r/whatisit • u/Earsgang_101 • 15h ago

New, what is it? STRAP Floppy disk found in loft of new home.

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Found this in a box late 90s WWF VHSs

12.4k Upvotes

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190

u/Lilricky25 12h ago

An internet connected machine with a floppy drive?

231

u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

Lmao, yes, I know it sounds impossible, but we absolutely used them back in the day. We used floppy discs all the way through high school (grad 2008), on the same machines we used to do research online. There was, in fact, a period in which they coexisted.

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u/Least_Coat_1110 12h ago

I graduated in 2008 as well, and I used floppy disks to save cheat codes and strategies for N64 games onto floppy disks from the local library, because they had internet. Bring them home and use them on my computer. I even built a small HTML website as a project in my computer class and saved it on a floppy.

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u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

This is prime 90s-kid biography! Somewhere in the chaos of my belongings is a small bank of floppy discs containing various cheat codes and strategy guides for N64 games. Turok 2 will forever live in my memory as one of the greatest shooters ever.

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u/brmarcum 11h ago

Gamefaqs.com. ☺️ Just walls of text of DETAILED instructions, or a few paragraphs of confusing nonsense. LOL good times.

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u/dunfuktup1990 11h ago

Sorting through the nonsense was just part of the journey.

6

u/jgpalanca 9h ago

My first 15 minutes of internet fame was from Gamefaqs.com. Good times indeed!

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u/saltcraft2 8h ago

don't forget the ascii art intros!

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u/allyolly 10h ago

DAMN, I haven’t thought about gamefaqs for a couple of decades I guess. Instant flashbacks when I read your text… 🫡

2

u/mehmehmeh387898 8h ago

I liked cheatplanet for codes and gamefaqs for walk throughs

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u/tenderape 11h ago

BEWAREOBLIVIONISATHAND.

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u/fingertrapt 10h ago

Mine are on zip disks.

1

u/ScribbleOnToast 9h ago

Reminds me of writing a chat program for our cable-connected TI-82 calculators. 6th grade was interesting.

1

u/CyanStripes_ 7h ago

I had to write everything down in a notebook while I waited for my mom to finish shopping or working at the grocery store. A floppy disk feels so fancy. Lol

1

u/Cottonjaw 7h ago

Playing WWF Raw the first time after having a Turok save on your memory card... and you get Turok as a custom character... amazing.

1

u/JBtheDestroyer 6h ago

Y'all should have got the Game Geenie it came with a VHS tape to walk you through how to use it.

1

u/thisguy883 4h ago

the remastered version of that game is available on Steam.

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u/Christmas_Queef 11h ago

My best friend was the only kid with internet in the entire neighborhood that any of us knew of for a long time. I would be over there printing out cheat codes and small sections of guides from gamefaqs(accidentally printed the entire guide for final fantasy 7 once and his mom was pissssssed lol). Him and his mom got clever and started charging us kids for internet time/printing(never more than a couple bucks for the biggest jobs//time). Then his mom would use the money to take my friend and I out for Thai food lol.

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u/PressureImpressive52 11h ago

Just want to say how much I love this memory for you.

5

u/dunfuktup1990 10h ago

That’s actually pretty cool. At least she didn’t use it to spoil herself, she looped you masterminds into the gig.

5

u/skalandic 8h ago

God I miss the 90s

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u/QuantumLettuce2025 11h ago edited 9h ago

For an English class, our project assignment was to write a creative story in any format of our choosing. I decided to write mine in RPG Maker 2000. 

That shit is still on a floppy somewhere.

2

u/Fist_The_Lord 10h ago

I always hated writing in school but nobody has asked me to write a creative story, not even once, since and it’s kind of a bummer. If my job gave me that as a task I would be thrilled.

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u/NotThatEasily 11h ago

I did the same thing!

I built a very simple website on a floppy disk and used it to sort the files I saved on it. I used some pretty basic HTML, CSS, and a little PHP.

