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I have a whole case of them. Do you guys have any still lying around your house anywhere?

Yep. A pile of 3.5'', some 5.25'' and have access to some 8''.

Yes. 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" disks.

PC, Mac and Amiga.

I've been on the fence about getting a floppy emulator.

Tons, but mostly 20 years of poorly organized work and tax documents. Its amazing how long they last with no maintenance, especially when compared to hard drives, casettes, and cds.

MrBurgerKing wrote:Tons, but mostly 20 years of poorly organized work and tax documents. Its amazing how long they last with no maintenance, especially when compared to hard drives, casettes, and cds.

That is not always the case, unless those are from around the 1980s (or maybe even the early 1990s). My family had a box of floppies that I think we bought in 2001~, and they didn't make it to 2009.

Yes, I actually have a stack of 44 3.5" floppies on my desk, each one has different content for the old computers that I have in my collection (I have a bunch of computers that have 3.5" floppy drives installed).

If you count ZIP disks, I have eight of those. I also have a box of Maxell 5.25" HD floppies reserved for a day where I find a cheap 5.25" HD/1.2MB drive.

Floppy emulators seem like a good way to keep floppy oriented PCs working even after the day where floppy disks become extinct, but I prefer to use them as a last resort, the good old noise of a real floppy drive sounds too good for me to sacrifice for as long as they're still usable.

ATeamInc wrote:

MrBurgerKing wrote:Tons, but mostly 20 years of poorly organized work and tax documents. Its amazing how long they last with no maintenance, especially when compared to hard drives, casettes, and cds.

That is not always the case, unless those are from around the 1980s (or maybe even the early 1990s). My family had a box of floppies that I think we bought in 2001~, and they didn't make it to 2009.

Huh, all of mine are from a bulk order my work made in the mid 90s, and I haven't had any problems. I guess I really lucked out

Have few old 3,5inch floppies from 1990s. I am using them to copy software to old computer i found in trash with working 640gb hdd next to it

Yes, I have about twenty four 3.5" disks, they're split into two beige disk holders from RadioShack. The latest one I remember using was for MikeOS in early-mid 2011, another one I have is a Gateway 2000 floppy that was re-written for a Dell Dimension 4100 BIOS (version A11) sometime in 2005. Most of the disks either have only text files or DOS command files.

Yeah. I have many floppy disks (more than 20 years!). I use KryoFlux device to dump contents from disks into image files.

I have several floppy disks. All but one is 3.5". I have what me and my friends called the "magic disk". We used it to fix Windows or reinstall it or to boot a machine into dos. All it was, was just a glorified DOS boot disk but it came in handy. Somewhere I have a copy of TimeWorks "Word Writer PC" from the late 80s (5" & 3.5"). I also have a couple games but I don't remember which ones offhand.

Tons upon tons, which means at some point I'll have to start sorting and copying before its too late... not to mention, still have a pile of "new" factory sealed boxes.
Hopefully the KryoFlux will be back in stock and shipped soon.

More than a shoe box full, if you own vintage computers, but not floppy diskettes, then that's just weird.

I have around 20 (3.5" disks) also, but only 1 of 4 of my PCs have a floppy drive in it.
From the 1 app I have from around '96 (16bit) on a floppy, I just copied it over to a folder on storage drive & install it from there,
will still run on a W10 x86 OS.

All of my "vintage" hardware is currently 486 era and later (or PowerPC), so I don't really have very many 5 1/4 disks as I don't have a working drive to use them.
I have plenty of 3.5 disks mostly high density. I've acquired a few boxes of double density disks but nothing to use them yet.

Are we including Zip disks too? I have probably 20 or so loaded with Mac diagnostic and OS software. I've found this is the easiest way to boot an old mac

Sword7 wrote:Yeah. I have many floppy disks (more than 20 years!). I use KryoFlux device to dump contents from disks into image files.

floppy disks are still good for backing up that one file so it doesn't get lost in the digital clutter. I backup my dissertation on a floppy and put it in a safe with my USB floppy drive. that way... if the zombie apocalypse happens and all my hard drives and ssds die and the cloud is no more I can still finish my book and know exactly where it is. floppies are where I put my most important current and ongoing projects furniture covers.

I hope not. I think I shredded the last of the random backup junkers I still had. Inevitably I bet more will appear somewhere, and need shredding.

Twiggy wrote:If you own vintage computers, but not floppy diskettes, then that's just weird.

Well then I think I'm weird, I own 2 vintage computers and no floppies . To copy files I use a PCI USB expansion and networking

SistemaRayoXP wrote:Well then I think I'm weird, I own 2 vintage computers and no floppies . To copy files I use a PCI USB expansion and networking

If it has PCI it's not vintage enough!

I am making retroPC's and I use floppys daily for copying drivers from usb floppy to the pc i am installing. Alot of fun working with them.

So should I use an ISA one? Which one? (I unknown any models)

SistemaRayoXP wrote:So should I use an ISA one? Which one? (I unknown any models)

Of course I was making a joke.

Nobody can define what "legacy" really is; for me, it's those systems that were used in the 16 bit era, but even some of those have PCI slots.
Nearly all Pentium systems and following had PCI slots. 486 systems could have PCI or VLB (perhaps some of the oldest motherboards had neither). In 386 systems you will most often only find ISA, although sometimes there's EISA, or MCA in some IBM boards. There could be a tiny number of VLB 386DX boards, but I have never heard of a 386 board with PCI slots.

VLB boards generally also had ISA slots, and even early PCI boards (in the 486, Pentium, and Pentium Pro/Pentium II eras) more often than not, had ISA slots as well, and some even had EISA slots.

Does anyone actually still USE them on a daily basis? I just use a USB flash drive on my Windows 98 SE PC, but if I really need to get data over to my DOS pc, I will just burn a CD. The 1.44MB capacity is just too small to do anything...

I found a few stacks of floppies in my dad's office, since I'm not proficient in floppy disk terminology I'm not sure whether they are 5 1/4" or 3 1/2".

There are also dozens of CDs from the late 90s and early 2000s.