My company uses a floppy disk symbol to save your work.

[Lunabell]

Isn't that cute? Does anyone under the age of 25 even know what a floppy disk is? Maybe they teach about it in history class. 😆 🤣

[lapfog_1]

1. soon children will not even know

the symbols for HDDs either. Even the term "hard drive" or "disk drive" will go away.

eventually, the concept of external detachable storage ( of any kind ) may go away. There will be cloud storage and local memory ( persistent memory ). Those two will be around ( because of latency and physics until we extend quantum memory from wherever we are located to where some other information is kept.

[randr]

2. Are people actually proud of not knowing much?

[Basic LA]

3. Remember when they were actually floppy?

Then the smaller ones encased in plastic came along, like the ubiquitous symbol shown above.
Hope I'm recalling this correctly.

[Lunabell]

4. Yes!

I am that old, lol. I remember tape drive and punch cards.

[Basic LA]

6. Thanks for confirming!

We've been around!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. One of my tasks at work was to remove the second-shift hard disks ...

... and replace them with our third-shift hard disks. The removed disks were then covered with something that looks like a cake dish cover.

The next task was to plan where we would find lunch at 3:30am. There weren't that many places to choose from.

[rsdsharp]

12. When I started at my firm in the mid 80s, we had two word processing "stations."

They used large floppy discs — about 12”.

[intheflow]

36. When I started working in offices, same time frame,

I used different computers for different jobs. Word processing was done on an IBM Selectric typewriter and we could send out reams of form letters because it could store up to something like 120 words in its memory. We oohed and aahed over that marvel! 😂

I can’t remember what I did on the Wang and Apple computers (first job, short-lived due to extremely pervy boss), only that different computations had to be done on entirely different machines, and, yes, we backed it all up on the floppies that could double as fans in the summer.

[rsdsharp]

38. All of the secretaries had IBM Selectrics, but ours had no memory.

After a couple years the firm bought a couple of Facit typewriters that had storage similar to what you describe.

In the early 90s, everybody got desktop computers, including the attorneys — except for the secretary of one of the senior partners. She was about a year from retirement, and refused to use a computer.

[EverHopeful]

13. A coworker once suggested we call those crunchies

because of the sound they made when you ran over them with your chair. Didn't catch on, rather like my calling "autocorrect" "autocorrupt" hasn't caught on.

[AllaN01Bear]

22. 8 inch 4 1/2 inch. and the "hard floppy". hard drives intialy were the size of washing machines .

some du member has a hard floppy for their sig pic. i got a couple of hard ( 114 mb i think)

[Basic LA]

26. That was the progression all right.

The little 'hard floppies' were a big advancement.

[sdfernando]

34. Yes!

I worked with 8” single-sided floppy disks way long ago. Had to boot up with the System disk, take it out and put in another disk to work on your documents and save them…might need to put the system disk back in for other functions…..there was a lot of disk swapping going on…then, miracle of miracles, double-sided, double-density came out! 4X the capacity!

[Basic LA]

35. We were there at the start!

Sadly, my computer "skills" seem never to have advanced along with the technology.

[ProfessorGAC]

42. There Were Two Sizes

I used early computers with both sizes.
Here's the wiki page on the history of those media.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#:~:text=The%20first%20commercial%20floppy%20disks,1972%20by%20Memorex%20and%20others.

[Basic LA]

47. Thank you!

[Permanut]

51. Boy there's a trip down memory lane.

The 5 1/4" disks.

[PufPuf23]

61. Not just one floppy disk, two. One floppy for program, the other for data.

Bought my first pc in 1985 and also bought WordPerfect, Lotus123, and DBase.

Bought an Everex Step 386 in 87 or 88 with a 200 MB hard drive. The HD cost almost $2000 alone.

[OnDoutside]

11. I have heard of but have never seen a slide rule.

[Lunabell]

15. My engineer dad had one.

I did not inherit my dad's math gene. That's why I'm a nurse and not a veterinarian. So much math just to treat animals.

