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points by y1n0 1 day ago | 0 comments

> disks have a natural expiration date and it's not long

You really have no idea what you are talking about. It's normal for floppies, especially 3.5" to last decades just sitting on a shelf. I've got 5.25" floppies from 1984, and they boot just fine on my old apple //e.

42 years in my parent's dank midwest basement.

[–] viraptor 20 hours ago

Of course some will last longer. It's not a cliff, just "not recommended to use for longer than...". But a lot depends on the conditions of storage, how much usage they got, etc. Manufacturers gave them 10-20 years normally, which puts almost all of them in the not recommended territory.

The fact people have old working floppies doesn't change the fact that degradation happens.

[–] stackghost 1 day ago

Why do you write it as “Apple forward slash forward slash E”?

[–] MiroslavPokorny 1 day ago

If i remember correctly that Apple //E used that notation itself in its startup message and on various screens in AppleWorks.

[–] jacquesm 1 day ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_IIe

Check the logo on the picture on the right.

[–] stackghost 1 day ago

I suppose it just seems weird to write “//e” when it’s the “Apple two E” and II is the universally accepted Roman numeral notation for the number two.

[–] y1n0 1 day ago

That's how it was named. The bootscreen didn't say Apple IIe. It's Apple //e. with slashes. That's how it was in all the docs and any software and the bootrom.

Call it weird if you want, but that's what the name was.

[–] otterley 15 hours ago

You should check the actual manual: http://applelogic.org/files/AIIEREF.pdf

First, the cover uses italic sans-serif “I” characters, not forward slashes. It’s pretty clear if you’re familiar with typography.

Second, the body of the document uses neither. It uses the standard upright I character.

As for the boot ROM, well, at the time, the character set was a fixed bitmap, stylized text wasn’t a thing on PCs yet, and slashes were as close as they could get.

[–] otterley 1 day ago

It’s a cultural tic. Been around for decades. Those same folks also write “Apple ][“ to refer to the original Apple II.

[–] y1n0 1 day ago

It's a cultural tic to refer to something by its name.

[–] bmacho 20 hours ago

Is it it's name tho? Legally and culturally, do they have the power to name it?

[–] bmacho 16 hours ago

*its

I mean, like you want to name your dog Bell character, right-to-left character, Bell character, 0-width space. Can you do that legally? Can you do that culturally? Would that become the dog's name in most of the senses?

Random characters in Apple product names is similar territory, although less extreme.

[–] fsckboy 14 hours ago

>Why do you write it as “Apple forward slash forward slash E”?

because Apple did (and it was APPLE virgule virgule)

(the e when it appeared was lowercase)

https://archive.org/details/005a_Appleworks_Startup_Side_1