1988: NeXT Cube introduced.
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1988: NeXT Cube introduced. No floppy drive. Pundits outraged. I quietly smile.
1998: iMac introduced. No floppy drive. More outrage. I continue to smile. Who needs that old technology? Let’s move on!
2026: Um, I just purchased a floppy drive.
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1988: NeXT Cube introduced. No floppy drive. Pundits outraged. I quietly smile.
1998: iMac introduced. No floppy drive. More outrage. I continue to smile. Who needs that old technology? Let’s move on!
2026: Um, I just purchased a floppy drive.
will the new floppy drive read ancient Mac floppies which back in the day used an unusual variable-speed-of-rotation encoding?
no
OK what about those 2.88 Meg high-density floppies that were briefly all the rageno
OK but you still own an entire box of rare, unused 2” floppies from 1985?
yes
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will the new floppy drive read ancient Mac floppies which back in the day used an unusual variable-speed-of-rotation encoding?
no
OK what about those 2.88 Meg high-density floppies that were briefly all the rageno
OK but you still own an entire box of rare, unused 2” floppies from 1985?
yes
wait, what? 2” floppies? Not 3-1/2”? 2”?
yes I was persuaded in 1988 by a really good deal on a Zenith laptop that used these revolutionary 2” floppies. Obviously the future.
Official floppy disk of the 1990 World Cup!
(I didn’t notice what the official floppy of this year’s world cup is.) -
wait, what? 2” floppies? Not 3-1/2”? 2”?
yes I was persuaded in 1988 by a really good deal on a Zenith laptop that used these revolutionary 2” floppies. Obviously the future.
Official floppy disk of the 1990 World Cup!
(I didn’t notice what the official floppy of this year’s world cup is.)@shayman I had a Canon Digital Camera back then that took little tiny disks
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will the new floppy drive read ancient Mac floppies which back in the day used an unusual variable-speed-of-rotation encoding?
no
OK what about those 2.88 Meg high-density floppies that were briefly all the rageno
OK but you still own an entire box of rare, unused 2” floppies from 1985?
yes
@shayman Hm. I still have a USB 3.4" drive from the Bondi blue iMac I had around ‘99 / ‘00… I wonder it it’ll connect to my new(ish) MacBook Pro… And yes, I still have a whole pile of disks. Also, 5.25" from the 80s, but I’m guessing those might be lost causes.
But what I really need is a ZIP drive to see if there’s anything salvagable on those disks.
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wait, what? 2” floppies? Not 3-1/2”? 2”?
yes I was persuaded in 1988 by a really good deal on a Zenith laptop that used these revolutionary 2” floppies. Obviously the future.
Official floppy disk of the 1990 World Cup!
(I didn’t notice what the official floppy of this year’s world cup is.)I’m not really sure if you can consider the 2026 World Cup a success if it didn’t have its own Official Floppy Disk.
Fuji is probably bragging that they’re still the official World Cup floppy until a challenger comes along.
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@shayman Hm. I still have a USB 3.4" drive from the Bondi blue iMac I had around ‘99 / ‘00… I wonder it it’ll connect to my new(ish) MacBook Pro… And yes, I still have a whole pile of disks. Also, 5.25" from the 80s, but I’m guessing those might be lost causes.
But what I really need is a ZIP drive to see if there’s anything salvagable on those disks.
@fgraver I recall that when the 3-1/2” floppy came along, people said you could put it in your shirt pocket. So of course someone immediately made a shirt with a 5-1/4” pocket too.
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I’m not really sure if you can consider the 2026 World Cup a success if it didn’t have its own Official Floppy Disk.
Fuji is probably bragging that they’re still the official World Cup floppy until a challenger comes along.
@shayman Don't you even THINK about using those for video recording!
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@shayman Don't you even THINK about using those for video recording!
