ago
    Yea, it was called DMF, also used for Office 4.2 floppies for example.

joeyh 15y ago

One thing about those old windows 95 floppies is that they have surprisingly better quality than other floppies. I had to use some floppies in 2001, and had massive failure rates with newly bought ones, and near-zero with rewritten Windows 95 installation disks.

wazoox 15y ago
Same for me. I still use floppies with some of my synths (D-20, MV-30 -- no alternative, really), and the newest floppies (post 2000) are of terrible quality, while the old floppies (up to 23 years old) work perfectly and never failed me.

mirkules 15y ago

Hopefully, they weren't low density floppies that they made you punch holes in and reformat as high density.

st0p 15y ago
I did this all the time when I was 13, 14 years old.
yuhong 15y ago
They weren't, because they were Windows 95 installation floppies.
- mirkules 15y ago
  I had a CD-ROM by then, so I don't know what the floppy installs looked like.
  - yuhong 15y ago
    But you know that Windows 95 was released in 1995.
    - mirkules 15y ago
      So what is your point? I used low density disks in '94, so it's not a stretch to imagine they were around in '95.
- ordinary 15y ago
  It's weird. I was /there/ in 1995 and I have trouble even remembering Windows 95 came on floppies. I feel old.
nitrogen 15y ago
My Windows 95 installation floppies were high density floppies with a special disk format that gave them 1.6MB instead of 1.44MB.
- yuhong 15y ago
  Yea, it was called DMF, also used for Office 4.2 floppies for example.