HN Reader

I still have a few floppy disks packed away at the loft, but I wonder if they still work the next time I turn on my BBC or Archimedes.

As a kid (ok, as an adult too), I knew what the "CH" on floppies meant. I was curious, but never asked or tried looking it up.

I forget when, but one day, it dawned on me that it said "HD"!

I guess most of my floppies had their labels on in such a way that the flap/door was facing down, so it said "CH". To read "HD," then the label would be upside down.

One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect switch.

Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs.

FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would have been nice :)

I only see a 403

I just feel like tech moved so fast that in SOME ways its sad.

I just wish we could still use retro tech in some way without having to replace it.

does anyone anywhere in the world still produce diskettes... if I want to start my very old Apple ][ - what are my options?

A trivia not touched on in the article - IBM 5 1/4" floppy drives had dual heads and could read the front and back side of a disk without flipping. For cost savings Apple ][ drives had only one head so you had to flip the disk occasionally. But to convert an IBM 5 1/4" floppy for dual sided used on an Apple, you had to cut a second write-protection notch, either with scissors, and xacto-knife, a hole punch, or with a dedicated "drive doubler" puncher.

https://atariprojects.org/2019/06/28/make-floppy-disks-doubl...