@rebeld I’M THINKING ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW
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@shayman Hm. I still have a USB 3.4" drive from the Bondi blue iMac I had around ‘99 / ‘00… I wonder it it’ll connect to my new(ish) MacBook Pro… And yes, I still have a whole pile of disks. Also, 5.25" from the 80s, but I’m guessing those might be lost causes.
But what I really need is a ZIP drive to see if there’s anything salvagable on those disks.
@fgraver I have some NeXT magneto-optical disks and I suspect there are no functioning MO drives left anywhere. (they attracted dust at an alarming rate.)
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I’m not really sure if you can consider the 2026 World Cup a success if it didn’t have its own Official Floppy Disk.
Fuji is probably bragging that they’re still the official World Cup floppy until a challenger comes along.
Of course THIS is still my favourite removable storage. 256 Megabytes, baby! Enough room for the entire OS, AND all your apps AND your home directory! You’d visit a diskless NeXT cube in a lab and boot your entire environment!
Well that was the plan, anyway, until most network admins said “NO”
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Of course THIS is still my favourite removable storage. 256 Megabytes, baby! Enough room for the entire OS, AND all your apps AND your home directory! You’d visit a diskless NeXT cube in a lab and boot your entire environment!
Well that was the plan, anyway, until most network admins said “NO”
Fancy!
My first HD was a 45MB Syquest drive.
"Look, if I fill it up, I can just buy another cartridge!"
I ran it bare screwed to a piece of wood because I couldn't afford a case right away.
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Of course THIS is still my favourite removable storage. 256 Megabytes, baby! Enough room for the entire OS, AND all your apps AND your home directory! You’d visit a diskless NeXT cube in a lab and boot your entire environment!
Well that was the plan, anyway, until most network admins said “NO”
So cool. Btw, I've been meaning to ask, did you ever get to work with the ISPW? Those things were the bomb at the time, but also crazy expensive.
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will the new floppy drive read ancient Mac floppies which back in the day used an unusual variable-speed-of-rotation encoding?
no
OK what about those 2.88 Meg high-density floppies that were briefly all the rageno
OK but you still own an entire box of rare, unused 2” floppies from 1985?
yes
@shayman those are clearly not floppies, they are stiffies
I think naming them that way might be a South African thing? I grew up calling that thing a stiffy. The things that came before them, we called floppies. Because, y'know, if you grab it by the corner and flap it up 'n' down, it goes flop flop.
I'm sure shocking and outraging the adults had nothing at all to do with the naming choice!
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@shayman those are clearly not floppies, they are stiffies
I think naming them that way might be a South African thing? I grew up calling that thing a stiffy. The things that came before them, we called floppies. Because, y'know, if you grab it by the corner and flap it up 'n' down, it goes flop flop.
I'm sure shocking and outraging the adults had nothing at all to do with the naming choice!
@discobeez I don’t remember hearing that term but it makes sense!
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So cool. Btw, I've been meaning to ask, did you ever get to work with the ISPW? Those things were the bomb at the time, but also crazy expensive.
@culturednyc No, I knew of it as a board you could theoretically plug into a NeXT cube but my two NeXT cubes never had anything that fancy plugged into them
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Of course THIS is still my favourite removable storage. 256 Megabytes, baby! Enough room for the entire OS, AND all your apps AND your home directory! You’d visit a diskless NeXT cube in a lab and boot your entire environment!
Well that was the plan, anyway, until most network admins said “NO”
Anyway, back to the original topic: I found a DOS floppy circa 1994 that my wife had used to save some family tree research on, and this new $25 USB-C floppy drive + my mac + an app called “GEDCOM Navigator” means that we can read and enjoy all this old family tree data!
(“we” meaning “cathy”)
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@culturednyc No, I knew of it as a board you could theoretically plug into a NeXT cube but my two NeXT cubes never had anything that fancy plugged into them
@shayman From what I recall, they were about $10K at the time. Western didn't have one and neither did UofT, but we did have visiting people at UofT using them.
They were great for realtime signal processing, they kind you can now do on pretty much any laptop, tablet, phone, etc.
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