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Comment by dsclough | Hacker News Reader

Hope you managed to preserve these, I’d be keep to take a listen if they’re hosted online somewhere. I’ve been using renoise for 15 years on and off and while nowhere near 100s of tracks a month I fondly look back on the first year I used it similarly - that combination of youthful energy and tracker software is really something special. Renoise has come a long way and is a joy to use.

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Alas most died on boxes of floppy discs which succumbed to a flood

I recently discovered some 50 odd floppies which survived, and a couple old 5" hard drives - so I'm hopeful! I assume most of the data will be pretty patchy by now (if not totally gone) but I'm gonna try some forensic recovery

If I manage I'll put the survivors somewhere for sure :)

Anywhere I can check out your renoise stuff? Always keen to find new stuff to boggle at

Not the person you were replying to but here’s someone who still uses Renoise for releases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Robot_and_Proud

Oh cool, hadn't heard of this person - thanks!

The greaseweazle is a very cost effective way of reading old floppies.

There's a community on FB, you can occasionally but pre made drives, even without that, a board and a floppy drive is enough.

Awesome, thanks - had no idea this existed (and great name)

I had more than a hundred 5.25" floppies from the 1980s and I successfully recovered all but two of them thirty years later. It's definitely worth a try.

Same, I had several hundred 3.5" floppies from the 80s and they were all fine when I ripped them. I think double density might be more reliable than high density.

That's super impressive, and very reassuring!

What sort of memories did you find? (if you don't mind sharing)

Also: any tips for recovery? I'm so far assuming I'll just get them nice and cool, then do multiple raw read passes so I can then choose the individual bits which are the same across most passes

Mostly it was loads of 6502 software I wrote when I was a kid, and also some high school projects I did. It was fun to look through it.

The disks that worked just worked! I did try multiple passes on the two that didn't, but that didn't help.

Oh that woulda been a neat bit of time travelling, glad it worked out!

I'm quietly hoping I end up finding a bunch of my old x86 assembler projects in these discs (well - excited and a little scared... perhaps better through the rosy glasses of nostalgia)

If you can get your hands on an Applesauce low level copier you may be able to recover them. https://applesaucefdc.com

Will keep an eye out! Hopefully they get their supply chain back - sucks when small (great) ventures like this get gutted by shortages

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