PastaThiefBoost if you're old enough to know why I have one of these on my computer desk.
rk: it’s hyphen-minus actuallyYou can make the flip side usable or, if you’re bad enough at it, both sides unusable.
Shriram Krishnamurthi@rk I see all the references to 5.25" floppies, which I knew well, but I have never used a punch with one. What does it do with a floppy?
@PastaThief
@PastaThief
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/F/flippy.html
You could use a hole punch to make another write notch on the other side of a single-sided floppy, doubling your disk space (though at the time most drives could only read one side at a time).
Some disks were also shipped without a write notch at all, so that you couldn’t replace whatever was on them; a hole punch gave you a free reusable floppy!
@rk
Wait, this was true of *all* 5.25"s? I'm shocked that I never heard of this before, seems startling to miss a trick like this in India, when we could barely afford one floppy!
@PastaThief
Wait, this was true of *all* 5.25"s? I'm shocked that I never heard of this before, seems startling to miss a trick like this in India, when we could barely afford one floppy!
@PastaThief
Some manufacturers insisted that the back of a floppy wasn’t good or whatever, and I think in the *very* early days some of them weren’t hard-tracked/sectored on the back but by the mid 80s I’d’ve bet it would work on any of ‘em.
…I can *smell* 5.25” floppies in my memory now, sheesh.
Peter Ludemann@rk @shriramk @PastaThief
This "common knowledge" made it all the way to my village on the edge of the rainforest (Vancouver BC). And I'm sure there were some Indian students in CS at UBC (although they were likely 2nd or 3rd generation Punjabis, so perhaps had few connections with India or its tech community).
This "common knowledge" made it all the way to my village on the edge of the rainforest (Vancouver BC). And I'm sure there were some Indian students in CS at UBC (although they were likely 2nd or 3rd generation Punjabis, so perhaps had few connections with India or its tech community).
@PeterLudemann @rk @PastaThief
Well, the problem is I didn't know anyone in the Indian "tech community". All I knew was my best friend, a few teachers who knew far less than me, and people at a computer company who couldn't answer my questions until I realized why: they had actually, in a notable sense, faked their product. (The product was real, their contribution was not.)
Well, the problem is I didn't know anyone in the Indian "tech community". All I knew was my best friend, a few teachers who knew far less than me, and people at a computer company who couldn't answer my questions until I realized why: they had actually, in a notable sense, faked their product. (The product was real, their contribution was not.)
@shriramk @rk @PastaThief
You've travelled far ... much farther than me. My starting point was a paperback edition of "Teach Yourself Electronic Computers", which I discovered at a WH Smith bookstore when visiting my grandparents, who lived in south England (an exotic locale for someone living in the middle of Vancouver Island's rain forest): https://archive.org/details/teachyourselfele00west/page/n7/mode/2up
You've travelled far ... much farther than me. My starting point was a paperback edition of "Teach Yourself Electronic Computers", which I discovered at a WH Smith bookstore when visiting my grandparents, who lived in south England (an exotic locale for someone living in the middle of Vancouver Island's rain forest): https://archive.org/details/teachyourselfele00west/page/n7/mode/2up
@PeterLudemann
That's funny, I imagine Vancouver was pretty exotic for someone in south England, too. (-:
@rk @PastaThief
That's funny, I imagine Vancouver was pretty exotic for someone in south England, too. (-:
@rk @PastaThief
Vancouver Island != Vancouver.
https://www.town.lakecowichan.bc.ca/scenic.php