I grew up in the late 90s, so by the time I ever really got to use a computer, Floppy Disks were already pretty well out of fashion. For anybody else who “grew up” in the 90s, did you actually enjoy using them? We’re they always an inconvenience or did they have some magic to them?
I had a library of 3.5 floppys, so not the giant actual floppy disks, but the tiny hard ones. They were magical. Everything about computing felt different in the 90s, because everything was more rare and special. I got my first computer in 95, and my dad made sure it was a beast. It had such a large hard drive, it could store TWO games, as well as an operating system! So, the floppies were part of the ritual. If I wanted to play a game not installed, I would delete one of the games, gather the multiple floppies that stored the other game, and go through the installation process. It built up anticipation for the game and gave you time to think. Thinking back, you had more time to think back then… all that being said, you had to treat the floppies with reverence. If you lost floppy 5 of 11, you’re program was done.
Oh! And on the other side of things, being able to work at something at home, then bring it into school on a floppy was novel, but most of the time I would just print out whatever I was working on. Printing out stuff was the expected end goal back then.
Those 3½ floppys also had that metal protector on them that made a satisfying SHHHHTICK sound when you pulled them back and released it
So much fun to fiddle with!
Yeah, having to keep so many floppies for 1 thing (like games) always seemed like such a pain. That’s the part of this post I was most interested in hearing about - if it was really as big a pain as I thought it would be lol
You kinda worked around it, at least my family did. You would keep them all together in a disk holder or something. I don’t really recall losing any like that, until the 2000s, when they weren’t in use any more.