It's 2023! Do You Know Where Your Floppies Are?

[Dancing Wind]

For everyone bemoaning the archaic infrastructure of the Paizo website:

San Francisco Subway Runs On Floppies

Our train control system in the Market Street subway is loaded off of five-and-a-quarter inch floppy drives,” SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin told KQED’s Priya David Clemens this week.

Not even the 3.5 version, but the even more floppy 5.25 type.

[Steve Geddes]

True floppy.

[Papa-DRB]

Sorry, can't help myself....

IBM 5110 - 8 inch floppy disk

Myself and another gent, in the Industrial Engineering department of the Construction department for an International Company, coded a financial application in APL on the 5110, using 4 of the 8 inch diskettes in tandem to hold the data. This was back in the late 1970's...

-- david

[Dancing Wind]

Steve Geddes wrote:

True floppy.

There was actually an even truer floppy.

In the early 1970s, IBM made some electric typewriters that could use magnetic media to store boiler plate text. It was the same plastic magnetic media that was later enclosed in either paper or plastic to make "disks".

But, this was naked plastic, in the exact size and shape of IBM punch cards (which were 'floppy' because they were simply single-ply cardstock)*.

In 1973, the law office where I worked became an early adopter of those typewriters,

IBM MagCard II Selectric Typewriter "8,000 character memory, corrections capability and a card reader able to handle a pack of 50 magnetic cards."

*which I had used nearly a decade earlier to write and compile my first programming efforts.

[Dancing Wind]

Papa-DRB wrote:

Sorry, can't help myself....

Check your PMs

[Papa-DRB]

Dancing Wind wrote:

Papa-DRB wrote:

Sorry, can't help myself....

Check your PMs

Responded...

[Fumarole]

Seeing BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) called a subway is weird. I lived in the Bay Area for decades and never once heard it called that by anyone local.

[Tarondor]

Dancing Wind wrote:

In 1973, the law office where I worked

Cripes! I thought I was the oldest guy around here. I feel young again! :-)

[Totally Not Gorbacz]

I was about to complain about Paizo's website, but then my electricity provider (you know, critical goods, strategic infrastructure etc.) told me that I have to re-send a PDF with one form that I sent them because I made the PDF editable (so I can write on it using my stylus) and their system borks up when you try to upload an edited/editable PDF. You need to print, write on it, scan, and send as an old-school PDF, like those savage barbarian tribes did in 2000s. Ugh.

[Steve Geddes]

Our time will come again.

[Dancing Wind]

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

You need to print, write on it, scan, and send as an old-school PDF, like those savage barbarian tribes did in 2000s. Ugh.

What!? They didn't ask you to fax it?

[Totally Not Gorbacz]

I'm in Poland, not Germany :D

[Kelseus]

The US nuclear ICBM system only just stopped using 8 inch floppy disks in 2019.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/air-force-finally-re tires-8-inch-floppies-from-missile-launch-control-system/

[Drejk]

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

I was about to complain about Paizo's website, but then my electricity provider (you know, critical goods, strategic infrastructure etc.) told me that I have to re-send a PDF with one form that I sent them because I made the PDF editable (so I can write on it using my stylus) and their system borks up when you try to upload an edited/editable PDF. You need to print, write on it, scan, and send as an old-school PDF, like those savage barbarian tribes did in 2000s. Ugh.

Or you could have filled the editable pdf and then save it as non-editable print it to pdf, effectively creating a new pdf that is not fillable (maybe that wouldn't crash their system). I had to do that last month with friend's character sheet because his phone pdf viewer wasn't showing edits either.