[AllaN01Bear]

23. i have one . havent used it. there are slide rule apps for iphone and desktops. some still usem,

[lastlib]

37. I will give up my slide rule when they pry it out of my cold, dead, stiff fingers......

Still have the slide rule I got for my 16th birthday (other kids got a car for their 16th--I got a slide rule.......and was actually happy about it!) Had to make a new leather case for it last year--the old one was coming apart. I don't use it much--but I can still solve triangles on it faster than I can look up an app online and type in info. In high school, I won a slide-rule competition against students from about two dozen other schools. I was pretty dog-gone good with it!

Some 30-somethings at work a few years ago had never seen one, so I had to bring it in and demonstrate it. They were mildly amused.

[ProfessorGAC]

43. Had One In HS

Might have used it in my 1st year of college. "Affordable calculators came out around that time, including scientific versions. So, I don't exactly remember when I got my first one.
But, we used them extensively in HS.
The math teachers had 4 foot versions hanging over the chalkboard.
They looked like this.
https://trtradingcompany.com/product/huge-4-pickett-american-quality-slide-rule/

[Elessar Zappa]

41. Why would young people know?

It’s not essential knowledge.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. Can you even still buy them? I still do use these disks though, but it's been a long time since I've bought

some, so as I was reading your email/text, I wondered. I guess that you still can buy them, but I've still stocked up on them pretty well.

And you're probably right, does the younger generation even know what these are, if they ever even seen a floppy disc.

[Lunabell]

7. I don't know.

I don't think they even put cd players in cars anymore. Everything is streaming now. I can still hear the dial up screech we used to get when signing on to the internet. 😆

[SWBTATTReg]

8. Yes, I do miss the familiar tones of when you dial in to a computer link, it was so 'catchy' I guess. The only reason I

kept the floppy disc drive in my computer when I had it built, was that I'm always double and triple ensuring that I can get into my system, do things should something happen to my computer, hence the floppy disc drive. Of course I have the disc drive too, but they wondered when I had them build the system years ago why I would want this feature (the floppy drive) still? Of course, I told them of my desire to have multiple entryways/access on my computer for any possible thing that may happen.

Next time I go to Office Depot, Office Max, I'll look to see if they still have the discs (floppy).

[getagrip_already]

9. Amazon sells them, but they aint cheap

$30/10.

You can still buy them and the readers/drives though. These are the more modern hard plastic 3.5" ones. I didn't look for the 5" version.

[AllaN01Bear]

25. staples and i understand game stop does .if my information is correct.

[lpbk2713]

14. I still have three or four unopened boxes of floppy discs

Even though I haven't had a computer with a floppy drive for twenty years or more.

Although I must say I do have an external floppy drive with a USB connector.
So I could use a floppy disc if I had to.

[Lunabell]

16. Collector's items one day?

You may have a fortune to leave your grandkids! 😆

[JoseBalow]

20. Here's your inheritance kids!

[JoseBalow]

17. The first computer I ever used was in grade school

It was a Wang (no offense!) that used rolls of punched paper tape.

[Lunabell]

18. Oh my!

I've never even heard of this one.

[JoseBalow]

19. Instead of a stack of punch cards

you would feed in a roll of perforated paper tape. The bigger the program, the bigger the roll of tape. It could get quite unwieldy and cumbersome, but still more practical that a stack of cards.

[Lunabell]

29. Wow.

That is ancient!

[AllaN01Bear]

30. allan01bear , behave . this is so rife for puns . i rmember those as well

[lastlib]

39. When I took a BASIC language course in college....

we saved/loaded our programs to/from paper tapes. You had to be one of the FORTRAN kids to use the 8" floppies.....