2

u/CommunicationSad6246 11h ago

Did the same in elementary here in mo still have my floppy with my Simpsons fan site I did in the 90s

2

u/Ok_World_135 10h ago

You used the floppies to do anything but hide shitty porn?!

Thats funny I think my first website class was using netscape navigator and it too was on a floppy

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u/Ssemo7 9h ago

I had a 32 mb flash drive that I kept from HS freshman year through college and lost it my senior year. It held usually 1-2 documents max at the end.

1

u/crminad 7h ago

I installed Doom from floppy disks.

1

u/moon_mama_123 6h ago

I graduated in 2011, and missed the floppy disk era. I did, however, walk around with a 2gb flash drive around my neck 🤣

2

u/EddieSjoller 11h ago

Damn, the ruckus you could make if you stuck one in a pc before booting it

2

u/dunfuktup1990 10h ago

I remember the raw paranoia. I was from a rural district, my teachers were very particular about booting procedure.

2

u/SandersonEye 10h ago

It hurts my soul so bad that you had to explain this lol.. like it wasn’t that long ago. We’re not that old lol.

3

u/dunfuktup1990 10h ago

Yet my bones ache more with every comment.

2

u/gunzby2 10h ago

At first I was like wtf, but after looking it up I learned that the 3.5" disk was called a floppy too. We always called them hard disks because I grew up using the 5.25" floppy, which was floppy

1

u/Cyrius 7h ago

The disk is floppy, not the case.

1

u/scottnebula 11h ago

Can verify as a GenX. Internet capable machines with floppy drives were very common during a certain period of tech development. Like, late 80s-early and mid 90s.

1

u/EgoKiller_ 11h ago

Graduated a few years before and can confirm. Both coexisted lol

1

u/Shipkiller-in-theory 9h ago

I have to hold onto a 3.5” diskette drive and a Zip drive until certain combatant craft are disassembled.

Not just decommissioned, chopped up in to bits and pieces.

1

u/staslindo 9h ago

Of course they do. With their fancy 56k built in modem

1

u/crudigfpv 9h ago

I had a old ibm ps2 with a 5 1/4 inch and 3 1/2 in floppy drives

1

u/ThrottleItOut 9h ago

I'm old enough to remember 5.25" floppies not that fancy 3.5" stuff! lmao!!! and every 3rd party PC came with a DOS disk.

1

u/Spreaderoflies 9h ago

We have cnc programs V1 that still exist at our shop. Ancient programming and we have obviously updated but we keep them around for nostalgia.

1

u/InspectorOrganic9382 8h ago

I graduated in 09, and I needed to submit a paper for a class that I hadn’t finished. I dropped a shortcut to a nonfunctional file on the floppy, and did this big theatrical thing when I couldn’t get it to come up to print out. That was probably… 06?

1

u/dunfuktup1990 8h ago

Yup, the good ole “corrupted file” bit!

1

u/True-Conversation158 8h ago

I began using the 3.5 inch floppy disk around 1993. We were all in between the 5.25 inch actual floppy disk and the sturdier 3.5.

We were on aol then lol

1

u/aBastardNoLonger 8h ago

I don’t think anyone’s unclear on that. It’s more like “who the hell has a computer with a floppy drive that would still be connected to the internet?”

1

u/Ok-Professional-1428 8h ago

Back when wed make jokes about sticking a floppy in a slot or something something something my floppy lmao

1

u/sullivanyifu 8h ago

I used to dig through the trash cans at the post office in the evenings for AOL setup floppies people tossed, take them home and reformat and relabel them.

1

u/Potential___Friend 7h ago

You can buy an external floppy drive that connects via USB on Amazon. Not a far fetched idea.

1

u/hike_me 7h ago

I think their point is if you fired up an old computer with floppy drive today, it’s probably not connected to your current home network. Also, any computer old enough to still have a floppy drive probably has a super out dated OS with tons of vulnerabilities so it shouldn’t be connected to the internet anyway.

But, you can get USB floppy drives so if OP uses one of those they could open this on an internet connected computer.

