Recycle – Floppydisks

NickNaraghi

These used to be 50 cents a piece at my high school library. What a joy it was to have a tiny simple way to transport essays (and pixel art and other fun things) to and from school and amongst all the school computers.

vunderba

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?

phendrenad2

"Add to cart" does nothing. Wonder if they actually sell floppies, or just shred them to keep pushing us towards modern technology.

fuzzfactor

Now I've got a pack of old floppies that are outgassing :0 I have no other explanation. This is an almost-full box of miscellaneous floppies in one of the original cardboard trays of 30 from Office Depot. I've got kilos more floppies in different closets but these are good ones I selected a few years ago that all passed SCANDISK. Now this one little box is in an old ziploc bag in the office and it keeps self-inflating. At first I thought it was unusually low barometric pressure one day but I keep squeezing out the air rain or shine and it keeps on puffing back out by itself. Something I really didn't expect. If I did still own my own laboratory, I'd tell you what kind of gas it was by now though ;)

soupspaces

With 46 of them you can make a nice bag https://www.instructables.com/Floppy-Disk-Bag/

ayaros

A couple years ago I got a bunch of recycled low density DS/DD disks here. It was a good deal; yeah I had to clean em off a bit, and I also re-labeled them with some newer labels. But a good deal nonetheless. I approve.