[SWBTATTReg]

54. Ahhhh, Fortran. A long long time ago! Amazing that we all had to program literally in all kinds of languages,

Basic, Assembler, Pascal, SAS, Cobol, PL1, etc. And you had to know multiple languages too, in order to read some magnetic tapes, e.g., Assembler to read some mag. tapes.

[ProfessorGAC]

44. Saw Those

In HS, there was a dumb terminal connected to a local university's mainframe.
We saved our work to paper tape like that. I took that short course my 3rd year of HS. I don't have the faintest idea what I tried to program.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

59. Somehow I acquired one of the punch machines with a full roll of paper tape.

No documentation and no idea about the interface on it, though. It just collects dust in my garage.

[JoseBalow]

60. I wouldn't know where to begin to get one to work with a modern device

I have seen them connected to old typewriters, like a kind of word processor I guess. I'm not sure how interchangeable it would be, or if you could even re-adapt it from one device to another. Maybe some sort of modified HAL I suppose, not my field of expertise at all.

[Danascot]

21. The MS Word and Excel programs I use

use the floppy disk symbol for save. It's in the upper left corner and small.

Per wikipedia: The retail floppy disk version of Windows 95 came on 13 DMF formatted floppy disks, while OSR 2.1 doubled the floppy count to 26.

[kimbutgar]

27. I've been working with a woman in my senior moving job and I have thrown away so many of these discs

Because she has nothing to use them on! I actually found a 45 size floppy disc also!

[AllaN01Bear]

32. our united families once went to canada and stayed in a bnb. the owner was still using her apple 2 e to do her job.

this was as of the year 2000. this was for a reunion and to talk to the most seinior members of the fam. my late mom and aunt. the matriarchs . sook bay canada.

[LoisB]

28. I still have some. Of course, I also still have a Wang programming manual.

I'm old.

[underpants]

31. I'd never thought of that. I'm conditioned. Can we PLEASE not use Teams?

What pain in the ass.

[AllaN01Bear]

33. how many of u remember teleprinters . chunck chunck chunck and the bell . ding. i forget the bell symbol

[hunter]

48. The Associated Press machines at our university newspaper....

The bells were for big news, the sort they'd interrupt television and radio for. We'd all freeze, like at the beginning of an earthquake, wondering if the bells were signaling the end of the world, the missiles launched, time to jump under our desks and kiss our asses good-bye.

Just like most earthquakes, the moment quickly passed.as someone called out the story, the death of some famous person, whatever...

[Basic LA]

52. Teletypes! Now you're talking.

I was an operator for RCA Global Communications in SanFran, and then at Western Union headquarters in Downtown L.A.

[Shermann]

40. The 5 1/4" floppies were the personal computing standard for a time

The 8" didn't make much inroads there and were quickly replaced. The 3 1/2" standard replaced that just as quickly. Anybody who used the 5 1/4" to any significant degree probably remembers losing data. They were, well, floppy and had exposed magnetic media.

The icon is considered a "skeuomorph".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph#Virtual_examples

[Polybius]

45. It's still the international "save" symbol

A huge amount of software still uses it too, and thank God for that!

[Polybius]

46. And someone in this very group still posts "Dial-up warning" in their thread titles

[AllaN01Bear]

49. lol cats , note , some still use dial up as internet connection so is not completely lost.

[Polybius]

50. Stop!

Are you sure? As in March 2024? Why? Is a router not an option with their computers?

[AllaN01Bear]

53. hem google search and these answers please . untill we get full service yes it is a thing.

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/providers/dial-up this iks as of mar 17 20204.

[Lunabell]

56. Wow.

We need to upgrade in this country. Everyone should have access to highspeed internet, should they choose to.

[HoosierDebbie]

57. Part of infrastructure plan

42+ billion dollars was designated to make high speed internet available all across the country through Biden's Infrastructure Plan.

[AllaN01Bear]

58. crosses fingers and toes that biden gets re electid to complete this mission.

[area51]

55. k&r n/t

[Yavin4]

62. My avatar n/t