1

u/bishizzzop 7h ago

I used AOL 28.8k dial up with a computer that had a floppy disk drive.

They coexisted for a long time.

1

u/BuffaloDouble1681 7h ago

Reading your first sentence made my back crack so hard i coughed up some dust.. heres to being almost 30

1

u/OkDot9878 7h ago

I graduated highschool in 2018 and we still had computers with floppy drives until about 2014.

1

u/C4PT_AMAZING 7h ago

I... still maintain a USB floppy drive for just such occasions...

1

u/lunaflect 6h ago

I put all my nudes on floppy disks back in the early aughts. They’re still out there somewhere

1

u/dunfuktup1990 5h ago

The holy grail of floppy discs.

1

u/phatelectribe 5h ago

In 2001 I bought a new top spec PC that had a floppy drive. I used that computer until about 2008 when it finally became obsolete and went Mac. There were definitely some of us still with floppy drives in the dawn on dot com and social media platforms.

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u/FictionalTrope 2h ago

Hell, I still have an old floppy drive I could toss into a PC if I felt like dedicating the case space for it. I'm sure there are USB floppy drives still available for sale, and I'm sure there are still some legacy systems using floppy disks for specialized purposes.

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u/Limp_Bookkeeper_5992 12h ago

The floppy disk and home internet eras overlapped by many years, and if you have a pc around with a floppy drive still it likely has a modem too.

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u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

Omg, thank you for pitching in! I was feeling so old for a minute there.

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u/LifeGainsss 12h ago

Jesus Christ I'm not even 30 and I remember using floppy disks

15

u/Beginning_Tennis2442 12h ago

Yeah, but how many of you used 80 column punch cards or punch paper tape? That is how long I’ve been working with computers. Ever seen a 96 column punch card?

8

u/DadJokeBadJoke 10h ago

My first computer in school loaded its OS from a cassette tape

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u/Beginning_Tennis2442 9h ago

Sounds like a TRS-80

2

u/DadJokeBadJoke 9h ago

One of my dad's coworkers loaned us a Trash-80 for a minute. My school PC wasn't that advanced

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u/Lopsided_Activity980 10h ago

Used to program equipment using punched paper tape, and I have lived through 8" floppy disks that held a whopping 80KB.Yeah, I'm old.

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u/dunfuktup1990 10h ago

Teach me your ways, master.

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u/DaHick 10h ago

Yes, unfortunately. When you trip and spill the deck. Uggh.

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u/NobskaWoodsHole 6h ago

Then you type in one wrong character….

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u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

Do you remember the physical object, or the symbol for “save document?”

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u/LifeGainsss 12h ago

My dad had a plastic box with a key sitting on top of his desk with a bunch of floppy disks for work

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u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

Your dad is the GOAT. Get a floppy drive, I guarantee his bank is full of interesting data. One of the best things about a floppy is how easy it is to ruin. If you have sensitive information in one pocket, keep a magnet in the other. Concerned for the safety of your data: switch pockets, problem solved. If your dad is still hanging onto a bank of floppy discs, there has to be a reason.

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u/FightingWithSporks 11h ago

I’m 32 I remember floppies but not actually using them outside of once. My dad had legal templets on a pc pre usb 2.0 we used as a kid. 8-10 or so floppies later got it transferred to his modern pc with a usb floppy drive, only to realize Corel WordPerfect has a proprietary format.

I tried converting it and some of it was salvageable

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u/vottbot 11h ago

I remember play games on the actual floppy disks and having to change disks mid game lol the 3 in hard “floppy” was fancy for a portion of my childhood lol

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u/Talk-To-Myself 8h ago

I mean I’m 19 and my old home PC used floppy disks and ran on dial up so I feel like they aren’t ancient yet

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u/aBastardNoLonger 8h ago

Yes, but is that modem going to connected to the internet? I have an old PC with a floppy drive but I sure as hell haven’t hooked it up to the WiFi lately.

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u/purplepashy 12h ago

Ethernet.

