Re: Storing hundreds of floppies?

Posted on 2022-02-17, 15:11

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just to wrap up - found a few items after about 6 hours of searching, both expensive for what they are and what I need them for, but seem to be the best options available. First: 41HrSFV5nqL._AC_SL1000_.jpg This is far more expensive than it should be, it's just plastic. However, it's just the right …

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Re: Storing hundreds of floppies?

Posted on 2022-02-17, 01:23

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is all good info, thanks. But like... organization? I have to think there was a better way in the 80s and 90s for software houses to catalog floppies.

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Re: Storing hundreds of floppies?

Posted on 2022-02-16, 23:55

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My experience with 5.25 320k medium is that they're far more reliable than 3.5. I bought a weird collection of utilities and games from basically a grab bag at a scrap store a few years ago and every single "ibm formatted" disk was read 100%. I mean none of them looked particularly bad and most had …

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Storing hundreds of floppies?

Posted on 2022-02-16, 23:06

by

by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey all. Happened upon a large collection of 5.25 and 3.5 media that I want to keep safe after throwing on archive.org, those are in addition to several hundred floppies of different types that I have "just lying around". I'm grabbing as many as I can for other reasons, but mainly for preservation …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years? (Disks)

Posted on 2022-02-09, 11:32

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Unfortunately I don't know anybody selling new tyvek sleeves. You might consider floppy jewel cases for the 3.5" disks. So I might have a very tepid lead on old stock tyvek floppy disk sleeves, or at least a company who makes custom tyvek folders and used to make a lot of floppy sleeves. It's a …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years? (Disks)

Posted on 2022-02-08, 20:10

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I will def be self-duplicating these, simply because I can do something that takes forever on 3 machines and just chill out. Right now I'm not rushing this and just want to do it correctly. I've found that most of the pre-applied labels/stickers seem to come right off of consumer disks, so I'm not …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years? (Disks)

Posted on 2022-02-08, 15:41

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just to re-ask, are the "newer" 5.25 disks like the 2000s era disks, in that a lot of them are junk? Or is 5.25 stock generally good from any era of production From personal observation which doesn't prove anything, disks produced closer to the end of their era are of inferior quality/endurance. …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years? (Disks)

Posted on 2022-02-08, 12:57

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The issue I'm running into is I need a decent stock of floppies (around 500) for a project what project (on earth) needs five hundred floppies??? more background please :) can't you use a hardware floppy emulator for your project? the SD cards can easily hold the content of 500 floppies like: …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years? (Disks)

Posted on 2022-02-08, 12:52

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, storage conditions are important. It doesn't have to be perfectly 20C with controlled humidity (though it would be great) but if the temperature swinged close to 0C (or worse, below), and/or above 35C, the magnetic material can easily start to flake off. Nothing can be done about that. That …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years?

Posted on 2022-02-08, 12:02

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Dysan, 3M, Memorex, Verbatim. That's what I remember from the old days. How I wish the younger me didn't throw away all of those floppies once they started having bad sectors, I now know so much more about the tech to probably rescue some of them. But then again I did use them a lot with various …

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Re: 5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years?

Posted on 2022-02-08, 11:51

by

by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bondi wrote on 2022-02-08, 11:41: Here is a recent thread What are the better 5.25" 1.2MB floppy drives around? I'm asking about disks specifically.

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5.25 Floppy, Best Brands or Years? (Disks)

Posted on 2022-02-08, 11:38

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm aware this has been asked ad infinitum however I would really appreciate everyone's thoughts on 5 1/4 floppy disk stock. The issue I'm running into is I need a decent stock of floppies (around 500) for a project and one of the only sellers of bulk I can find right now don't have named floppies, …

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Re: Definitive list of Shareware, Freeware, etc?

Posted on 2022-02-04, 18:40

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by dumpsterac1d

in DOS

in DOS

Just to wrap this up, I have some clarity on the original Catacomb. Basically the Gamer's Edge disk which houses Catacomb 1 in its most official capacity doesn't contain traditional shareware or freeware, it has to be shared in full. How GOG got around this (and Catacomb 1 is technically a "bonus" …

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Re: Definitive list of Shareware, Freeware, etc?

Posted on 2022-02-03, 12:40

by

by dumpsterac1d

in DOS

in DOS

Thanks folks, this helps a lot. The other releases I've planned have specific mention somewhere on the disc or programmed into the games themselves that they're shareware or freeware, so this first disk is the one that's causing me the most trouble. Gamer's Edge was a product they were promoting, …

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Definitive list of Shareware, Freeware, etc?

Posted on 2022-02-02, 11:22

by

by dumpsterac1d

in DOS

in DOS

For background, I wanted to do a retrospective/shareware limited release series on floppy, starting with Softdisk's Carmack/Romero/Carmack games. Oddly enough, I remember games like Rescue Rover, Catacomb 2, and Keen far more than any of their other games, so wanted to highlight that period and do a …

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Re: Intrest in new ISA cards?

Posted on 2022-01-21, 12:00

by

by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A Lot to reply to - First, the Tseng ET4k is just an example of what people could do given a powerful enough FPGA and some dedication. That being said, Herc cards for VLB are more expensive than anyone here gives them credit for. If someone wants to sell me a VLB Herc with 2mb VRAM for under 130, …

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Re: Intrest in new ISA cards?

Posted on 2022-01-20, 16:27

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you start using FPGA emulation (no, it's not real hardware like some people say - it's just a hardware trying it's best to immitate original hardware - it's emulation). Then why bother with hardware at all... Just use PCem or box86 emulator and call it a day. Is this comment true when people …

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Re: Intrest in new ISA cards?

Posted on 2022-01-20, 13:01

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

- VGA/SVGA cores that are emulating expensive chipsets, Tseng 4k, 3DFx, etc. If you think the ET4000 is expensive, you wouldn't like the cost of a custom chipset emulating it with a limited production run :) If that board can emulate anything I ask it to with some less expensive daughterboards and …

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Re: Intrest in new ISA cards?

Posted on 2022-01-20, 12:28

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey, digging this back up from the grave to ask if this has had any more interest in the intervening years. After having a serious look at the MiSTer system (and also the price of some of the more obscure hardware for my new 486 build) I was thinking that perhaps someone out there was working on an …

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Re: KVM Switches and 1 Keyboard/Mouse to rule them all

Posted on 2022-01-16, 13:07

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by dumpsterac1d

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've tried three PS/2 to USB adapters in the past and they were all crap. Ultimately I gave up on them. They work fine most of the time but then randomly you'll get a stuck keypress and everything goes haywire. If you plan on using these adapters, I would recommend getting one and testing it out …

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