Shirt.Woot

aobrien73 wrote: I am not buying that the 5 1/4 drives were ever read only.

You don't need to, it's talking about 8 inch floppies, not 5.25" floppies. They looked about the same, but much larger. The very first line of the table in the aforementioned link is what states they were read-only, but really, that was just the first drives they actually sold. IBM had write-capable drives internally at the time, and they used those to write the disks sent to customers, whose hardware could only read them.

WOO HOO 80k of storage, i cant even store the close up photo of this shirt on one disk.

Ahhh...this was back when floppy disks really WERE floppy! Good times, good times.

hazbean wrote:Then you could educate them. The initial floppy disks were read-only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Sizes.2C_performance_and_capacity

Even your link does not agree with you. They were always writable, assuming you had something to write with, which until about 73 or 74 no one did unless you could sweet talk a preconfigured head unit out of an Amdahl rep. Which most of us did because IBM was and still is a royal PITA to get anything out of.

kmartind wrote:You don't need to, it's talking about 8 inch floppies, not 5.25" floppies. They looked about the same, but much larger. The very first line of the table in the aforementioned link is what states they were read-only, but really, that was just first drives they actually sold. IBM had write-capable drives internally at the time, and they used those to write the disks sent to customers.

Well ok, what I was driving at is I don't buy that the disks were readonly. My experience is with the 5 1/4, descendant of the 8" disks. Sure I would believe that some drives were only readonly but this is not like a cd and largely not intended for software distribution. If someone can give me a reference that convinces me that they were ever readonly I would buy one. I am less concerned about the cardboard issue, I'm a software guy, as long as I can write to it I don't care if the disk is encased in cheese.

It just seems like a geek shirt that is off on some pretty specific details. I don't want to get a wedgie at my next DOS users club.

ElGuappo wrote:No, it does not state they were read only, go back and READ it again. It says they were not field writable, and that had nothing to do with the floppy disks and everything to do with the availability of the equipment needed. Once someone attained a read/write head those exact same floppies with the out-of-date patches were recycled and reused.

I don't know who you are arguing with here. The Wikipedia page does say they were read-only in the table (and I quote "8-inch: IBM 23FD (read-only)"), and even though it says that, it's not really correct for the reasons I already stated, twice. In the text itself it also does say they weren't field writable, which is more correct. In any case, I think we actually agree.

Edit: Ah, looks like you edited the post, so nevermind.

My first computer/games machine used audio cassette tapes. This is positively futuristic by comparison. :^)

Love the retro styling and the phrasing. It feels authentically 70s. Nice work, Firefrogh. Congrats!

A movie I was watching refered to a floppy disk. It then occurred to me how most people are going to have to Google it. Then I hugged my 8 gig jump drive.

seangt95 wrote:I heard a lot of hype about Woot switching to different shirt blanks???

Does anyone know is this on the old or new style tee? And are the sizes the name, or do I need to remeasure??

:/

Not sure about the mens shirts but the womens sizes are jacked. The smalls are short and wide like crop tops. Width wise, the smalls are now larges.

I /still/ play text-based adventure games. And rogue-based games. Playin' SLASH'EM Nethack on my Android phone now.

hazbean wrote:Then you could educate them. The initial floppy disks were read-only.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Sizes.2C_performance_and_capacity

Understood but stating "Read-only" and "Storage" in the same clause is an oxymoron, isn't it?

Unless it's supposed to be clever. Hmm.

i thought it was a floppy disk until the 5 1/4" size which was the diskette.

As a fellow child of 1971, it was nice to see this one print!

Thanks for throwing a bone to the newly-minted 40 year olds, voters!

Of course, some born in '71 are already 41. Not me, though...I was born in LATE '71. So there.

Cool design but floppy disks came in plastic enclosures, not cardboard.

amnewsboy wrote:I feeling like popping "Impossible Mission" by EPYX into my C64's 1541 Floppy Drive.

Except that I don't have the game anymore. Or a 1541 Floppy Drive anymore. Or a Commodore 64.

(sigh)

Yes! A flood of nostalgia just overwhelmed me reading your comment, when Load"*",8,1 popped into my head. We had two 1541 drives. I can still remember the song it sang as it buzzed away loading and loading and loading and loa...

All of your friends at work would then be wrong. In 1971 when the 8 inch floppy was introduced it was in fact read only and enclosed in a paper sleeve.

Am I the only one that remembers how 'lightning fast' these were over the cassettes used to store data?

We moved a couple a years ago and my wife tossed my complete Windows 3.1 installation set on 3.5" floppies as well as an ANCIENT auto-cad program that I had on the 5 inch floppies. I was so bummed. Her excuse: "They have sat there since we moved in and you haven't touched them. I figured they were junk."

I just ordered a shirt...

dasknave wrote:The cardboard is the part you would slip it in to to protect from dust. Even the 5 1/4 had these.

That's not an enclosure

Boy does this bring back memories! I used to work for Memorex engineering floppy disks and doing customer support. FWIW, the enclosures are vinyl, not cardboard.

zippy99 wrote:All of your friends at work would then be wrong. In 1971 when the 8 inch floppy was introduced it was in fact read only and enclosed in a paper sleeve.

