Geeks older than 40 are likely to remember the 90s well. The Internet was a sleepy village, PCs were expensive, hard disks were small and software came on floppy disks. And I have lots of floppy disks, from packaged software and magazine cover disks to drivers and trial software. A rough estimate is that there are around 500 3.5″ floppy disks in both 720 kb and 1.44 Mb varieties stashed away.
In my mind, I always hoped to get into retro computing, but the reality is that there’s always going to be something new which is more interesting than hacking CONFIG.SYS to squeeze the drivers into as little memory as possible. So it’s with resigned acceptance that I’m finally having a clear out of the disks to reclaim valuable storage space.
Of course, I can’t simply throw the floppies in the bin. I’ll have to copy the files to my NAS “just in case” which has thrown up a couple of interesting things.
First, I’m surprised at how well the disks have survived. Of all the hundreds of disks, only two disks proved unreadable, both of which were magazine coverdisks. Expectations of floppies shedding iron oxide like Italian cars of the same era have proved unfounded and on the whole, they have been quite reliable.
Secondly, and not entirely unexpectedly, there has been the massive increase in file sizes and numbers over the years. Here’s a quick comparison of the Windows install disks.
- Windows 1 – 178 files 1.9 MB over six 320 kB floppies
- Windows 3 – 282 files 47 MB over eight 720 kB 3.5″ floppies
- Windows 95 – 1946 files 574 MB on one CD
- Windows XP – 6655 files 542 MB on one CD
- Windows 7 – 2.2 GB download
Finally, it’s the “blast from past”. What companies and software has survived the 20 years since then? Here are a few of the disk sets that I uncovered.
- Microsoft Windows v1
- Lotus Ami Pro v1
- Serif PagePlus v1
- Borland Turbo Pascal v5.5
- Central Point PC Tools v6
- Wordperfect v5.1
- JASC Paintshop Pro v1
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro
Ah well…all good things have to come to an end. I suppose I’ll have to clear out the data CDs next….
Say Goodbye to the 90s http://t.co/bGcL8dLc
Say Goodbye to the 90s http://t.co/ZYSEqWvE via @@geeknews
I’ve recently gone through a bunch of old Macintosh floppy discs myself and find that many are still readable.
Say Goodbye to the 90s http://t.co/Zm7zomRp
Say Goodbye to the 90s – Geek News Central – http://t.co/kEMwdMSK #GNC #retro
@GeekNews lol, yes, I remember the olden days too. http://t.co/GegWl1xQ