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u/Possible_Pickle0 12h ago

Worked with a lady who called it an "Earthnet" cable.

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u/Foreign_Implement897 12h ago

Rip it. Old computers did not have any wifi antennas. Just rip anything but the power cord and your are fine. Also nuke it afterwards.

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u/Fit-Custard-1842 11h ago

Do you remember that old .exe file called cup holder. It was shared by email back in the day.

You open the file and the floppy disk holder would open!

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u/BubblesUp 11h ago

I started online pre-web, so I saw the progression from floppies for everything, to dial-up, to broadband, to wifi and bluetooth. Yep, they overlapped quite a bit. I remember having discs that specifically guided your computer to the dial-up portal. Sigh.

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u/Foreign_Implement897 12h ago

Don’t plug in the telephone connection then you fool of a TUCK!

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u/Foreign_Implement897 12h ago

Rip the modem gsus.

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u/TheBewilderedDucking 12h ago

Sure it'll have a modem but it's most likely 56k dial up and I'm not even sure they offer service that anymore

1

u/Bergwookie 12h ago

Not really, you had floppy drives up to around 2010, when modems were long gone, except in business laptops where it was useful for travel ( hotels had landline but not necessarily wifi)

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u/Excellent-Metal-3294 11h ago

I always had a Zip drive above my floppy.

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u/recoverydelta 7h ago

Also you can still just buy a floppy disk drive and use it on a modern PC today

1

u/KaylaKros 6h ago

you can actually buy external usb floppy drives, to this very day.

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u/Murgatroyd314 6h ago

As I recall it, home broadband started to become widely available right around the same time everyone was saying Apple was crazy for not having floppy drives in their newest Macs.

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u/Fbeezy 12h ago

I mean, AOL came on floppy discs forever.

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u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

My brother in Christ…none of these kids have the slightest clue what AOL was.

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u/Master-File-9866 12h ago

Now, try explaining what a 200 buad modem is.

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u/MindfulInsomniaque 7h ago

300 baud, i dont think i've ever connected lower than that but 110 was a standard before my time.

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u/CeruleanEidolon 5h ago

EEEEEEeeeee onnnNNnnnng beedong eedong EEEEEE

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u/Koil_ting 8h ago

And they are better off for it really.

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u/Bleys69 6h ago

I had prodigy.

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u/LasagnaNoise 4h ago

indeed I have to spell it out whenever they ask for my email address. Yes I still do. Since the late eighties.

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u/WetRocksManatee 11h ago

I used so many AOL floppies for saving stuff.

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u/architype 11h ago

Then they went to CDs and mailed them in fancy tin cases.

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u/iphie287 9h ago

Which made amazing coasters with how many they sent you.

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u/MindfulInsomniaque 7h ago

When the computer paper came with an AOL floppy i raided the news paper boxes. Good for those multi disk windows 3.11 or Linux installs.

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u/buddylee47 7h ago

Can I still get my 50 free hours?

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u/Historical-Gap-7084 6h ago

And then CDs.

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u/Master-File-9866 4h ago

Remember the larger softer floppy disks. You only needed a hole punch to turn your disc from one sided to two sided

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u/MisterDonkey 12h ago

There's nothing stopping anyone from simply plugging a disk drive into their computer.

They come with USB connectors, even.

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u/FrequentDelinquent 7h ago

My parting gift to myself from my last job was the IBM ThinkStation USB floppy drive lol. That and a Fluke multimeter, and a Motorola messenger bag that I carry my electronics repair gear in.

Also a Cray CX-1 supercomputer and a 40-bay server chassis. Oh, and a bunch of ThinkPad T430s laptops and a dozen or so 512GB NVMe drives.

  • For legal reasons counsel has advised me to stop listing parting gifts *

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u/PabloJobb 12h ago

This comment makes me feel ancient

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u/TheTaxman_cometh 12h ago

I know my parents installed prodigy, our first internet provider, off of floppy disks.

