Have you personally used a floppy disk?

@vaporeon_ haz your asslet personally been to an IMAX?

@sidd_harth0_5h4h Last time I was at a cinema at all was before the start of COVID-19, and back then I didn't even know what an IMAX was

@vaporeon_
I am *just* barely too young to say yes to this. I recall having them in the house, but by the time I was independently using the computer, it was all about CDs.

@vaporeon_

When I was a kid I used the 5 1/4” all the time with my dad’s Apple IIe!

Specifically the games Choplifter and Wings of Fury.

@vaporeon_ punch cards and paper tape, too!

@rogerparkinson @vaporeon_ A summer job was archiving the previous year's paper tape data for my dad. Then there was a big bonfire when I was 14?

@vaporeon_ unfortunately i don't have much of a reason to use them, except i do have a sony mavica that uses floppies which i really like! it's an old camera but being able to just take out the floppy and put it in my computer is really convenient

@rogerparkinson @vaporeon_ Never used punched cards personally, but my father worked with mainframes in the seventies, eighties, and possibly late sixties so my early life included shopping lists and other notes on unused punched cards.
Didn't get to use 8" floppies in anger but did work in a place where they were used.

@vaporeon_

Floppies were still commonly used through the early 2000’s, so anyone in their late twenties probably used them at school.

@vaporeon_ I do use them now. But 3" floppy for ZX Spectrum +3

@vaporeon_ I made company system backups on floppy disks. The real 8" ones.

@vaporeon_ I still have a stack at home, and a few working floppy drives.

the first msdos games I played like TestDrive, Bolo, Grand Prix, etc, all came on floppies someone copied and spread. Floppy era was honestly peak piracy haha, I feel like more software floated around without rather than with license

@vaporeon_

Yes. From 8" to 5¼" to 3½".

@JustJimWillDo @vaporeon_
I never used an 8", but have used 3" disks (Amstrad). (plus the 'usual' 5¼" and 3½")

@vaporeon_ 5¼ inch just a few times. 3½ inch TONS! In the good old late 80's/early 90's.

@vaporeon_

I've used 5¼-inch and 3½-inch floppy disks! 💾

@vaporeon_ 5 1/4 and 3

@vaporeon_ 3.5, 5.25 or 8-inch?

Yes to all three.

@ShayneParkinson @vaporeon_ 8" on a CP/M machine in a professional setting.

@ShayneParkinson @vaporeon_ I never used an 8", but I did use 3" floppies in the 80s (we had an Amstrad PCW, and I think Amstrad was the only manufacturer in the UK that used 3" instead of 3.5").

The first two, yes. And I also have a couple of 8" floppies stored away somewhere for their novelty value.

@ShayneParkinson @vaporeon_

@vaporeon_ 8 inch, and had to program on punch cards at Uni.

@vaporeon_ yes! in elementary school we had a few Apple IIe computers that I vividly remember. I was also in a daycare thing with a computer area and vividly remember playing this game (and beating it! i think it was the first game i beat)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll's_Tale?wprov=sfti1

@vaporeon_ My first CV was saved onto an 8" floppy disc drive, though that didn't last long and instead I rewrote it on a PC/MS-Dos 3.1? PC, with WordStar. I still use JOE as my main editor on the Linux command-line, because it uses the same WordStar key bindings, just about 38 years later.

@vaporeon_ Though I ony started with 5 1/4" floppies, @irina has used 8" ones.

I think I might still have some boxes of 3.5" floppies in the depts of my desk drawer, as obsolete and unreadable as the stack of CDR's.

@vaporeon_ which size? 😆

@marinheiro Any size counts as "yes"! Which size have you used?

@vaporeon_ Yes - and proper floppy ones, not the solid versions.

And I have worked with a system that ran off 2 8" disks.

I used punched cards in my degree work too (not really in work). Although I did have to use coding sheets.

@vaporeon_ first time in around 2004/2005 i think, for bringing a file i made at home to school

then there was a pretty long pause, except i did boot dos off a floppy in high school a few times and run zsnes on them.

I have a fair number now though since I got an amiga and later some 486 computers

@wyatt Beautiful! :O
I love the translucent floppies

@halla @vaporeon_ I still have an 8" floppy somewhere with some stories on it which I'd love to be able to read and possibly edit.

@vaporeon_

My first real computer (Olivetti M-20) made me switch from cassettetapes to 5¼-inch floppies. 😊

@vaporeon_ we have both handled floppies and actively used pcs with a floppy drive, but we have never used a floppy

@vaporeon_ all of them! (Except the micro ones that came at the end of the sequence)

@vaporeon_ I have, in fact, used a floppy disk for its _original_ intended purpose. Namely, loading microcode into an IBM mainframe. (It was an 8" unit...). I only did this the once, though; I've used 5.25" floppies and 3" not-so-floppies more times than I can count, and the majority of those uses were NOT FOR WINDOWS.

@vaporeon_ almost. we had a computer with a floppy drive at home and we had some floppies, but by the time I would get to use it the drive was dead so…

@vaporeon_ No 8", but 5 1/4" and 3 1/2". They were formatted to 1.2 and 1.44 at the time, but plenty low density ones were still in use. They are the symbol of the old, better times of my youth, before the great enshittification when computing was still exciting and fun

@vaporeon_ I used to punch extra sector timing holes and write protect notches so I could flip single sided disks over and use the back side of the media.

@vaporeon_ god i wish

@snapsjaw What's stopping you?

@vaporeon_ 8" hard sectored even!

@vaporeon_ i did blink a bit about the meaning of "personally used" :) But, yes, and 5 1⁄4 as well as 3 1⁄2 …

@vaporeon_ Sinclair QL tape cartridges, anyone?

@vaporeon_ Summer job in the mid 90s even had to work with legacy 9 track magnetic tape reels.

@vaporeon_ Tapes first then 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppys, yes.

@vaporeon_ My first was the Commodore 1541 🤓

Dozens or more probably, hundreds 😉

@vaporeon_ thousands

@vaporeon_ no but I’ve touched one

@vaporeon_ Yay, we respondents are officially old!

@vaporeon_ I can lay hands on a few without moving my chair. But I'd have to get up from the chair to get the RadioShack USB drive so that I could read the floppy.