A site like MobyGames enshrines so many images of cassettes, cartridges, and floppy disks (3.5/5.25). One might feel a little melancholy about the news of yet another magnetic storage medium coming to an end. The bright side is the importance of a site like MobyGames that allows one with a click of a mouse to see, read, and experience all of them again and insures they will never fade away!

[Sony delivers floppy disk's last rites].

*sigh*

Just earlier today, I romantically described to a colleague how realistically WinUAE emulates the Amiga floppy sound through your sound card. :o)

I read about this yesterday. I still have a box of floppys, and I might buy some more just in case I never find any again. RIP for 1.4 meg. storage. 2.0 megs unformatted. 8)

...and I had to actually use a floppy today, as my Dad's ancient laptop has a CD drive that won't read CD-RW, go figure...

Me too, me too. :o) A client sent some data on a 3,5 disk, and my old work horse is almost the only one around that still has a floppy drive built in.

As long there is any equipment that runs an OS that requires a boot disk to install, there will always be someone selling a floppy disk. The cost may rise, but they will stay available. Right now I have a sealed package of disks from Nipponic. Even 5 1/4" is still manufactured today.

oh my god I want some 5 1/4's!!! I'd love to use a whole bunch as wallpaper or something... I miss the sound of my old computers...

They also look better hanging on your dorm door than 3.5's.

... but it seems the floppy drives for the 5 1/4" floppies aren't made any more, which is sad since my last 5 1/4" floppy drive killed itself many years ago, and I still have hundreds of floppies to make backups of.

Either it was my imagination but I never had a 3.5 floppy disk that last more than 3 months. My Dragon Wars 5.25 however lasted for 6 years. When the casing got messed up (actually is sometimes melted), just scissors it open and moved it to a new casing. Lovely.

I've got some floppys from the DOS era, and they still work great. (My dad never used them.) I stupidly gave most of them away. 8(

Tested one year ago hundreds of my DOS disks, most of them work well. Yes, some of the 3.5" disks are gone, but 5.25" could last for eternity.

Tested also dozens of my C64 disk - same here. Recognized that i did an save 20 years ago onto one of my Ultima Collection I (1-3) disks, loaded and the great Avatar THF (my initals) was back in life too :)

Those wobbly 5.25" disks are almost unshakable, even those in an container that saw a lot of sun the last years work fine. Hah, really no need for CDs and DVDs. I'm sure i can play them again when i'm old and grey (okay that isn't so far away) ...

Mine lasted a week. I'm very... um... shocking, apparently. Floppy media didn't last long around me.

You should really move to a more friendly climate. =)

Most definitely. I remember we could reuse 5.25's over and over for years, while 3.5 would spontaneously die just because, even if they had been written just once. When 3.5 finally became the norm, me and my nerd friends were all sorts of pissed off, we couldn't believe such a unreliable thing could be so widely accepted >=(

Then again, we were also outraged about the low resolution of EGA compared to Hercules, so I guess we were kind of snobbish with older stuff.

ensures?

You pick which you like... they are Synonyms of each other or would you like assures? :)

Insure - synonyms ENSURE 1 : to provide or obtain insurance on or for 2 : to make certain especially by taking necessary measures and precautions

Ensure - synonyms INSURE 1 : to make sure, certain, or safe

Oh wow, I remember when I was so excited to discover the huge storage format of the new 3.5, how neat and modern those floppies looked compared to 5.25... am I old?..

No, just 20 years older, I guess. :o)

I remember the times when I've discovered the program 800.COM, allowing to store 800 kBytes of data on 360 kBytes` 5'25" floppies. It allows me to re-format my floppies, rewrite all content archived, and acquire so much blank 800K floppies to write more and more games...

P.S. I had 80286 PC with 10MHz / 16Mhz (in Turbo mode), 1Mb RAM, and 40Mb HDD.

Am I old??? :-)

P.S. I had 80286 PC with 10MHz / 16Mhz (in Turbo mode), 1Mb RAM, and 40Mb HDD.