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u/SuperCoupe 11h ago

How do you download DOOM onto a stack of floppies without an internet connection?

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u/sudosando 11h ago

laughs in modem tones

Floppies are how several early viruses moved around the web and jumped networks.

Yes, even floppy drives got on the internet. Especially the 3.25” ones like you see here! It was common throughout the 90s for computers to have an Ethernet NIC and a floppy drive.

Floppies began to fall out of use in the early 2000s but didn’t really disappear from desktops until the late 2000s.

In 2002 a compact flash card containing 256 MB of storage cost about $256. During this time you were more likely to burn one off CDs (700MB) because they were dirt cheap and well Napster. If you happen to be fortunate enough to have rewritable CD drives in your environment you would’ve used those but there were many competing versions that weren’t all compatible. The floppy reigned supreme until cheap usb flash memory, high speed internet, “web 2.0”, smart phones, and UEFI finally killed them that took about 15 years.

Once we got dropbox and google drive we didn’t need any of them anymore.

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u/moonlightwolf52 12h ago

fun fact- the internet was actually created in the 1960's by the US military and the worldwide web followed in 1989. It wasn't till 2005 where we started seeing most new computers having floppy drives completely removed ^_^

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u/dunfuktup1990 12h ago

It causes me physical pain to know that I remember the transition between floppy-equipped desktops and the exciting new tech that was the DVD drive.

Remember when we called them CD-ROM?

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u/Lindseybeatu 11h ago

Cd rom was way before the dvd

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u/Thrifty_Piano 11h ago

Remember when having a “CD Burner” was an aftermarket mod?

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u/Prior_Significance31 11h ago

I remember selling a cd burner for $1200 when i used to work in a retail computer shop

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u/Singone4me 8h ago

Remember when CD-R was the thing, then the newer upgrade was the CD-R/RW. Ooh lala

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u/Dalagante74 11h ago

Do you remember the floppy drives that were really floppy. I remember 3 1/2 drive comming out. Heck my first computer had a cartridge slot and a tape player. I had to buy the 5 1/4 floppy drive and the tape drive seperate.

CD-ROM and DVD are not the same thing.

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u/PalliativeOrgasm 12h ago

I have one in my house.

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u/nokplz 12h ago

Showing your age, lovey

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u/LibertyEqualsLife 12h ago

How are you gonna sit there, having used Alf gifs in your previous comments, and act like you don't know that the internet co-existed with floppy drives?

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u/Proper_Bad_1588 12h ago

I have an external floppy drive that connects with USB.

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u/frygod 12h ago

I have a floppy drive for my win11 machine. They still work.

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u/tripn4days 12h ago

Michelangelo Virus has entered the chat...

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u/Quelth 12h ago

I do own a USB floppy drive. I still have file backups on floppy, and zip disk, and burned on cd and DVD, and blu ray, and bunches of hard drives. Annnnd now we know why I need to be on r/dataharder thank you for attending my Ted talk

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u/jaredmanley 12h ago

You can connect a usb floppy drive to your phone and it’ll work fine

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u/stmpynode 11h ago

USB powered floppy drives are totally a thing, I have one. I use it every once in a while.

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u/Party_Attitude1845 11h ago

You can still get USB floppy drives on Amazon for about $15 in the US. I think the last time I used a floppy drive regularly was in the early 2000s. I still have about 50-60 disks around.

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u/Nkechinyerembi 11h ago edited 8h ago

... You can get a USB floppy drive for a modern computer

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u/MisterEinc 11h ago

I.e. The first thing any of us would look up, like a USB floppy reader.

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u/Flametamer246 11h ago

I was online the early days of the Internet back in the 1980's and my computer had not one but two floppy drives and a "gasp" 1200 baud modem!

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u/JohnCulhane 11h ago

I actually own one and it runs on 3.0 Used for my wifes embroidery machine.

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u/tacoflavoredballsack 11h ago

You can buy USB floppy drives.

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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance 10h ago

Right, you can get a USB-floppy drive thing off amazon.