Enclosure is the case for the circular diskette, which was plastic. Paper sleeve is for storage, not an "enclosure "

xninjagrrl wrote:Not sure about the mens shirts but the womens sizes are jacked. The smalls are short and wide like crop tops. Width wise, the smalls are now larges.

Woot never changed blanks, still AA blanks...

I'd buy this if the caption wasn't such a fail

wvutkep1002 wrote:Woot never changed blanks, still AA blanks...

While this shirt - and yesterday's for that matter - are on the old blanks, they have started using the Anvil blanks on some shirts.

bounty42 wrote:They were initially read-only. took a while to develop the write notch.

You could put a notch in them to make them writable, then you could put a piece of tape over the notch to protect data from being reformatted. I used a hole punch to notch them.

ceotty wrote:While this shirt - and yesterday's for that matter - are on the old blanks, they have started using the Anvil blanks on some shirts.

REALLY? how will we know the difference?

flukeboy wrote:I joined the computer age with the Commodore with the tape recorder. The only 8" floppy I saw was in the movie "War Games". So, I am on the fence on this one but I like the design.

Love that movie! Let's bring that t-shirt back for a week woot!!

wvutkep1002 wrote:REALLY? how will we know the difference?

Well, it's been discussed ad nauseam in each associated thread, but when it's an Anvil tee the sale page has a box noting the different size chart. For example.

djenkins1982 wrote:DigDug maybe.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (later, Where in Time...), the *original* Test Drive, DigDug, and all those little games that came from SoftDisk... which I had to look up to make sure I remembered correctly. Night at Fleeners was a fun one.

The Laser 128 (AppleII clone) fell down a flight of stairs years ago and still works to this day. Haven't encountered any damaged floppies, either.

Those of us who are old enough to have used floppy disks should probably not be wearing a t-shirt with the word FLOPPY on it.

I remember playing Kings Quest on the Tandy. We had 13 disks for one game..

Good thing the image is only on one side...just like the original disks!

How did this get voted and picked with errors in the text. Really cardboard. Man just fix the text please so I can buy one, I cannot go around with such a lie on my chest.

However the concept and design is awesome, so I might just buy one and write over it.

Been a while since I saw a shirt I really liked. In for one.

ellenbhawk wrote:Those of us who are old enough to have used floppy disks should probably not be wearing a t-shirt with the word FLOPPY on it.

LOL.... Quote of the day.

As an "old timer"... I remember the first PCs...having TWO floppy drives was an upgrade and a big deal. You could read your program AND write your data! Floppies being one sided. the notching punch to make them writable. the foil tape/tab to make them read only. making single sided disks "dual sided" by cutting out the backside... ah, the days. For those who quote audio cassettes... those came later in the commodore/amiga/TRaSh-80 days.
It is with fond memories and great frustration that I recall the punchcards of yore... I bid them farewell back with COBOL and FORTRAN and Assembler...

emehew wrote:You could put a notch in them to make them writable, then you could put a piece of tape over the notch to protect data from being reformatted. I used a hole punch to notch them.

Heh, I forgot about the whole notching of disks to make them writable. My parents used to save money on blank 5 1/4" floppies by buying 1 sided disks then we had a special notch puncher that made it so the computer could write on both sides of the floppy.

Wodinn wrote:Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (later, Where in Time...), the *original* Test Drive, DigDug, and all those little games that came from SoftDisk... which I had to look up to make sure I remembered correctly. Night at Fleeners was a fun one.

The Laser 128 (AppleII clone) fell down a flight of stairs years ago and still works to this day. Haven't encountered any damaged floppies, either.

I had Where in the World... as well along with the big book that came with it for looking up facts. I also enjoyed a game called "World Games" that was like the Olympics with some different events (like bull riding). I also had a Laser 128 too, but never really heard of anyone else admitting that they had one. My Laser 128 though liked eating floppy disks so we always just made a copy of the original disk and then used the copy till it went bad, and then made another copy.

Yep, this one's in that same "throwback" line as the "distressed" Metallica Ride the Lightning/Master of Puppets t-shirts sold at Hot Topic so that teens can act like they've been listening to those albums since before they were born.

And I thought *I* was being a poseur when I bought my MOP t-shirt in 1990!

Cute idea, not t-shirt material. Too much in that vein of "this is what we THINK this particular decade was like."

Will it work with my Vic-20?

ellenbhawk wrote:Those of us who are old enough to have used floppy disks should probably not be wearing a t-shirt with the word FLOPPY on it.

Hahah!

But seriously, they aren't THAT old. I used them on Macs in elementary school, and I'm still in my 20's!

emehew wrote:You could put a notch in them to make them writable, then you could put a piece of tape over the notch to protect data from being reformatted. I used a hole punch to notch them.

That's only if you had a write-capable drive, though. (Not correcting you; clarifying for the young-uns =P)

Yay since these are still on AA blanks I'm in for three!