24 Feb
2009
24 Feb
'09
1:56 p.m.
On 24 Feb 2009 at 14:59, Brian Lanning wrote:
I was always surprised by how robust they were.
They seemed indestructible.
I recall a departmental party where we were celebrating the release
of our BASIC compiler (after much hard work). We had the source-code
8" floppies (done on an Intel MDS) on display for all to see and a
couple of bottles of cheap champagne to pass among the faithful.
You guessed it--one of those bottles sprayed all over the (only
current) pile of release floppies, turning them into a sticky mess.
We carefully washed each removed-from-the-jacket floppy, dried it and
inserted it into a new jacket--and then made two copies. We turned
one of the copied sets over to the corporate guy in charge of losing
things the next day for safekeeping.
--Chuck