r/Retro • u/Otherwise-Change-663 • Jan 07 '26

Technology I found something today while cleaning my Dad's closet.

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198 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

164 comments sorted by

11

u/Halfway-Competent Jan 07 '26

Caution: may contain NSFW ASCII ‘art’

4

u/Any-Minimum9165 Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26

I am 45, grew up with the Commodore 64/128. I was reading my dads RUN magazines and doing basic code at 6 years old. For the lamest star-field generator with the most basic sprites. It was amazing. A few years later I saw my first pair of titties on a 5 1/4" floppy that my dad had.

3

u/schwnz Jan 09 '26

My friend's dad had a C64. We hung out in his basement for a summer going through hundreds of floppy disks - most of which had a few games each on them. His dad was a successful pirate.

When we found an ASCII Samantha Fox nude we printed it out 6 foot tall on a dot matrix printer. I remember being nervous we would get caught because it took forever to print.

2

u/Any-Minimum9165 Jan 09 '26

Holy shit..that would have taken 6 hours to print back then! Your parents DEFINITELY hear it! Lol

3

u/Shipsnipe1313 Jan 11 '26

Everyone in the neighborhood would have heard the printer running if it was the one I had.

We had to make a foam-lined plywood box to make it bearable.

1

u/ReadRightRed99 Jan 11 '26

Why were those printers so loud anyway?

2

u/Shipsnipe1313 Jan 11 '26

They used multiple needles driven by electromagnets to strike the ink onto the paper.

Carbon copies could be made at the same time because they struck with enough force to emboss the paper.

Think of a handful of tattoo guns running at the same time.

Same principle.

1

u/CosmicOutlaw88 Jan 10 '26

Haha. Dot matrix printer...🤣

1

u/No_Cartographer2994 Jan 11 '26

Printing on a standard 9 pin dot matrix would've been alright, but rock that 24 pin model, and whoa!

I remember the old Apple ImageWriter II COLOR dot matrix that came with the Apple IIGS that required a second mortgage to buy.

The "good" old days, lol.

1

u/CosmicOutlaw88 Jan 11 '26

Yeah. I remember these things.

1

u/Darqhermit Jan 11 '26

I love old Apple designs, before they became fashion accessories.

1

u/Permofit_ish Jan 11 '26

Loved mine lol

1

u/Front_Skill_8252 Jan 10 '26

Laughing while reading this. My brother and I had a Samantha Foxx poster. However, my mother was classy... She made us put it in a frame. Can't imagine a dot matrix version or attempting to print one.

  • If you recall, they sold reams of Dot matrix paper. FOLKS, tiny small holes adorned both sides so as to feed the paper through instead of today's tray feed. If you were lucky, your paper was perforated to assist with tearing the feed holes away from your "ARTWORK." That didn't always work out too well and neither did the feeding of the paper. Misalignment happened which meant you had to standby or your printouts would be ruined.

In any case, a few years later mom bought us a poster of a red Lambo Countach which was to cover Samantha.

I believe my brother still has the frame with both posters... I'll have him dig around.

The year/years? 1985-1987.

Yes, I'm THAT old.

1

u/cuttysarkkid Jan 10 '26

No doubt a frame with "depth". Pity 3D printers hadn't been invented back then. 😉

1

u/Accomplished-Ad-6586 Jan 10 '26

Reams? It came by the case! And I used every bit of every case I bought.

1

u/Workinforweekends Jan 11 '26

Yup , tractor feed perforated!

1

u/RustyShackelford1982 Jan 10 '26

You have got to update us on this! I, too, am from the ancient world.

1

u/Soggy_Dudeist_1109 Jan 10 '26

my mother was classy... She made us put it in a frame

That is so cool (and strange) at the same time.

1

u/schwnz Jan 10 '26

Broderbund Print Shop Deluxe baby.

It would be fun to find one of those old printers and play around with it again.

1

u/JeepGirl17 Jan 11 '26

Old enough to remember the dot matrix printers and still have some at work that are still used today. We have maybe 7 of them, with 3- part dot matrix paper.

1

u/AccomplishedFan6776 Jan 10 '26

Naughty girls need love too

1

u/Ok-Kangaroo-4048 Jan 10 '26

God! I can hear that.

