Floppy disks

In case you’d forgotten what 5¼ inch diskettes look like, here’s a reminder.

5.25 inch diskettes

My kids noted: “So they really were floppy!”

I wonder what ever happened to the Xidex company? There seems to be little information on them on the web, but a few ebay sellers are selling unused disks. Verbatim are still around.

Why were the disks out? Today I set up my old BBC micro to see if it still worked, and to ponder putting it on ebay. It did work, but some of the disks reported errors. On closer inspection, some appeared to have mould or some other kind of growth on the magnetic part.

Possibly if I really had to retrieve the data, I could find someone to recover it, but there’s nothing important on them. It does serve as a reminder that every so often you should refresh your vital data from whatever media it’s stored on, onto something new.

6 thoughts on “Floppy disks

  1. Timothy McVeigh

    I’ve got tons of those XIDEX covers holding my old C64 games (still in their CD holder after all this time).

    ^_^

  2. Matt

    You still have a working BBC Micro?
    I have very fond memories of working out how to make them “beep” in “Computer Class”,
    and then driving that stupid little turtle around the floor on butcher’s paper to draw polygons.
    And what was that game? FRAK?!!

  3. daniel Post author

    Yep, it works a treat. I had a look at some of my old code… nothing worth saving really, though the “Ultima” clone I co-wrote (unfinished) is pretty cool.

  4. Archi

    I lent my BBC to a friend for a Uni project.

    He broke it 🙁

    But the analog port had already died so I couldn’t play Elite anyway…

    there’s never any BBCs on eBay whenever I look…

  5. James

    I’ve got a whole box of disks that look just like those verbatim ones

    But they are 8 inches across not 5.25.

    Oh and we have an Apple II here at work. It’s plugged in and works..
    Somebody uses it I guess.

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