[ale] a moment of silence please

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed Apr 28 09:31:27 EDT 2010


Is it hoarding if you still play with it?

Umm. Is this mic on? ...

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 8:39 AM, William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com>wrote:

> On an upcoming episode of "Hoarders"...
>
> wf
>
> On Wed, 2010-04-28 at 07:24 -0400, Jim Kinney wrote:
> > YOU HAD MAGNETIC MEDIA?!?!?!?!?
> >
> > toggle switches, and paper tape were the IO methods on the first
> > computer I had access to. It was a big next step up to be able to use
> > punch cards for program entry over those horrid toggle switches. And
> > output was multiple feet of wide greenbar with tractor holes never
> > quite were perforated correctly for fast tear off.
> >
> > And it wasn't my Dad's computer room with the bazillion floppies and
> > rw tape. It was mine. :-)
> >
> > I still have a huge pile of floppies with win 3.1, MS office, autocad,
> > mathmatica, Lotus 1,2,3, excel 4, quicken, Prodigy and the upgrade to
> > 14,400baud, etc. I may still have my first Slackware floppies
> > downloaded over that speed-boosted 14.4 modem.
> >
> > Still have a box of zip disks with the tons-o-crap downloaded from
> > uusnet as I bounced between win3.11 and slackware.
> >
> >
> > Hmm. Maybe I should throw out some cruft...
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 6:47 AM, Richard Bronosky
> > <Richard at bronosky.com> wrote:
> >         I remember the punch tools. I remember using a soldering iron
> >         on the
> >         3.5s and cleaning up the hole with an Xacto. I'll raise you:
> >         knowing
> >         exactly where in my Dad's "computer room" I could go today to
> >         find the
> >         little black stickers that I would put on a 5.25 to make it
> >         writable
> >         again. I'll raise you: going to visit my dad for the weekend
> >         to find
> >         my room full of ceiling to floor stacks of boxes of 5.25
> >         floppies when
> >         it was his turn to look after the inventory of CUGA*. Good
> >         times!
> >
> >         *Computer User's Group of Ashland (KY), which was basically
> >         like a
> >         monthly software swap meet.
> >
> >
> >         On 4/28/10, Pat Regan <thehead at patshead.com> wrote:
> >         > A friend of mine once bought OS/2 on cd.  I know we had 2.0
> >         and Warp,
> >         > but I'm pretty certain this was Warp.  We were probably in
> >         the early
> >         > part of high school.  He didn't own a cd-rom drive, but I
> >         did.  A
> >         > monstrous 1x sony external deal that used caddies.
> >         >
> >         > He saved 10 or 20 bucks by going cd instead of floppy.  But
> >         we had to
> >         > find 10-20 floppies to use to create the install disks.  We
> >         made those
> >         > at my house and we walked the couple miles to his house to
> >         install it.
> >         > Half way through we hit our first bad floppy...  So we had
> >         to go back,
> >         > recreate that one...  I think we had to do that twice.
> >         >
> >         > I don't miss 3.5 inch floppies.  My fond memories are of
> >         5.25 floppies.
> >         >   I had a neat little punch tool that made perfect clean
> >         holes to make
> >         > the other side writable in the Apple drives.
> >         >
> >         > The 3.5 punch tool was much more monstrous by comparison,
> >         and the hard
> >         > plastic didn't cut as cleanly.  I do remember once melting a
> >         hole in a
> >         > 3.5 floppy with a soldering iron to make it high density...
> >         >
> >         > Pat
> >         >
> >         > On 04/28/2010 12:49 AM, Chris Woodfield wrote:
> >         >> I see your loading Windows 3.1 from floppies and raise you
> >         multiple
> >         >> installs of Microsoft Office 5.1(?) for Mac - I think there
> >         were at least
> >         >> 30 floppy disks in the box. And Windows 95 clocked in at 15
> >         disks?
> >         >>
> >         >> -C
> >         >>
> >         >> On Apr 27, 2010, at 6:59 26PM, Dustin Puryear wrote:
> >         >>
> >         >>> I have vague memories of loading Windows 3.11 from
> >         floppies when I was
> >         >>> in 9'th grade or so. Wow.
> >         >>>
> >         >>> -----Original Message-----
> >         >>> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On
> >         Behalf Of
> >         >>> Michael Trausch
> >         >>> Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 4:11 PM
> >         >>> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
> >         >>> Subject: Re: [ale] a moment of silence please
> >         >>>
> >         >>> On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM, Paul
> >         Cartwright<ale at pcartwright.com>
> >         >>> wrote:
> >         >>>> JoshuaInNippon writes "In a brief press release buried
> >         within Sony
> >         >>> Japan's
> >         >>>> website, the company announced that they would be ending
> >         sales of the
> >         >>> classic
> >         >>>> 3.5 inch floppy disk in the country in March of 2011.
> >         Sony introduced
> >         >>> the
> >         >>>> size to the world in 1981, which saw its heyday in the
> >         1990s. Sony has
> >         >>> been
> >         >>>> one of the last major manufacturers to continue shipments
> >         of the disk
> >         >>> type
> >         >>>> they helped develop, but had ended most worldwide sales
> >         in March of
> >         >>> this
> >         >>>> year. The company's production of the 3.5 inch floppy
> >         ceased in 2009.
> >         >>> Sony
> >         >>>> noted the demand, or a lack thereof, as the reason. The
> >         company's
> >         >>> withdrawal
> >         >>>> is one of the final marks in the slow death of the floppy
> >         era."
> >         >>>
> >         >>> Being that I *still* use 3.5" floppy disks, this does make
> >         me quite sad.
> >         >>>
> >         >>> I use them these days as ~900KB encrypted stores (with
> >         duplicates!) of
> >         >>> small things like encryption keys and certificates.
> >          Something about
> >         >>> sorting the things and working with them without them
> >         being in my
> >         >>> $HOME is nice to me.
> >         >>>
> >         >>>   -- Mike
> >         >>> _______________________________________________
> >         >>> Ale mailing list
> >         >>> Ale at ale.org
> >         >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         >>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >         >>>
> >         >>> _______________________________________________
> >         >>> Ale mailing list
> >         >>> Ale at ale.org
> >         >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         >>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         >>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >         >>
> >         >>
> >         >> _______________________________________________
> >         >> Ale mailing list
> >         >> Ale at ale.org
> >         >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         >> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >         >
> >         > _______________________________________________
> >         > Ale mailing list
> >         > Ale at ale.org
> >         > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >         >
> >
> >
> >         --
> >         Sent from my mobile device
> >
> >         .!# RichardBronosky #!.
> >
> >         _______________________________________________
> >         Ale mailing list
> >         Ale at ale.org
> >         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > --
> > James P. Kinney III
> > Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
> > Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ale mailing list
> > Ale at ale.org
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> > See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20100428/b20af97a/attachment-0001.html 


More information about the Ale mailing list