Easy: flip the switch to 'More Magic'.

LOAD "*",8,1

That's a lot of kiddie porn....

meh

How can there possibly be 5,000 floppy disks' worth of useful information? I suspect this is the world's oldest collection of 1990s-era porn.

You have nothing on a floppy that you need. False scenario.

I suggest writing all that information down, very slowly and tediously, on note paper, double spaced, so as to ensure future usability.....because this whole computers and technology thing won't last much longer.

Should have spent his time developing a sex cyborg.

My solution was to run wget on textfiles.com, much quicker and easier.

That's easy, just go to the DOS prompt and type
cd *.*

We may need to hire this guy to figure out how to do the same thing with several hundred HP3000 tapes.

Am I the only one who's upset that they fall to the ground afterwards?

actualhuman: Easy: flip the switch to 'More Magic'.

I haven't heard the "More Magic" story from anyone (other than myself) in a few years. Good job on remembering that one.

Give an intern from the local college two credits in... I don't know, something. Sit them in front of a PC with an old floppy drive. Occasionally unlock the door and throw in some Lunchables so they don't die.

Maybe he has 2500 copies of that Ducktails game.

Big deal I built something like this back in 1996 for a company that had stored a great deal of data onto 3.5 disks and then want to move the data onto the server and then tape backup. I built four of them and programed the software to run them which would detect a disk read error and eject it into another bin. I think they had about 25,000 disks and it took us around three months to do the transfer.

Vrpljbrwock: Am I the only one who's upset that they fall to the ground afterwards?

That didn't bother me so much as "why didn't it load the next disk while taking the photo of the previous one?" It would shave a few seconds off each cycle.

Because all that crappy old Amiga shareware is really rare and important.

OregonVet: Manually doing that task would be even more boring than that video.

I've never posted these words in a Fark thread until now:

Done in one.

Solenoid on the eject, ensuring that any data that still is readable is completely fubar after sitting next to an active magnet during the photograph stage.

Jim from Saint Paul: Inaccurate headline get's greened again.

[www.romston.com image 278x199]

^^^^^ *THAT* is an old floppy disk.

Your geek is a bit off.

3.5 inch discs were also called floppies -- cuz they were soft on the inside, crunchy on the outside.

Yogimus: You have nothing on a floppy that you need. False scenario.

Sorry, my friend works in and out of mine labs, depending on who is hiring, and what level of research and production is going on. Sometimes this includes firing up 15 year old computers that he worked on before , and that still have all the software he needs. This also sometimes entails using old floppies that he had originally put in the drawer when they previously closed the mine. Just about every time he takes on a temp hob at one of these mines to do a few months work, he has to try and rebuild the system, but to the specs it originally was, because of the piles of data on these old systems.

considering floppy disks haven't been in mainstream use in 10+ years, I have to wonder what's so farking important it has to be transferred to a hard drive anyway

maybe the same people can invent something to transfer my 78rpm records to disk!!!

I see on the TV you can get a prescription now for floppy software

Ah, Amiga. Now I'm not surprised. Never have I owned more floppies than when I had my Amigas. Fun days, but I do not miss floppies.

It's good to see that 80's porn will be preserved for future generations.

`Dad, what's does the phrase "drapes matching the carpet" mean?'

`To the archives, son! I'll show you.'

mithras_angel: Vrpljbrwock: Am I the only one who's upset that they fall to the ground afterwards?

That didn't bother me so much as "why didn't it load the next disk while taking the photo of the previous one?" It would shave a few seconds off each cycle.

Yeah, I thought the final 'drop to the ground' part was kind of lazy, considering the work they went through to make everything else. Could have at least designed it to eject into a garbage can or something.


Yeah, shaving a few seconds off the cycle will add up, too, since those floppies have such a slow read time, and there's so many, probably hours by the end. I have to disagree with subby's headline, it's still going to take WEEKS to do, maybe a month. It's an impressive little machine, but not very fast, once again thanks to the read speed of those floppies...

Jim from Saint Paul: Inaccurate headline get's greened again.

[www.romston.com image 278x199]

^^^^^ *THAT* is an old floppy disk.

And so is a 3.5".

/headline is not inaccurate
//not subby

Mikey1969: Yogimus: You have nothing on a floppy that you need. False scenario.

Sorry, my friend works in and out of mine labs, depending on who is hiring, and what level of research and production is going on. Sometimes this includes firing up 15 year old computers that he worked on before , and that still have all the software he needs. This also sometimes entails using old floppies that he had originally put in the drawer when they previously closed the mine. Just about every time he takes on a temp hob at one of these mines to do a few months work, he has to try and rebuild the system, but to the specs it originally was, because of the piles of data on these old systems.

So he needs the hard drive, not the floppy.

That's a lot of free internets. Thanks AOL!

Laughable absurdity. Any info that was worth keeping on there 20 years ago *might* have been worth trying to transfer 19 years ago. The laundry list of problems with this once-popular form of data storage make this endeavor all the more pathetic.

mithras_angel: Vrpljbrwock: Am I the only one who's upset that they fall to the ground afterwards?

That didn't bother me so much as "why didn't it load the next disk while taking the photo of the previous one?" It would shave a few seconds off each cycle.

*THIS* to both of these.

Also, this process assumes all discs read correctly - the last few times I've been forced to deal with floppies, I had about an 80% success rate AT BEST. The exit chute should have had a diverter flap to channel discs with possible read-errors into a separate container for re-examination.

Smelly Pirate Hooker: How can there possibly be 5,000 floppy disks' worth of useful information? I suspect this is the world's oldest collection of 1990s-era porn.

Guess that should have been "world's LARGEST collection of 1990s-era porn." Whatever. You know what I mean.

I have the same problem with a lot of ... Files on cdrs

/ yeah, it's pr0n

Jim from Saint Paul: Inaccurate headline get's greened again.

[www.romston.com image 278x199]

^^^^^ *THAT* is an old floppy disk.

I had DUEL 5.25's on my 8088 ... I even upgraded the memory to 256K... yah I know, that's baaaaad aaaaaass... that's how I role!

Smelly Pirate Hooker: Smelly Pirate Hooker: How can there possibly be 5,000 floppy disks' worth of useful information? I suspect this is the world's oldest collection of 1990s-era porn.

Guess that should have been "world's LARGEST collection of 1990s-era porn." Whatever. You know what I mean.

you mean a whole pic?

SteelDraco: Give an intern from the local college two credits in... I don't know, something. Sit them in front of a PC with an old floppy drive. Occasionally unlock the door and throw in some Lunchables so they don't die.

Credit? Screw that. Promise to write them a good recommendation letter.

OregonVet: Manually doing that task would be even more boring than that video.

Agreed... And I would say that the time it took to build and set up all that would have been LESS time than that required to sit there and load the disks on to a computer manually.

/not that it isn't clever

Jim from Saint Paul: Inaccurate headline get's greened again.

[www.romston.com image 278x199]

^^^^^ *THAT* is an old floppy disk.

Technically, the smaller ones are floppy disks, also, but I feel you on your angst. At the time where computers used both, it irked me that both types of storage had the same common term.

Because I felt a little part of me die inside whenever someone would refer to one and not which one specifically, I knew I was going to be an anal retentive geek, the kind who would lash out on people who say "the internet is broken" when really it is their own shiat that is farked up, and "my computer won't turn on" when all they are doing is turning on their monitor (fun fact... heard this in one of my Computer Science courses I took).