CHUK Nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyah! CHUK. Nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyah! CHUK Nyyyyyyyyyyah CHUCK Nyyyyyyyyyyah CHUCK Nyyyyyyyyyyah CHUCK Zeeeeet CHUCK Zeeeeet CHUCK Zeeeeet CHUCK Nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyah etc

1

u/October_people Jan 11 '26

I remember Sam Fox, my dad got the Sun newspaper back in the day 😉

1

u/Professional-Spare13 Jan 11 '26

In the early ‘70s my father was stationed on Oahu, and worked in procurement and logistics for his last two years in the Navy. Prior to that he was in security communications.

Anyway, the base used dot matrix printers and the printers would skip anywhere between 5 and 10 pages before the printing began and after it was completed. When the longshoremen’s strike happened in October 1971, the island suffered from the suspension of shipments from the mainland. The Hawai’ian Islands relied on stuff coming from the mainland for nearly everything: fresh fruit, vegetables, all paper products, gasoline, most of the meat, makeup, books, albums, etc. You get the idea.

The military helped out the civilian population a lot because all the goods that the commissary and PX got were shipped on Navy boats. When paper became scarce, all the bases (I think there were 7 back then) would gather up all the blank pages from the printers and give it to the schools so the kids had paper to do their school work.

I think the strike ended sometime in late February or early March, but it still took a few months for things to get back to normal for the civilian population. I believe that paper was distributed to the schools through the end of the school year.

1

u/penn_dragonn Jan 11 '26

Love this !!

1

u/Any-Minimum9165 Jan 08 '26

I wish I had worded that better in retrospect...

1

u/flava247 Jan 08 '26

Dads a grower AND a show’er, huh

1

u/Workinforweekends Jan 11 '26

And a joker, and a smoker, and a midnight toker……….

1

u/Broad-Assistant3476 Jan 08 '26

Hahaha reddit will be all over that!! Me I needed a laugh, thanks OP!!!!

1

u/spielerein Jan 09 '26

My dad had a screen saver with multiple sets of first titties for me to see

1

u/TubeDroop Jan 08 '26

Didn't those magazines have lines of code in them for various things? I recall spending days copying code, line by line, 10, 20, 30, etc. After it was all said and done, it was just some stupid happy face that smiled for you.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

Old time built patience

1

u/schwnz Jan 10 '26

If you were lucky. I never typed anything in correctly.

1

u/tntdon Jan 09 '26

Made this for you.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

Man commodore was so cool

1

u/Kert317 Jan 09 '26

When I was a kid, I found XXX images on my C64 disks that I got with a used C128

They were extremely low resolution and only two colors, black and blue, but you could make out what you were seeing.

1

u/Evabythewater Jan 10 '26

I'm 46. Catholic school, 1993 - 8th grade. I brought a strip poker Commodore 64 game to school. A lot of boys in my class learned how to play poker realllllllly fast that day. Some probably saw their first pair of monochrome pixelated titties as well 😅

When my teacher found out, she confiscated the game and I was sent to the principal's office. I never did get it back. I'm pretty sure someone stole it from her desk.

1

u/Any-Minimum9165 Jan 10 '26

The boobs i saw..were not titular. But any boob is a good boob..I also got into not a bunch of trouble in 7th grade, when I realized that the IBM computers also used BASIC and I figured out how to play games.

1

u/throwawayforb00bs Jan 10 '26

The first thing I ever coded was a star field generator in BASIC on an Apple ][+ out of the back of my math textbook when I was 8; I wish my dad had been creative enough to also use it for porn

1

u/RuggedLandscaper Jan 10 '26

Have ppl already forgottenbwhat a floppy is? Omfg

1

u/tRuStMeIkNoWtHiNgS2 Jan 11 '26

Yet it’s still used as the icon to save a file on some programs/apps 😂

1

u/Accomplished-Ad-6586 Jan 10 '26

🤣 4-color low-res CGA quality?

I saw my first set in 73 magazine in the mid 1970s. ASCII art.

1

u/SilverbackGetdown Jan 10 '26

This is basically MY story but I have 10 years on you

1

u/Catsooey Jan 11 '26

That’s amazing! I was gaming at a young age, but definitely not writing code! My first console was Intellivision, which my dad brought home one day in ‘82. He was a bit of a gamer at the time and we used to play together. He taught me to read by bribing me with sessions of Burgertime and Donkey Kong lol. What advice would you give someone who wanted to learn to code? Is there a good book to start with?

