I have a collection of Mac floppies containing software w/licenses and font collections. I would love to find a home for them if there is such a place for such old items. All I would ask is payment for shipping. I can send pictures; all are in perfect condition…as far as I know.
Thank you!
With warm regard,
Chuck
If some of them are 800K, it may be hard to find a floppy drive that can read them, unless you have a working Mac from the 90s. We have a USB LaCie floppy drive, but it can only read 1.44 floppies. A bunch of years ago, I preserved some of my floppies as disk images.
Perhaps the Computer History Museum?
The Macintosh Repository is more aimed at disk images but it might be worth contacting them.
Good morning Adam. Thanks so much for these leads. It’s probably a futile endeavor but throwing away these floppies just goes against my sentiments about my old Macs. Wish I’d kept my (PowerBook?) one!
With warm regard,
Chuck Crawford
I wonder if the person who does this might be interested?
Not entirely sure if it would be relevant, but wanted to throw it out there as a possibility.
If all else fails, GreenDisk will recycle them I think. You have to pay shipping but at least they don’t go into a landfill.
The Museum Of Printing, which is near Boston, does have a lot very interesting hardware Macs and as well as a lot of Apple focused services:
However, I don’t think they will pay for shipping.
Thanks for your response. I appreciate the help. The disks are not marked as to the capacity. How does one tell?
With warm regard,
Chuck
Thanks for this Scott. It can’t hurt to contact them. I appreciate your response!
With warm regard,
Chuck
Thanks Peter! That may be exactly my only option…unless I want buy an old Mac🤓
With warm regard,
Chuck
Thanks MMTalker. Since I have quite a few fonts on these disks, that just might be the right place. I also have PageMaker and Illustrator and a few old Mac software disks. I appreciate your response.
With warm regard,
Chuck
If there’s a hole in the corner, opposite the corner with the write-protect shutter, then it is a high-density (aka “HD”) 1.44M disk. If there is no hole, then it is a double-density (aka “DD”) disc and will be formatted for 800K (or 400K if formatted on a very old Mac or 720K if formatted on a PC).
Note the difference (red rectangle region) on these two disks:
Note also the “HD” icon in the lower-left corner of the HD media (blue box). Although it looks like “CH”, that’s because the image, from this orientation is upside-down. Here’s how it looks from the other direction (as you would see it when inserting the disk into a drive):
It is possible that someone put an HD disc in an ancient 800K drive, which would format it as 800K. But the result won’t be readable in a 1.44M drive, because the hardware will see the hole and will assume that it is supposed to be 1.44M (and offer to format it on insertion). If you have (or think you have) such a disc and you don’t have an 800K drive, you can tape over that hole to make the drive think it is DD media. Just be careful so the tape doesn’t come off inside the drive, which would be a pain to clean up afterward.
Green Disk looks like it won’t save the disks as disks. A different option is www.floppydisk.com. They’ve been around for decades selling disks, and they have a recycling service that would let someone else use them.
If you want the data preserved, and any are original disks, the Internet Archive would be a better place as they would image the disks and preserve things that may not exist otherwise: Donating Physical Items to the Archive – Internet Archive Help Center
Is there such a thing as an adapter for the Apple floppy drive connector, which I think is a serial connector? I still have two old floppy drives stashed away here (it’s amazing what you find when you start going through containers of old Mac hardware). I still have two power PCs here but have doubts about either one powering on anymore.
Thank you David for all your involvement over the years. Although this is the first direct reply I’ve had from you, I’ve learned a great deal while you were helping others.
With warm regard,
Chuck
This is Great. Thanks! Brian. I will check on these two links. Very useful!
With warm regard,
Chuck
The ApplesauceFDC is what archivists use for imaging legacy 3.5" and 5.25" media and directly connecting drives. It’s not cheap, and a new unit is in production. The Mac native software is great too and he has created new disk image formats to store all content on the disks, including the flux and copy protection.
Not that I know of. And Apple dropped support for external floppy drives many years before they dropped the drive altogether.
If you know someone who is comfortable with a soldering iron, an old Mac that won’t power-on can often be fixed by looking for and replacing any leaky capacitors. It’s a pain in the neck, but quite doable. If the machine was working fine when it was put away, that may be all it takes.
If someone here follows their development, please share the announcement when the new model goes into production.
With the Applesauce, John has received all the parts and is assembling the new units. People were getting on the waiting list by placing orders months ago. The order option isn’t there today, and he says the site is being updated, so ordering should be possible again soon.
@kat634e It’s often possible to find local computer/electronics repair shops that will do capacitor replacements quickly for a fair price. A couple of years ago, I had a local repair shop inspect an old Silicon Graphics system and replace the caps. The bill was a little over $100. It probably was around $10 for parts and the rest was labor.
