[ Retro Scan of the Week ] A Trunk For Your Disks
May 6th, 2013 by Benj Edwards
An elephant never forgets your Atari 2600 cartridges.
In a previous Retro Scan, I cataloged one of my least-favorite brands of floppy disk storage boxes. This time, I thought I’d share an ad for the Elephant Memory Systems Trunk, one of my favorite disk storage boxes.
As far as floppy disk box designs go, the Trunk is my favorite mostly because of nostalgia. This was one of the first floppy boxes I ever used; my dad had bought one to store our Atari 800 or Apple II floppies in (can’t remember which, although I still have it in my closet). Compared to other disk boxes, this one feels solid, and the build quality is high.
The Trunk does have one serious drawback, though: The lid covers so much of its outward-facing surface area that it is very hard to pick up and move around without accidentally opening it and spilling its contents on the floor.
Still, it’s a pretty good floppy box. This and the Flip ‘N File.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Estimate how many 5.25″ floppy disks you own. What system(s) are they for?
May 6th, 2013 at 3:29 pm
5 1/4 floppies? I own exactly… 7. They belonged to an old 8088 my dad’s company had in the mid 80’s and 90’s. I sincerely don’t know if they have any information on them: I salvaged three years ago from what used to be my grandparent’s/dad’s office.
-Commanderraf
May 6th, 2013 at 3:37 pm
Hmm… 5.25″ floppies? I would have to guess about… 100. Approximately half are for the Commodore 64, approximately half are for the Atari 8 bit computers, and there are one or two MS-DOS formatted discs as well.
May 6th, 2013 at 11:23 pm
I’ve got about 90 floppies, including a few Elephant disks. 60 are Apple II disks that I’ve kept around since the mid-80s, and most still work (An Elephant never forgets). It’s a great little time capsule.
15 disks came with a C64 system I picked up in the mid 90s. Sadly, most of these disks have gone bad for some reason and can no longer be used. Another 15 disks are old early 90s PC disks, including the installer to Microsoft Office Professional circa 1994. These are high-density disks and I’ve had no luck using them with older computers.
I don’t want to overwrite my old Apple II disks from the 80s, so I only have 5 or 6 disks for downloading new software, etc., which is not enough.
May 7th, 2013 at 8:11 am
I probably own a couple of thousand, not including a couple of dozen boxes of blanks. Almost all are for the C64/C128 – A few for the Apples and a few for IBM and other, miscellaneous systems.
May 7th, 2013 at 12:05 pm
I have about 50 5.25″ disks that I am currently using with my Apple IIc.
May 7th, 2013 at 12:26 pm
I had one of those boxes growing up. Used it with our 1200XL and 1050 drive. Good times 🙂
I think I still have around 200 or so disks down in the basement still. A mixture of mostly Atari and some Apple II disks. I also have a box of 3.5″ disks in Mac and PC format. Oddly enough, I still have a way to read the 5.25″ disks, but nothing to read the 3.5″ ones with.
May 7th, 2013 at 3:40 pm
I think I have 2 cases of these. Most were games (King’s Quest III, Infocom’s Cutthroat, Rogue, Ultima V, and others), but a few (like an old light pen application and desktop software) had some (theoretically) productive uses. They were used on my old Tandy 1000 EX, and later, a Samsung that boasted a 1MB internal hard drive.
May 7th, 2013 at 4:16 pm
I have some 50 or so; in storeage since 1993 when I traded a Siemens-Nixdorf (80286 with a 40Mb HD and one 5,25in drive) for a newer one (486SX 25Mhz, 80Mb HD and a 3,5in HD drive). Haven’t used them since, but I still have them around. I also own some 30 or so boxed games with 5,25in disks, the older probably being a copy of DAMBUSTERS I bought a long, long time ago…… My first flight sim (or may ithat was MOSQUITO ACE?) which ran incredibly slow (so slow it was hardly usable) in my dad’s 8088 Acer clone B&W display…. and incredibly fast in the 286 in glorious four color CGA (the computer had incredible crisp EGA graphics). So fast defensive fire would obliterate ground and air targets, altough it ran slow enough to play and burst the dam.
May 8th, 2013 at 10:30 am
I’ve got about 80. They were originally document disks for a Commodore 128, but I use them for programs for my Apple IIGS (I don’t have a 3 1/2 inch drive for it).
May 8th, 2013 at 4:55 pm
I’m going to take a guess at approximately 100.
About 50+ of them are C64 programs and games.
About 30~ of them are IBM PC games and boot disks
About 5~ are for the Sanyo MBC-555
The remaining disks are blank — either destined for the C64 or the IBM PC some time in the future…
May 10th, 2013 at 12:32 pm
I had about 30 floppies for a MSX Hotbit. The MSX system were very popular in Brazil (my home country) in late 80’s. I’ve been keeping them just for the memory sake.
My wife made me throw them away a while ago. They were stored in some cheap cardboard boxes and I think there wasn’t much of a chance that they would work again anyway.
May 10th, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Wow, I had those cases for my floppies and carts! They were built like tanks. Good memories.
May 10th, 2013 at 4:02 pm
I might as well chime into the discussion. I probably have over 1000 5.25 floppies. Maybe a few thousand or more. For many platforms, but mostly IBM PC, Atari 800, Commodore 64, and Apple II. Most are illicit copies of software made by other people that I have inherited or acquired over the last two decades. Then there are my own person 5.25″ floppies from the Apple II and PC era.
May 11th, 2013 at 5:09 pm
I had those. I got rid of them back in 2008. 🙁