I would like to write of and document a rabbit hole I am currently in the process of descending. But first, here's some floppy disks.
Just a little box of colorful transluscent 3.5-inch floppy disks. I found it in a Goodwill long ago for fairly cheap, not more than a few bucks. They were fresh in the box and everything there, as they are in this image now, all of them empty and unused. Funilly enough, the last time I checked, you can also buy a box of floppies just like this one off of Amazon as well, brand new and everything. I don't know if these are still manufactured or if these are just some unsold stock. Either way, you too can snag some, at least for now.
Anyway, let's crack open the box.
The cardboard label surrounds a plastic case. The top swivels on an axis along the bottom, opening like so. The case contains 10 floppies of 5 different colors (blue, red, green, yellow, and purple), and a manual that I don't care to unwrap since I want to keep everything in as pristine condition as possible since I don't know if this thing might become a collectors item someday. Let's take a closer look at one of the floppy disks.
These floppies are real interesting since they actually allow you to see the disk itself contained within the plastic exterior. Let's take a look at the back.
It's mostly the same as the front. One detail in the corner, though, towards my pinky finger. Here, let's take a closer look.
That's the write protection switch. You shift it to set it so that the floppy can't be written to, only read from. Right now it's write protected since the cover blocks a little hole (no, not the bottom one, that's just part of the case that is a little thin and translucent, so it looks like a hole, but it's not), but if you shift it down, you can modify what's on the floppy.
Anyway, that's an overview of floppy disks. You may be wondering why I dug up these floppies I bought a while ago for an article I wrote just now. Well, it's not all for the article, it's because I'm going to buy an old Pentium 1 laptop running Windows 95, and I need these floppies so that I can transfer data between my regular laptop and the old one.
A youtuber named The 8 Bit Guy recently made a full real time strategy game that runs entirely within DOS, and I decided I would like to buy and play it. I could totally buy the $10 digital edition and just play it within the DosBox emulator instead of buying a machine that runs DOS, but that . . . just wouldn't be so cool. There were physical copies in stock, and I didn't know if this game was going to be in consistent physical production forever. hy not pick up a copy? And if I'm going to have a nice physical copy of this game, then heck, maybe I should pick up a physical machine to play it on too.
So, I've been looking online at purchasing an MS-DOS gaming laptop. It won't have any CPU more powerful than a Pentium 1, and it won't come with any Wifi capabilities or USB ports or anything of the like. The only way I'll be able to send data between a modern computer and this old one will be via either floppy disks or CDs, hence the floppies and the USB floppy disk drive I have with me (not pictured).
Of course, I won't be just playing Planet X3 on this thing, either. I've been playing some MS-DOS games via Dosbox from an abandonware website while I shop for an appropriate retro laptop, hence why I might need a few spare floppies to get all those old games transferred. Some of these older games I'm playing are more obscure than others, and they're also from all sorts of different eras and time periods. I've been enjoying playing these simpler older games. Expect to see a review or two of some of these MS-DOS games in a little while on my game reviews page.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this ramble I wanted to share about old 'pooters.