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Comment by InvaderFizz | Hacker News Reader

I never used AOL, but as a kid, receiving the 3.5" floppy in the mail was really nice. Saved me having to buy one!

I forget. Did they remove the little plastic square thing to make it read-only?

For youngins, 3.5" floppies had a "write protect" switch. If it was a solid plastic bit, you could write, but if the switch showed a hole, it would be treated as read only. Here's the first Google result I found: https://electronicstechnician.tpub.com/14091/css/Write-Prote...

None of the ones I got ever did. They were immediately repurposed (along with all those free Computer City floppies).

Reusing the CDs was a little harder. ;)

AOL CDs made great coasters.

You could just cover the hole with a piece of scotch tape and voila, writeable!

Scotch tape, huh? I would have figured electrical tape, for opacity. I don't think I ever had to do this though.

All the floppy drives I've ever seen had a little mechanical arm attached to a microswitch that detected the presence or absence of the write protect notch. VHS cassettes worked similarly.

Audio cassettes had this also. A little tab you could break off that would prevent recording. If you later changed your mind and wanted to record over the tape, you would just tape over the hole.

No need. It was just pushing something inside the drive. A little piece of paper jammed in the hole worked fine too.

You also drilled a hole on the other side to make the disk double density.

I'm not 100% sure I remember correctly, but I believe the AOL disks were standard in every way except that they never inserted the plastic slider. A bit of tape fixed that problem. Scotch tape worked fine, as pointed out by another poster. I typically just used a portion on an unused floppy label and wrapped it around the edge. I wasn't much concerned with write protection usually, so keeping it permanently writable was fine by me.

> I never used AOL, but as a kid, receiving the 3.5" floppy in the mail was really nice. Saved me having to buy one!

Those were sooo ubiquitous. But I never saved any, and now I wish I had some.

Luckily, the Smithsonian is on the job: https://www.si.edu/object/nmah_1395721

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