Dad was a bit of a hoarder. Part of that was from growing up dirt poor. Part of that was when you’re living out in the country you don’t really throw anything away if it still has some use to it. Chains, rope, tools, all of them are kept and stored away because when you need them you had better have them, and they’re expensive to replace.
On the other hand, there’s stuff like this.
Those of us who are a certain age may know exactly what that is. The kids I mentored have no clue. I believe its last useful period of existence was in the early 90’s, as the computer that employed that device was turned into a word processor that I use to type up my high school papers, on a monitor that was simple green text on a black screen.
There was an entire box of them. There could be several reasons that Dad kept that box. One, he was the person who set up the first internet network on Kaneohe MCBH while he was in the service, so they could be mementos. Two, he just forgot that they were there. Doubtful, but possible. Three, dad never threw anything away that might still be useful and God knows he could run across another IBM 88I at some point and need to run a backup on the DOS. He didn’t keep the old computer as a souvenir, so he didn’t have a real purpose to keep the disks.
I have a little bit of my Dad’s hoarding gene. It’s been muted somewhat by the constant moves that the military demanded. Every move we threw away more stuff, and donated more goods, and pared down what we had as the houses we could afford got smaller and smaller, thanks to an unreal housing market and various other reasons. I think I’ve cut my personal library down five different times, until every book I own is either on a Kindle or can fit into a 3×4 foot bookshelf.
I, unlike my Dad, understand that the chances of running across a computer with a 5 inch floppy disk drive are so low as to be nearly impossible, and the data on that disk has probably degraded as it sat in a red case for forty years. I tossed all the disks into the trash.
I kept the case. It could be useful. I am my father’s son, after all.
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There’s always a future use for it….said every man about nearly everything.
You should have kept one for historical reference. Maybe MacGyver could have used them for something..
I am a fellow member of that congregation.
All fun and self-humor aside, there are some poignant moments. Currently paring down many of my books. A lot of somewhat-guy-oriented books are simply not going to be kept in the family. I will offer them to my son; as a severely dyslexic person, he has learned to read, but these intellectual offerings are beyond his comfortable reading ability, even if the content is well within his cognitive skills, and I don’t expect him to want them. We are open enough to each other that he won’t take them simply to assuage me.
My tools, on the other hand . . .
You can get a external disk reader that plugs into the computer. We have them and they call them a gray co
Box
I dug out all of mine about month 3 into COVID. There were a few that had degraded, but most worked fine. (Fire safe in the basement that I regularly change out the desiccant.) So I was able to play a bunch of old Commodore Pet, Commodore 64, 8086 clone, Amiga 500, and Apple IIC games, since all of those machines still work.
You win!
See. There was a silver lining to the Covid.
Evil Franklin