3 ms·

Relatedly, I was recently digging through the attic at my family’s home and came across a 3.5" disk containing a bunch of QBASIC programs I’d written in the ear

Relatedly, I was recently digging through the attic at my family’s home and came across a 3.5" disk containing a bunch of QBASIC programs I’d written in the early ’90s. Despite sitting for decades in a non–climate-controlled attic, it loaded up just fine when I plugged it into a USB floppy drive. Honestly, looking back at code from 30+ years ago felt more like an archaeology expedition. Also how many other kids also went around brandishing 3.5" floppies like a weird gun, "cocking them" by pulling back the shutter and letting it go with a satisfying snap?

Waterluvian 2mo ago
If you loosen the metal cover just right you can make it go absolutely sailing across a computer lab (or any room, I bet).
recursive 2mo ago
Definitely can still feel the spring sensation.
mister_mort 2mo ago
I definitely remember doing that as a kid, and I remember bending the thin metal off some broken ones. Whatever brand I was using allowed that metal to work a bit like a spring, you could launch it by compressing it. (Sorta like the frogs you find in Christmas bonbons.)
qiqitori 2mo ago
A while ago I learned that very early versions of 3.5" floppies didn't have the auto shutter mechanism and you had to open and close the shutter manually. (I think that was probably just used on some Japanese Sony machines.)
- vunderba 2mo ago
  Interesting! I tried to find a demonstration of the manual shutter. This is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. Apparently, it was one of the earliest Sony models to feature a semi-automatic shutter. https://youtu.be/H67IfAyb_4c https://youtu.be/H67IfAyb_4c
- clsec 2mo ago
  I used to use them, and 8" disks, daily with some of the first CAD/CAM engraving machines I used at work in the early 90's.
ColdStream 2mo ago
Looking back over any code older than 12 months is always like archaeology, at least if it is my poorly documented tech-debt ridden nonsense.
- vunderba 2mo ago
  haha true. My favorite part is when I start cursing loudly "what hipster doofus wrote this pile of steaming horse crap?" as my eyes bleed Ark of the Covenant style from unblinkingly debugging poorly documented code in a company with a huge codebase only to realize a few seconds later that it’s mine from several years back, when I first started. The old “we have met the enemy and he is us.”
kstenerud 2mo ago
I was pissed when I discovered that the cassette tape containing all of my c64 programs was gone. Most of them were crappy, but there was a D&D character generator I wrote when I was 8 that I'd made extensive use of for quickly generating randos for us to play one-offs with. The oldest publicly released code of mine is SLIPShuttle, which provided pushbutton connecting to the internet on an Amiga (the cmdline interface was terrible). Written in AREXX https://aminet.net/comm/tcp/SLIPShuttle.lha https://aminet.net/comm/tcp/SLIPShuttle.lha The second oldest was ringconnectd, which allows you to "ring knock" your (POTS connected) modem to make it connect to the internet and mail you your IP address. It was VERY handy while I was in college, and apparently it took off in Africa a few years later as their internet connectivity grew. https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/ringconnectd-2.2.tar.gz https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/rin...
- ndom91 2mo ago
  Out of curiosity, what's the use case for ringconnectd? Just to find out what your IP is? What would you need that for back in the day?
  - mjg59 2mo ago
    Dialup systems typically spent most of their time offline. If you wanted to connect to one over IP you'd need some way to get it to dial back up to the ISP, and then some way to get the new address it'd ended up on.
    - kstenerud 2mo ago
      Yup, and phoning a number wouldn't incur charges unless the other side picked up. ringconnectd never answered a call, but rather listened for a ring pattern that you could specify. So what I'd typically do is go to a payphone, dial my line at home, let it ring twice, hang up, get my money back, dial again letting it ring twice again, hang up, get my money back again, then go to the computer lab to wait. My system at home was configured to connect after the ring pattern [ring, ring, delay, ring, ring]. It would then wait 30s, connect to its ISP, and email me its current IP address. I did it this way because I was already using the terminal for pretty much everything, and we didn't get dedicated machines on campus. So it was better to just hold my work on my Linux machine at home and connect to it from the lab.

Waterluvian 2mo ago

If you loosen the metal cover just right you can make it go absolutely sailing across a computer lab (or any room, I bet).

recursive 2mo ago

Definitely can still feel the spring sensation.

mister_mort 2mo ago

I definitely remember doing that as a kid, and I remember bending the thin metal off some broken ones. Whatever brand I was using allowed that metal to work a bit like a spring, you could launch it by compressing it. (Sorta like the frogs you find in Christmas bonbons.)

qiqitori 2mo ago

A while ago I learned that very early versions of 3.5" floppies didn't have the auto shutter mechanism and you had to open and close the shutter manually. (I think that was probably just used on some Japanese Sony machines.)

vunderba 2mo ago
Interesting! I tried to find a demonstration of the manual shutter. This is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. Apparently, it was one of the earliest Sony models to feature a semi-automatic shutter. https://youtu.be/H67IfAyb_4c https://youtu.be/H67IfAyb_4c
clsec 2mo ago
I used to use them, and 8" disks, daily with some of the first CAD/CAM engraving machines I used at work in the early 90's.

ColdStream 2mo ago

Looking back over any code older than 12 months is always like archaeology, at least if it is my poorly documented tech-debt ridden nonsense.

vunderba 2mo ago
haha true. My favorite part is when I start cursing loudly "what hipster doofus wrote this pile of steaming horse crap?" as my eyes bleed Ark of the Covenant style from unblinkingly debugging poorly documented code in a company with a huge codebase only to realize a few seconds later that it’s mine from several years back, when I first started. The old “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

kstenerud 2mo ago

I was pissed when I discovered that the cassette tape containing all of my c64 programs was gone. Most of them were crappy, but there was a D&D character generator I wrote when I was 8 that I'd made extensive use of for quickly generating randos for us to play one-offs with. The oldest publicly released code of mine is SLIPShuttle, which provided pushbutton connecting to the internet on an Amiga (the cmdline interface was terrible). Written in AREXX https://aminet.net/comm/tcp/SLIPShuttle.lha https://aminet.net/comm/tcp/SLIPShuttle.lha The second oldest was ringconnectd, which allows you to "ring knock" your (POTS connected) modem to make it connect to the internet and mail you your IP address. It was VERY handy while I was in college, and apparently it took off in Africa a few years later as their internet connectivity grew. https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/ringconnectd-2.2.tar.gz https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/system/network/daemons/rin...

ndom91 2mo ago
Out of curiosity, what's the use case for ringconnectd? Just to find out what your IP is? What would you need that for back in the day?
- mjg59 2mo ago
  Dialup systems typically spent most of their time offline. If you wanted to connect to one over IP you'd need some way to get it to dial back up to the ISP, and then some way to get the new address it'd ended up on.
  - kstenerud 2mo ago
    Yup, and phoning a number wouldn't incur charges unless the other side picked up. ringconnectd never answered a call, but rather listened for a ring pattern that you could specify. So what I'd typically do is go to a payphone, dial my line at home, let it ring twice, hang up, get my money back, dial again letting it ring twice again, hang up, get my money back again, then go to the computer lab to wait. My system at home was configured to connect after the ring pattern [ring, ring, delay, ring, ring]. It would then wait 30s, connect to its ISP, and email me its current IP address. I did it this way because I was already using the terminal for pretty much everything, and we didn't get dedicated machines on campus. So it was better to just hold my work on my Linux machine at home and connect to it from the lab.