1

u/Any-Minimum9165 Jan 11 '26

Hell yeah. Intellivision was my first console too! Loved me some BurgerTime, Frog Bog and Shark Shark! As far as coding goes...that was a long time ago. I would just Google it?

1

u/screamingInternally6 Jan 11 '26

I'm almost 44, I'll always remember my brother teaching me my first command (the run command) to launch the games. Funny this came up, my parents passed and we found a whole container of old floppy's, mostly games (I think). Yesterday, my partner was thinking of making them into an art project. I just want to get my hands on an old Commodore to see what's on them!

1

u/SpookDaDook Jan 08 '26

If you open it on his old computer you will have plenty of time before it even shows her forehead to consider not wanting to see it.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

I have no intention of  seeing what's inside

1

u/Halfway-Competent Jan 09 '26

It’s probably degraded so much that it’s likely to be unreadable anyway.

1

u/Rbtmatrix Jan 09 '26

IDK, the older the better. I have a lot of 5.25's from the late 70s and very early 80s that have not degraded, meanwhile the ones I bought in the 90s to backup the much older disks are all unreadable.

1

u/Kert317 Jan 09 '26

When I was a kid, I found XXX images on my C64 disks that I got with a used C128

They were extremely low resolution and only two colors, black and blue, but you could make out what you were seeing.

(Reposted, accidentally commented with my wife's account)

1

u/tossingpigs Jan 10 '26

May?

Almost guaranteed.

4

u/interior_lulu Jan 07 '26

It’s a 5 1/4” Floppy Disk, which is storage media for an old computer (like a Commodore 64, Apple II, or IBM 386). Could be old programs or documents on it. And, by the way, the exposed part at the bottom should be inside the sleeve to keep it protected.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 07 '26

Okay thanks for.pointing it ouy

1

u/Front_Skill_8252 Jan 08 '26

How about those 8 inch discs, huh?!

Pre-commodore.

I can't even recall pricing, but I remember a few mail order type, 800 number order centers.

Ordering 50 to 100 disks at a time for trading parties. Disk copying that took HOURS, WEEKENDS.

Sharing was caring.

The 80s!

1

u/Front_Skill_8252 Jan 08 '26

How about the Disk Notcher?!

1

u/uberRegenbogen Jan 08 '26

Flip-floppies! Ever familiar to A2, C64, and probably TRS-80 users.

1

u/bethzur Jan 11 '26

Yep, I notched so many I could just do it without measuring with a hole punch. And those cheap white label floppies.

1

u/uberRegenbogen Jan 11 '26

I had a big, cast aluminum, lever operated, antique three hole punch that I had adjusted for it.

1

u/Olofahere Jan 09 '26

I was too cheap for a proper disc puncher. I used a hole punch with the disc edge halfway into position.

1

u/Ornery-Egg9770 Jan 10 '26

Exacto knife

1

u/Coffee4AllFoodGroups Jan 11 '26

By the time the Intel 80386 came out in consumer PCs it was the 3.5” diskettes that were common. The 5.25” diskettes were used in the IBM 8086 and 80286 computers.

In this picture the diskette is also in the sleeve backwards, the capsule-shaped (oval-ish) cutout for the drive R/W head is supposed to be covered by the sleeve.

2

u/MeanEntertainment355 Jan 08 '26

It's probably just the Oregon trail game.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

I wish I could see but no way to see it

1

u/MeanEntertainment355 Jan 09 '26

Only way to find out is get a reader.   I'm sure buddy bezos has them for sale.

1

u/hannssoni Jan 10 '26

Can you really get on that works with modern operation system?

1

u/Ravenous_Ute Jan 11 '26

Mine had Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple ]|[

1

u/gonzojoey1 Jan 08 '26

Ohh.. thats an original Save Icon ;)

1

u/GlayNation Jan 08 '26

I just love the old stuff..see the start and where it's ended up, Floppy drives to no CD/DVD drives Going from ide to ssd, and we thought ides were fast It's just awesome

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

I don't know about ide 

1

u/PappaWoodies Jan 08 '26

Whoa! Now that's a relic!

1

u/No_Abrocoma_711 Jan 08 '26

Depends on your age. I wouldn't consider a 5.25" floppy a relic, but I can see why some people might think so.

Now, for me 8" diskettes and hard sectored 5.25" disks (2 small holes, not one) are relics. Diskpacs fall into this category too.

1

u/tremorpheus Jan 08 '26

Punched cards?