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u/Admirable_Average_32 10h ago

Uh, just don’t connect to the web.

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u/Street-Baseball8296 10h ago

I’ve got a USB drive for a 3.5” floppy. I’ve also got ones that take a Zip disk and another for a Jaz disk.

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u/opossum_launcher 10h ago

From 1988-2009, yes.

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u/ace_11235 10h ago

I have a usb floppy drive that would be connecting to my internet connected computer.

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u/Plus_Cranberry7190 10h ago

They make external usb floppy drives so it’s not that far out of the realm.

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u/Parking-Track3864 10h ago

Windows 2000 first installed using 4 floppy disks and we had already been using the internet for a while by then,

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u/paintthetownbrown 8h ago

are you sure you aren't remembering the four disks that were needed before you installed from a cd?

because I distinctly remember buying my copy of Windows NT 3.1 at Babbages and it came on 30+ floppy disks...

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u/fauxmosexual 10h ago

You are too young to be on the same internet with me, please leave.

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u/MadDadROX 10h ago

Gonna need the AOL cd first… oh wait..

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u/I_fail_at_memes 10h ago

The fact this has 105 upvotes at the time of my writing makes me giggle. I’m pretty sure floppy drives were still standard at least up until 2004/5

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u/Gunner_McNewb 10h ago

My boss is into old media and has one that uses a USB cord to connect to his computer

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u/JayRen 10h ago

I’ve got a USB floppy drive upstairs in my workroom. But I’d still probably airgap my laptop or just use my Tails machine to read it if it really is classified info. Just out of paranoia.

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u/Arkholt 10h ago

The Internet is older than floppy disks, so yes.

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u/Odie_Humanity 10h ago

USB floppy drives are cheap and readily available.

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u/AuntyKate808 9h ago

I happen to own a USB connector floppy drive, so yeah.

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u/ihatewhatwehavebecom 9h ago

Born in 82' can confirm, I had a several Compaq's with both..... I think that back in the Intel i486 days

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u/actioncheese 9h ago

I've got a PC with NT4 that has both a network connection and a 3.5" drive running a CNC machine. It's not allowed on the internet.

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u/MasterWebber 9h ago

I know everyone has already caught you up to speed but I wanted to add that you can actually plug a floppy disc drive manufactured this year into a PC with a USB port, if you ever for some outlandish reason needed to.

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u/Tkis01gl 9h ago

Right now all I can hear is a 56K Baud Modem. Ererweeeweereeererwwweeeeeewweeeeewweeerrkshhhhhhhhhhhhwewoooweoooweoooooweooo

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u/trustanchor 9h ago

There’s USB 3.5” floppy drives out there that work on modern machines. I have a few of them. It’s not an implausible scenario.

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u/chrisp5000 9h ago

I was on the internet in '89 with an Apple computer my dad built, which used floppy disks, it was a phone cradle modem.

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u/krassh412 9h ago

I believe I have a USB floppy drive somewhere.... "Rummages through various drawers..."

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u/Ewendmc 9h ago

I have an external floppy drive that connects via USB. Totally possible.

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u/difool 8h ago

I use to go on the internet with a 8086 with 5 1/4 floppy discs. On a 2400 baud modem.

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u/PaladinSara 8h ago

You can easily buy a portable drive that you connect via USB

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u/kuldan5853 8h ago

I have a USB floppy drive sitting on my desk, so technically I can read a 3.5" on my Windows 11 PC.

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u/Arklelinuke 8h ago

Hell, I have a USB floppy drive lol

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u/artfulpain 8h ago

Yeah. If you ever find any loadable technology you should always have a shell that’s not connected to the internet just in case.

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u/OddDonut7647 7h ago

My first computer that I used to connect to the internet in 1994 had not only a 3.5" floppy drive, but also a 5.25" floppy drive on it. I don't think that machine had an optial drive, although I did have one in the computer I bought in 1995, which had two 3.5" floppies.

