[FRIAM] Floppy disks still live. Sorta

[Steve Smith]

When Mary moved here she had a collection of 3.5" floppies with her 
early poetry on them...  she wasn't sure what she had and hadn't had a 
floppy drive to look at them with since the 90s.   As it turned out I 
had a USB floppy reader I had bought to help someone else recover their 
history and she copied everything onto her hard drive... a few of the 
floppies were unreadable... I don't remember the details (5 years ago?)  
I believe that deep in my shed there is a mid 80s PC with a 5.25" 
internal floppy drive... <sigh>.   I also had a "core memory" artifact 
from one of the earlyish LASL machines in my office for decades but I 
can't remember when/where I let it go.

I remember a Sandia?  Engineer who I would occasionally encounter on 
flights in/out of ABQ and layovers.   He would carry a small stack of 
punch cards that he used to take notes on and when anyone would ask him 
about them, he would tell them about the history of such items and  
offer to sell them one for $1, and apparently many, many people took him 
up on that deal... a good deal by some measure for everyone.  I saw him 
sell at least 5 or 6 in the times I was in his presence (on the plane, 
waiting for a flight, etc). and I wonder where all those strange little 
artifacts ended up? Ed or someone else on the same flight paths I was on 
in those days might know who he is?   Sandia Engineers (and Scientists) 
were easy to spot in airports, esp.  ABQ...  maybe LANL too, but Sandia 
had a particular signature "look"?   The cards were probably Sandia 
property and there is probably a waste/fraud/abuse scandal to be had in 
there somewhere...  gak!

I also used to collect exposed 35mm film from garage sales and friends 
going digital?  Why would anyone have *exposed* film? Nobody knows 
exactly... I assume the transition time when someone would deprecate an 
old camera (after going digital) would lead to at least *one* roll of 
film in the old camera half-exposed.   I kept them in a ziplock freezer 
bag, thinking that *someday* I would (hand) process them all as a sort 
of performance-art experience.   Instead I encountered someone about 5 
years ago who was doing a similar thing and I simply gave my collection 
(20 or more) of exposed rolls to them (along with a similar number of 
frozen unexposed rolls).

I also expect that abandoned USB sticks and micro/mini/SD/??? cards will 
also be an interesting Archeological find someday.   I have a 4" 
diameter metal pipe core to my spiral staircase with an open (capped) 
top which I have come to use as a "time capsule". Every few weeks I have 
a small collection of artifacts that have no proper use but are 
entertaining in their own right that I drop down there.  I have at least 
3 or 4 USB sticks layered in there. I don't know exactly how deep my 
collection is... I've been doing this casually for years but only with 
small and acutely (at the moment) interesting items...  Maybe 1 foot 
deep more or less? The presumption is that decades from now the house 
(owner-built in the early 80s) will burn down or be bulldozed to put in 
some ultra-modern thing and the spiral staircase will be the last thing 
standing and *maybe* someone will notice as 1000 tiny bits of gak flow 
out of the pipe as they haul it off.  Or not.   I've been tempted to cut 
a tiny "door" in the bottom to provide access, but that would ruin the 
conceit I think.  Maybe paint a "fairy door" in the same location to 
suggest to a curious person to do so? MMmmmMM?

I would drop the old floppy and a (newer) DVD-USB drive down the hole as 
a "bootstrap", but they are both too big.



On 9/14/22 10:09 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
> https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-standing-in-the-floppy-disk-business/#:post_86454
>
> =======================
> Tom Johnson
> Inst. for Analytic Journalism
> Santa Fe, New Mexico
> 505-577-6482
> =======================
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>    1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/