Archival Floppy Disk Preservation and Use [video] | Hacker News Reader

Archival Floppy Disk Preservation and Use [video]

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92 pointshggh23 comments

I really like videos that teach me a ton of things for something I'm never ever going to use.

This was really enjoyable, thanks.

I wrote a C program a few years ago to make an image copy of DOS floppy disks. This was so I could preserve bootable floppies. (It doesn't deal with copy protected disks.)

It's a DOS program itself because it uses DOS to access the FAT tables. So it needs to run on Windows XP or earlier, or use a DOS box.

I can put it up on github if anyone wants it.

please do

Ok. Check back tomorrow.

https://github.com/WalterBright/utilities/tree/main/floppyim...

Thank you.

Cool video! Too bad it doesn't go in the details of copy protection. What they were doing those days was truly devious and hellish :-) (and hacking them was even more :-) )

So a modern Copy II PC Option Board.

This is a great example of a YouTube video that should have been an article.

You mean https://wiki.techtangents.net/wiki/Floppy_Disk_Imaging which is linked from the video?

(I am the video/page creator)

This is the eternal struggle of trying to write about something like this on the modern internet. The video is the flashy thing that gets attention (and revenue which allows me to do this as my job) but the written part is just talking into a void and hoping someone notices. I agree this type of information is best presented in text which is why I made an effort to produce a written component as well. But there's no way that article would have ended up linked somewhere like here.

A lot of people these days want to flip through YouTube or listen to podcasts rather than reading even though the latter is often more efficient. So now you're asking someone to create additional content that won't make them any money (assuming they care).

People still create content for free--and it's obviously hard to monetize content generally--but, as apparently in your case, it's possible and if that were my goal I'd probably optimize for that.

I am a big fan of your channel for quite some time. Thanks for your content! I wish I had the practical talent and your patience when it comes to repairs and restorations.

Always enjoyed your channel! I was literally taking notes on this video yesterday, so I really appreciate you writing the whole thing up. I recently cleaned, lubricated, and re-aligned a few 5.25 disk drives using IMD (and by some miracle it worked despite my initial frustrations) and your videos were seriously helpful. Much thanks!

> but the written part is just talking into a void and hoping someone notices.

The Web crawlers for LLM trainers definitely notice.

I love the channel and have been watching for a few years. I agree that videos are the flashy things but in some ways videos have ruined the internet for me a bit (not your channel though). What I mean is if I'm trying to learn how to do something and search for a solution, I find a gazillion videos and will be lucky to find a page that has succinct, written instructions. It's very infuriating. So, I often (almost always) have to watch a 10 or 15 minute video for 2 minutes of information instead of having written info that gets to the point. Keep up the good work on Tech Tangents, its awesome.

Well, you're losing the minority that didn't click on the video because life's too short and went straight to the comments.

Comments on HN usually contain related links and possibly more info than the item the story links to so it's a valid strategy.

Edit: but then you wouldn't have made any money off me anyway because I run ad blockers.

I run ad blockers and pay for a subscription to YouTube Premium. That's the best of both worlds as the creators get paid more and I see no ads.

As a subscriber and Patreon member, thank you for making videos with so much substance. You strike a good balance between entertaining and informative, and I’m glad you’re also able to create written records for work like this.

You're certainly not the one to be scolded for low information density in your videos.

(One semi-serious metric is the need to jump backwards to check something interesting when watching on 2×. This means the author/editor worked well on concise packing. Obviously, not applicable to live stream recordings.)

An article like that certainly can be linked here. Many similar ones are. There is no guarantee it will swoosh to the top, but it will be noticed by some people, and appear in someone's searches. Sometimes links are resubmitted years later, and finally get the deserved attention.

Take any advice you see on HN with a grain of salt.

I skimmed the linked article and I would have been lost and given up fairly quickly but watching the video I absorbed a lot more.

This is a great example of work “community” can do. We're in “Web 2.0” era, after all.

Dedicated fans can make a nice transcript, take screenshots when needed, and, usually with the blessing of the author, post it somewhere. It can also be turned into decent subtitles and attached to original video. Speech recognition can provide basic timestamps, then lots of merging and splitting in subtitle editor can happen, and correct text can overwrite the mess.

Rough estimate is 1 day of work for 1 hour of video. Commercial channels simply hire someone to do that before release. Author of the video in question has already provided the script himself.

When YouTube disappears, using the article, and keeping copies of videos in an on-demand archive (e. g. big torrent) would be easier than providing a streamable copies of all videos for everyone.

Comments on certain channels are important assembly points of knowledgeable people, and should be saved, too. Google might have a negative opinion on copying “its” data to other public web pages, but Goggle is not forever.

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