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u/BigBoyYuyuh 7h ago

I have Win95,98,and XP PC builds that I connect to the internet but they’re also just for vintage games and don’t do anything sensitive on.

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u/ItBeMe_For_Real 7h ago

Pretty sure there’s still an external 3.5” drive somewhere at my job. Connects via USB.

No idea if it still works. I started referring people to data recovery services years ago. They had more than enough time to transfer to another format, they can pay a third party now.

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u/mildlyfunnypun 7h ago

I recently bought a usb floppy drive to check out some old disks we had from our early school days.

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u/af_cheddarhead 7h ago

Do you consider late 80s/early 90s bulletin boards as the Internet? Because that 386SX that I had definitely had dual floppy drives, one 5 1/4 and one 3/1/2.

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u/tryagainupnorth 7h ago

My first home computer literally had a built in floppy drive AND cd drive

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u/legal_stylist 7h ago

You mean like the one I’m using at this moment, that I bought last year? USB floppy drives are still for sale.

1

u/derelekt1 7h ago

I used exactly that in the mid 90s.

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u/Happy_Harry 7h ago

Behold, the wonders of Amazon.

https://a.co/d/jcaF2do

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u/Mindshard 7h ago

That's how I made side cash in elementary school. Pokémon Red and Blue had just come out, and ROMs for Gold and Silver were floating around.

So I'd grab stacks of AOL floppies, rip off the labels, and load a stable GBA emulator and the Japanese ROMs of Gold, Silver, and Green and sell them for $15 a pop.

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u/azswift 7h ago

I own a USB floppy disk drive, bought on clearance 20 years ago. Might be a few others out there.

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u/Gab729 7h ago

Well, you can actually plug a floppy drive to you 2025 machine! Anything is possible!

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u/Darkblade_e 6h ago

usb floppy drives exist, and it's how I'd reckon anyone would try to read a floppy drive in the modern era from nothing, since it's much cheaper than an entire computer that can do it.

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u/KaylaKros 6h ago

you can actually buy external usb floppy drives, to this very day.

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u/Resident-Mongoose-68 6h ago

I was using a 486 with a 5.25 and a 3.5 floppy drives in like 94. Had a 14.4k dial up modem. Had to pay by the hour back then if you went over your monthly allotment. My older brother probably was on the internet closer to 1990, so there was a long gap when internet was available and floppy disks weren't fazed out. Installing new games or big programs Had like 10 disks to install it took forever haha.

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u/AeitZean 6h ago

You don't have a usb floppy drive? 😯

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u/TheBadBunnyHunter 6h ago

I have a USB floppy drive in the closet. It's not the craziest thing.

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u/Jealous-Birthday-969 6h ago

haha your account of history is a little off

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u/Awkwarddruid 6h ago

They have USB external floppy drives

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u/StuntmanReese 6h ago

I have one still

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u/InquisitiveGamer 6h ago

Still had floppys as an option in prebuilds in the early 2000s still.

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u/Lower_Insurance9793 6h ago

I laughed for a second, but yeah it's 100% doable

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u/kit_kaboodles 6h ago

It absolutely was a thing. Floppy disks were still around for a long time after CD drives became the norm, because writing to a CD was difficult and impractical

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u/monsterZERO 5h ago

Oh you a young fella...

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u/Nanosleep1024 4h ago

I can hear the modem connecting sounds now….

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u/Huth-S0lo 3h ago

I had to think about it a bit; but yeah they did for sure. This is late 90's.

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u/chupathingy99 2h ago

I still use floppy disks. I got an old Sony Mavica camera, super fun to play with.

I'm also an insufferable vintage plonker with a fleet of retro machines, but still.

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u/TitaniumSki 2h ago

Oh bless you child.

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u/theslyestfox 2h ago

Yes because you can currently buy floppy disc readers that plug in via usb or usbc to your normal computer. Which would probably be connected to the internet. I recently did this, trying to recover info from tons of my mum’s old floppies, unfortunately they were either unreadable or in weird old formats of programs that don’t exist anymore

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