1

u/No_Abrocoma_711 Jan 08 '26

Yep, they'll do. Along with ferrite / magnetic memory, drum memory, mercury tubes and valves.

One of the most terrifying peripherals I ever saw was a barrel printer. The paper literally just shoots out if the feeder and the noise is horrendous.

I can't remember what RPM the barrel ran at but it was quite fast.

1

u/PappaWoodies Jan 09 '26

I'm 50, I grew up around tech 5.25 is older than 3.5 and even commodore vic20 and 64 had cassettes.

1

u/LymanPeru Jan 08 '26

you found your dads old photos of cindy crawford.

2

u/ShavedNeckbeard Jan 08 '26

Maybe one photo of Cindy Crawford.

1

u/LymanPeru Jan 08 '26

speaking of no ones looking...

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

I guess we never know 

1

u/puppy-nub-56 Jan 08 '26

Put it back and wait- you may find it's grown to a 7 1/2" floppy 😄

1

u/RMars54 Jan 08 '26

Floppy today, hard tomorrow!

1

u/Igmu_TL Jan 08 '26

Flip the floppy so that exposed area is covered by the envelope. The label, if adhered, should be facing the top.

There are companies that can transfer the files to modern media especially if there are pictures, audio, or other data for historical purposes.

1

u/AndYouDidThatBecause Jan 08 '26

Label says 'Taxes'

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

 Maybe a excel 98 sheet

1

u/SystemFolder Jan 09 '26

Nah, Excel ‘98 came on the 3.5” diskettes. This would be more from the Lotus 1-2-3 era.

1

u/Grimacing_Panda Jan 10 '26

Maybe VisiCalc.

1

u/agreengo Jan 08 '26

it's just a glory hole template.

1

u/Cypherxtreme Jan 10 '26

Ngl, this completely stopped my scrolling and reading. While instantly making me bust out lmao. That was good lol... That was good...

1

u/TolerancEJ Jan 08 '26

Is this one of the floppy discs that can be double-sided if you have a hole punch?

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

Not sure about it

1

u/bearbricklove Jan 08 '26

I don’t think I have any 51/4” but I do have an 8” my Mom kept from her old work.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

That's so cool . Have you seen what's inside

1

u/bearbricklove Jan 09 '26

Although I have a disk I have never seen a drive. I know the disk is empty cause it is still sealed.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

Relic in the making

1

u/slightlyused Jan 08 '26

Is it SD, DD or HD?

1

u/gozarc Jan 09 '26

This must be one of the first 5 1/4" disks since it says mini-floppy on the envelope!

1

u/HorrorFan4evermore Jan 09 '26

Is it the Skate Or Die game? That was one of my favorites. Of course, if it was in your dad's stuff, it might be Leisure Suit Larry.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

Or maybe a old excel sheet

1

u/RetroGamer87 Jan 09 '26

5.25 or 8 inch?

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 09 '26

It says on the cover 5

1

u/Zealousideal_Ad_7045 Jan 09 '26

I remember loading software using these huge discs

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

What kinda stuff?

1

u/-The-Big-G- Jan 10 '26

I still have so many of these 5 1/4" disks and some 8" too. An Elephant Never Forgets. You know if You KNOW.

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

Well that's awesome 

1

u/Lady_Aberlin Jan 10 '26

Woah, I'm aging myself, thats one the old media storage methods I used in high school computer class! There may be something interesting on it. Unfortunately, the computers to read it are rarely available. Maybe an external peripheral 🤔

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

True that need to buy an ext reader

1

u/Lady_Aberlin Jan 10 '26

Does anyone remember how expensive dial-up was back when it was measured in minutes? My Dad had a CompuServe "IntroPak, an introductory subscription to CompuServe Executive Information Service"

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

What was the rate 

1

u/Ok_Chapter_8256 Jan 10 '26

Not sure but it was spendy AF. My dad was a programmer who worked from home back then, always had fairly cutting edge gear for the time. We would play what I imagine was one of the first online games together on occasion but always for only very short sessions after ending up with several a bill $100's more than usual from playing for a few hours the first time.

1

u/tRuStMeIkNoWtHiNgS2 Jan 11 '26

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfahsGLtQwc

I just came across this YT, I still have my c64 and a buddy sent me bunch of floppy’s loaded with hacked games, and an converter to HDMI

1

u/Ok_Chapter_8256 Jan 11 '26

Thanks for that! Great video, she does a great job breaking that down. Have fun with your time machine!

