#floppy-disks — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #floppy-disks, aggregated by home.social.
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New video: Commodore 4040 Disk Drive Refurb
Another Commodore 4040 dual floppy disk drive ended up in my hands, but only temporarily for repairs and refurbishing. This drive didn't boot up in the beginning and had other small issues. I will show in great detail how to take these things apart and how to clean them and get them up to speed again.
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New video for Patrons: Commodore 4040 Disk Drive Refurb
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Verbatim - The Whole Message is Quality!
Those are some serious diskettes! 8" and 5,25"!
#floppydisks #retrocomputing -
🚀 Wow, someone should tell this guy that #DOS isn't exactly the pinnacle of secure operating systems. 🖥️ But hey, if you want to build a "secure" #AI by channeling your inner '90s computer geek, who am I to stop you? Just don't forget your floppy disks! 💾
https://www.flyingpenguin.com/build-an-openclaw-free-secure-always-on-local-ai-agent/ #Security #FloppyDisks #90sNostalgia #HackerNews #HackerNews #ngated -
Why a Locked Floppy Disk Could Be Safer Than a Modern Network
Photo by CCDBarcodeScanner, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.Dear Cherubs, in the 1990s, office security had the elegance of a locked drawer and the threat model of a very determined coat thief. Floppy disks were the workhorses of the era, and Britannica notes they were popular from the 1970s until the late 1990s, made of flexible plastic coated with magnetic material. Before the internet became an everyday business utility, many workplaces were still mostly offline; Pew Research found that in 1995 only 14% of U.S. adults had internet access, and 42% had never heard of it.
THE LOCKED-BOX LOGIC
If your payroll files, drafts, and backups lived on removable media, the cleanest security move was physical control. Put the disks in a cabinet, lock the cabinet, and hope nobody on the third floor had a master key and a curious streak. It was a blunt system, but it worked because access was local, slow, and obvious. If someone needed a copy, they usually had to walk over, ask, sign something, and maybe endure a suspicious look from whoever guarded the supply room.
That is the part people forget when they romanticize the old days. The security was not magical; the attack surface was just tiny. To steal the data, someone usually had to be in the building, or at least within arm’s reach of the media. Annoyingly low-tech, yes. Also annoyingly effective.
MODERN SECURITY, NEW PROBLEMS
Once files moved onto networks and cloud systems, the game changed. NIST defines intrusion detection as monitoring events in a system or network for signs of possible incidents, and says intrusion prevention systems can also try to stop them. CISA says firewalls shield computers and networks from malicious or unnecessary traffic, while NIST says cryptography is used to protect sensitive digitized information during transmission and while in storage. In other words: the modern office traded one locked box for a whole stack of digital locks, alarms, and panic buttons.
Of course, the modern setup has its own virtues. Data can be backed up automatically, shared instantly, and protected with layered controls that the floppy-disk era never needed. NIST’s storage-encryption guidance still says organizations should physically secure devices and removable media, which is a polite way of saying: the box still matters, even when the box now lives in a server rack. Security did not become less important; it became more complicated, which is basically the same thing with extra meetings.
So yes, a locked plastic box full of floppies could be safer than a badly configured internet-facing system. But that is not because the past was wiser. It is because the past had fewer doors, fewer windows, and fewer strangers trying every handle on the planet at once. Security has always been a trade-off between convenience and control; we just used to do the math with keys instead of passwords.
Sources:
The Thisclaimer logo blends a classic warning symbol with a brain icon to represent critical thinking, curiosity, and thoughtful disclaimers. #cybersecurity #dataSecurity #encryption #firewalls #floppyDisks #internet #internetHistory #intrusionDetection #officeHistory #openSource #physicalSecurity #techNostalgia #technology #ubuntu #wordpress
Britannica — https://www.britannica.com/technology/floppy-disk
Pew Research Center — https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/02/27/part-1-how-the-internet-has-woven-itself-into-american-life/
NIST SP 800-94 — https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/94/final
CISA firewalls — https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/understanding-firewalls-home-and-small-office-use
NIST SP 800-175B Rev. 1 — https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/175/b/r1/final
NIST SP 800-111 — https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication800-111.pdf
Wikimedia Commons image page — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Floppy_Disk_HD.jpg -
Your daily reminder to keep #floppydisks out of toasters. #digipres #beaglebros
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New video for Patrons:
1541 Floppy Disk Differences
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Oh boy, the comments for my floppy disk punch video are great. There is quite a bit of polarization happening. Some remember this hack fondly, others say it's overrated, or even BAD for the disks!
What is your opinion?