Am I old??? :-)

Apparently younger than me, since I vaguely remember my first PC had 512 KB RAM and 20 MB HDD. And I was seventeen at the time! :)

Old is a bit pejorative. It's true that (in your age) each day that you wake up alive it's quite an achievement, but I would rather say that you just have a little more experience under your belt. Just kidding ok.

If a kid 10 years your junior is seemingly disgusted with what you call a "classic game", then you're not only old. Your virtually near extinction. :p

{sigh} My current computer doesn't even HAVE a 3.5" floppy drive. I do still have some floppies, though.

A few years back due to my new laptop not having a 3.5 inch floppy drive, i had to get a external USB 3.5 inch floopy drive in order to transfer my files from my old PC. Wonder how long it will be before i plug it into a PC and it wonders "what the heck is this guy shoving into my ports?".

I recently found a floppy disk from my childhood at the bottom of a drawer, but it had been demagnetised by a fridge magnet and I couldn't read it. Damn the luck. An entire drawer full of crap and it had to land on top of a magnet.

Those things were pretty cool. CDs have always been in a pain in that you can't get any scratches on them, while a floppy disk is a lot more resistant to abuse.

I found my Windows 95 boot disk the other day. Strangely though, my Windows 95 installation CD has vanished of the face of the earth for some years already.

Not really surprised if not-so-lasting storage devices were intentionally made not to last. In this regard, I really hate capitalism.

In all fairness it's pretty atypical for normal people to want to continue enjoying most software beyond its shelf life. Making storage media to survive the test of the ages would have been a poor investment for most publishers.

Yes, unfortunately. Until someone founded the internet and now we have a "permanent" storage device. Yay!

I used to have a favorite brand for 5 1/4 disks. It was called "Precision", had a motto "High quality at a low price" or something like that. Much, much cheaper than other disks, like 3M, etc. Suddenly they just dissappeared. Always had this feeling they got bought by the competition for selling disks too cheap.

But really, 5 1/4 disks that lasts for more than 5 years to 3 1/2 that barely make it pass 3 months, to CD/DVDs that barely make it past 3-5 reads is really getting annoying. :p

--

In another totally unrelated topic (yay!), I always wondered why no one created "another" internet?

Laying cable ain't cheap.

On a side note: image books being printed that way. I mean with some sort of a disappearing ink. After all, if you finish reading a book, why bother to return to in years later? Why not buying another book from Your Favorite PublisherTM?

Today's books are not terribly well assembled -- the inks and binding glues fade, acidify and deteriorate relatively quickly. Your grandpa's books may be appreciated by your grandchildren, but your books probably won't be.

Most definitely. The difference is profound. The books my grandfather used to study the American Civil War in College, themselves predating the First World War by a good twenty years or more, are still in stellar condition after being abused by a college student, moved a dozen times, and kept in neglected storage before being dropped on my shelves. The edges are frayed but the cover is still solid as a rock and the binding, though slightly loose, won't need to be reglued for a number of years yet. The ink is still as clear as the day it was printed.

Most of my more modern books, however, have to be sheltered in plastic and kept on high shelves, unread, to last even a decade in that condition.

This is something I've been noticing for years - when we take a new book off "new" after 9 months, the pages are already yellowed, and yes, the bindings separate and the glue gives up. Nine months, and some of them look ten years old! Not to mention, a great many more publishers are using a paperback format to save on materials, I assume, and of course, paperback books (not talking about your usual supermarket paperbacks, which are designed not to last long, but cookbooks, history, larger paperbacks in general) come apart even more quickly than the normally bound. Ugh, sorry, you've stumbled on a pet peeve :)

Wouldn't that be represented by the "price" of the book? My freakingly expensive hardcover lawbooks (at the expense of the American taxpayers) look like they can last longer than my great grandchildren. Then again, any book that costs more than 70 bucks should really last the next great flood. Oh, wait, that already happened.

Definitely reflected in the price of the book - we have a lot of expensive reference books and other stuff that is well-made, but your everyday bestseller is printed on the cheapest paper imaginable: James Patterson is a prime example - in six to 9 months his books look like they've been doing some serious smoking. Publishers are also choosing to publish more books in softcover, now, and libraries are buying them, because the prices are attractive....

Quantity over quality is always the best policy when it comes to making money from the masses. :p