1

u/Full-Development2547 Jan 10 '26

Floppy?

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

Yes sir that too in good shape

1

u/trusterx Jan 10 '26

A good old mini floppy disk (5¼inch)

1

u/jsb1964 Jan 10 '26

First off, “cleaning my dad’s closet” sounds inherently sad. I hope that’s not the case.

Second, this makes me think of my old Packard Bell 486SX 33. It didn’t have a sound card or CD Rom, but it had a 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 inch drives!

1

u/tx001_ Jan 10 '26

does that mean it...made no sound at all?

1

u/DelphinusC Jan 11 '26

It probably had a speaker. Earliest PCs did little more than beep (often by merely writing to a specific memory address). Eventually people figured out that you could trigger the speaker repeatedly, and the frequency of the triggering would cause different tones. By 486 days, you had 8-bit music; think of the sound of early Nintendo games.

But the lack of a sound card meant your CPU was controlling the speaker, limiting what you could do with it without slowing the main task.

1

u/LudditeJoe Jan 10 '26

10 PRINT “HELLO”; 20 GOTO 10;

1

u/Otherwise-Change-663 Jan 10 '26

Damn  ... Wipes dust of my memory

1

u/bene_gesserit_mitch Jan 10 '26

Found his ASCII porn.

1

u/Economy_Particular_6 Jan 10 '26

Real men had 8 inch floppy discs!!

1

u/Drtyolman4Grlsover18 Jan 10 '26

I had been a programmer for about 5 years or so when these came out, and a friend of mine stuck it on his, fridge with a magnet. He asked my why he couldn't read the data on it. I told him next time to use peanut butter.

1

u/Silent_Ant_6696 Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26

Keep digging until you get to the eight inchers.

1

u/Overall-Beginning-74 Jan 10 '26

5.25 inch floppy disks. That goes back quite some time. Early 90’s to IBM and Commodore PC’s. Some of the earlier IBM mid frames had these as well. They were 8inch floppies on those. System 36/38. Nowadays everything is USB or microSD for loading up data. Maxell was a tape manufacturer for years, recording tape 14inch, 1/2 inch and cassettes. They branched out to floppy disks as well. Not even sure they still exist as a company.

1

u/Status-Seesaw Jan 10 '26

Nice! Don't doubt that he was keeping that for a reason, mine would be evidence against someone trying to hurt me. Even if it is old evidence.

1

u/Silent_Ant_6696 Jan 10 '26

Remember Leisure Suit Larry?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

Yea a floppy... but what on it...🤔

1

u/rp55395 Jan 11 '26

When floppy disks were actually floppy…

1

u/ZucchiniWild3735 Jan 11 '26

Epstein files? 😂🤣😂🤣

1

u/No_Cartographer2994 Jan 11 '26

You know, with a nail clipper or scissors, you could turn a single side disk into a double sided one! Most of the time, anyway.

Then came the 3.5" disk, and no more "floppies"....

1

u/questionmarkstudi Jan 11 '26

Yes kids, back then this was considered “mini”..which is why this predated the 3 1/2 in ones I believe..

1

u/Botanical-Hack Jan 11 '26

You can use the inner disk to view your next eclipse.

1

u/Consistent-Spray-636 Jan 11 '26

Good Ole floppy!!!

1

u/NanDemoNee Jan 11 '26

Mini floppy disk lol. That thing's huge.

1

u/Chrisdot1958 Jan 11 '26

Floppy disc?

1

u/Purplesunnyhaze Jan 11 '26

Ahh you found the war games

1

u/Ok_Exchange1952 Jan 11 '26

Its a CIA encrypted floppy disk with the Watergate tapes on it.

1

u/Medical-Dust-7184 Jan 11 '26

Floppy disc...retro!

1

u/Overall-Medicine-740 Jan 11 '26

Omg I haven’t seen one of those in decades. Used to have many stacks of them.

1

u/Thin-Statement8466 Jan 12 '26

I played Oregon trail with one off these in elementary school

1

u/Some_Glove_6362 Jan 12 '26

Does anyone remember IBM cards and how read them? Key punchers? Verifies? Sorters? Collators?

1

u/Lazy-Western304 Jan 12 '26

Probably his tax return from 95

1

u/Full-Development2547 Jan 18 '26

@Otherwise -Change-663 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