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New video: Floppy Disk Punch
Back in the 1980s floppy disks were expensive. And many early floppy disk drives were only single sided, which means they only had one read/write head and would only use one disk side. Both Commodore and Apple-II users quickly figured out that you could flip the disk around, if you punched a hole into the other side of the disk.
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New video for all Patrons, even free tier:
Floppy Disk Punch
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WaffleCopyPRO v2.8.2 Fixes Wrong IPF Extensions When Reading Amiga Disks
#WaffleCopyPRO #Amiga #FloppyDisks #RetroComputing #DataPreservation #DiskImaging #ADF #IPF #DrawBridge #OpenSource
https://theoasisbbs.com/wafflecopypro-v2-8-2-fixes-wrong-ipf-extensions-when-reading-amiga-disks/?fsp_sid=3400 -
Popular Science: The archivist preserving decaying floppy disks. “In collaboration with retro computing enthusiasts who have built specialized floppy-imaging tools, [Leontien Talboom]’s recovered data from hundreds of historically significant disks in the library’s collection—including previously inaccessible lectures by physicist Stephen Hawking.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/28/popular-science-the-archivist-preserving-decaying-floppy-disks/ -
📜 Oh, dear Time Lords, please save us from the horrors of modern #technology by freezing computers in 1993: a time when dial-up tones were music to our ears and floppy disks were all the rage. 😂 Apparently, the only thing more outdated than this idea is presenting a private mastodon post as if it's some prophetic revelation. 🦖
https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/322461.html #TimeTravel #Nostalgia #DialUp #FloppyDisks #HackerNews #ngated -
Scanning in another set of original floppy disks from the 90s for my retro collection. This is an upgrade version of "MS Word 6.0 for Windows". I think having good scans of these media themselves is at least as important as having good disk images of their data content. 😃
#Retro #FloppyDisks #RetroComputing #Diskette #Preservation #Scan #Collection #Windows #Microsoft #Office #Word #InternetArchive
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Floppy Preservation Toolkit: UnifiedFloppyTool v4.0.0 for Flux Imaging
#UnifiedFloppyTool #FloppyDisks #FluxImaging #DiskImaging #RetroComputing #DigitalPreservation #DataRecovery #Greaseweazle #KryoFlux #Amiga #Commodore64 #AtariST #AppleII #TRS80
https://theoasisbbs.com/floppy-preservation-toolkit-unifiedfloppytool-v4-0-0-for-flux-imaging/?fsp_sid=1763 -
Checkmate 1500+ makeover for an Amiga 3000 look
#Amiga #Amiga3000 #Checkmate1500Plus #RetroComputing #3DPrinting #Greaseweazle #FloppyDisks #RetroHardware #Workbench #ClassicComputing
https://theoasisbbs.com/checkmate-1500-makeover-for-an-amiga-3000-look/?fsp_sid=1514 -
Floppy disk music, interesting!
Currently-free article from The Verge:
https://www.theverge.com/24034551/floppy-disk-music-scene-underground-diyI support this movement, very cyberpunk. And that's another one for the tracking list - a theoretical floppy disk Greensleeves to collect one day
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1571 Burst Ripping: Fast ZoomFloppy Disk Copies
#Commodore64 #C64 #Commodore1571 #ZoomFloppy #OpenCBM #Nibtools #DiskImaging #RetroComputing #Ultimate64 #FloppyDisks
https://theoasisbbs.com/1571-burst-ripping-fast-zoomfloppy-disk-copies/?fsp_sid=1016 -
The Register: Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote . “Smart TV UIs are hard enough for adults to navigate, let alone preschoolers. When his three-year-old couldn’t learn to navigate with a remote, one Danish computer scientist did what any enterprising creator would do: He turned an old floppy disk drive into a kid-friendly content controller that starts streams […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/13/the-register-danish-dev-delights-kid-by-turning-floppy-drive-into-easy-tv-remote/ -
bwack Tests Disks, Drives, and Cartridges
#Commodore64 #C64 #1541Drive #FloppyDisks #DiskTesting #C64Cartridges #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #GianaSisters #Ghostbusters
https://theoasisbbs.com/bwack-tests-disks-drives-and-cartridges/?fsp_sid=432 -
In this week's installment of 🚀 cutting-edge technology insights, behold the miraculous time machine: floppy disks as the ultimate TV remote for kids. 🤯 Because clearly, navigating a labyrinth of apps on a modern remote is so last century, and nothing screams "child-friendly" like a relic from the 1980s. 😂
https://blog.smartere.dk/2026/01/floppy-disks-the-best-tv-remote-for-kids/ #cuttingEdgeTech #timeMachine #floppyDisks #TVRemote #childFriendly #nostalgia #HackerNews #ngated -
Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids
https://blog.smartere.dk/2026/01/floppy-disks-the-best-tv-remote-for-kids/