13 Responses to “[ Retro Scan of the Week ] Disk Box Modern Art”

1. Eagles409 Says:
   October 21st, 2014 at 12:54 pm

   None anymore. I think I got rid of them all about 9 years ago when I moved.

2. jonsnow2000 Says:
   October 21st, 2014 at 2:07 pm

   Speaking of obsolete data mediums: I have a huge collection of Music CDs, hundreds of compilations, albums, singles. They are stored in boxes in my cellar, because I converted them all to MP3 a while ago, and those files are redundantly stored on 2 separate external drives.

   Now of course, there are still Audio CDs sold, they are not going away overnight. But how long do you guys think will it take till the last CD gets produced? Will it keep on living like Vinyl records which have clawed their way to niche status?

3. Benj Edwards Says:
   October 21st, 2014 at 2:14 pm

   Man, that’s a good question, jonsnow. I am guessing that CDs will be made in some limited capacity for decades to come. It will probably stop when there is not enough revenue to operate the factories that create them. And even then, a small cottage industry could probably run a CD mastering and manufacturing plant for a limited audience. So even though it may not be the dominant audio medium, I think there is no definite end to the CD in sight.

4. Chester Says:
   October 21st, 2014 at 7:34 pm

   None today, but at the time I never had to guess: each and every one of them was labeled and cataloged using the miracle of labels on continuous form, dot matrix printers and… floppy disk storage! 🙂

5. DNA Says:
   October 21st, 2014 at 11:50 pm

   I’ve got a single 5.5 in floppy that I got from my step-father many years ago. He couldn’t remember where he’d gotten it from and to this day I still don’t know what’s on it. I figure it most likely contains a copy of “Cloak & Dagger” video game along with some Cold War era Top Secret files… which might explain the older couple that’s been following me these past years.

6. LongSteve Says:
   October 22nd, 2014 at 3:13 am

   At a guess, today, I have about 50x 3.5″ 720k disks, about 5x 1.44Mb, and 2x 360k 5.25″. In the early 90’s, my peak total would probably have been about 300 all in, spread across 4 or 5 boxes, very much like the one shown in your scan.

7. D.D. Says:
   October 22nd, 2014 at 3:31 am

   I’ve never been great at guessing the number (or weight, or size) of things, but it would have to be somewhere between “several dozen” and “a hundred” floppies.

   If I’m seeing it right, I also believe that I have the exact same disk case as the one shown in that illustration — I picked it up at a charity thrift shop a couple of years ago. 🙂

8. Jistuce Says:
   October 22nd, 2014 at 4:06 am

   The small-run cottage CD mastering process already exists, if you can call anything Amazon does a cottage industry.
   Many CDs available on Amazon are print-to-order(including the Pacific Rim soundtrack, which is how I became aware of the service(whoo giant robots!)).

   Sure, they’re CD-Rs, but… for a lot of material it’s still the only way to buy a high-quality lossless recording. And why would I pay for MPEG-1 audio streams?

   As far as how many floppy disks I have… I have no earthly idea. Lots and lots.
   Unfortunately, many of them were stored in the heat and are unreadable now, as I discovered recently when I started mucking with my 99/4a.

9. John Says:
   October 22nd, 2014 at 6:14 am

   Counting blanks, I literally have hundreds, if not thousands, of floppies, mostly 5.25″. I have an extensive collection of old C= software. I still have an IBM SuperDrive hooked up to this very PC and about a dozen of the old 120MB discs that go with it on the shelf overhead. My C= discs are in the spare bedroom, so no problem with climate control 🙂

   I cannot say I use them very much. It is fun to occasionally thumb through my old floppy box from my college days.

10. SirFatty Says:
    October 22nd, 2014 at 10:35 am

    still use them at work, we have a lot of old machinery that runs on Windows NT… EDM machines that the programs are transferred to the onboard computer via floppy. Getting harder to find 3.5’s.

11. Moondog Says:
    October 22nd, 2014 at 2:21 pm

    I have about 25 3.5″ floppies, and around 10 or so 5.25″ floppies. I was about to toss the 5.25″ floppies, then I came across a Compaq Portable II that had dual 3.5″ floppies. I acquired DOS 3.0 on 5.25″ floppies while emptying out a cabinet at a previous employer, and plan to use it when I replace the hard drive in the Portable II. It had a 20MB Plus Development Hardcard that died, and I think I can trick it into using a Seagate 426MB drive using the On Track utility to handle the compatibility issues.

    I have a couple of LS-120 and ZIP disks also stored somewhere.

12. Sonic Says:
    October 24th, 2014 at 7:02 pm

    I still keep a dozen of 3.5″ floppies and a dozen of 5 1/4″ floppies.
    I don’t use them anymore, but I keep’em for nostalgia mostly.

    Back in the late 80s I had like 30 floppies, and in the mid 90s like a hundred.

    Floppies are Old Skool now.

13. Ant Says:
    October 26th, 2014 at 6:40 pm

    I still have 3.5″ disks at home and work, mostly for old PCs. I rarely use them at home, but still use them a lot at work.

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