In the episode where Adam eats lunch in the computer room. They had floppy disks sitting on top of the computers. I was always told not to do that because it would erase the floppy disk. It seems like computer nerds would of known that.
shareI caught that too.
<“Every man of courage is a man of his word.” - Pierre Corneille>
Yes, that was a big no on in my computer class room. My computer teacher even once said not even the vacuum was allowed near the floppy disks because that would erase them too. Can anyone tell me if that was true? She was a little odd and I always thought she might of made it up or misunderstood. Computers were new to many people back then. I have Googled it with not much luck. I am not ashamed to admit I'm not a computer nerd.
"Sometimes life hands you lemons that are worth 2 in the bush, I like kittens."
I was kind of wondering if it was an urban legend too, or if it would really erase the floppy disk.
I know magnets would erase cassette tapes, or VCR tapes.
I know we were lectured to never leave them on the computer though.
I've never heard that Krazykat but maybe someone has. As Alblmfld points out it could be an urban legend. Computers were new back then which may have scared some people especially teachers who knew as much as the students. I had one computer class in college in the 80s where a few students often corrected the teacher. She had learned from a book but these guys had learned from experience with computers. This poor woman was often clueless and freely admitted it. So an uneducated teacher may think something like a vacuum near a computer could cause damage.
<“Every man of courage is a man of his word.” - Pierre Corneille>
Reality check, Bookman. Unless you went to school in East Podunk, teachers know MORE than the student. That's why they're teachers.
Wow. No wonder you became a truck driver. 😘
[deleted]
In the 80's computers were so new, the teachers didn't have schooling for computers, they also hadn't really worked on computers.
My parents bought us a computer early on, and I knew a lot more about computers than pretty much all the teachers. It wasn't uncommon to see a teacher looking through a book as they taught a class, because it was the very first time the teacher had dealt with it.
My computer teachers didn't know much at all about computers in the mid 80s. The first computer teacher was the same as the Home Ec teacher! I felt sorry for her and she admitted she didn't know much. Like alblmfld said there were some students who knew more. When a computer wouldn't function right she'd turn to the same guy in my class every time. She also depended heavily on the book but admitted she didn't understand it most of the time. There are some things teachers must learn by experience and not from textbook.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop & look around once in awhile you could miss it - Ferris
Anything with an electric motor would produce a magnetic field that could erase diskettes or tapes, if the part with the motor got close to the disk or tape. A dust buster is so small that the motor is pretty close to the nozzle and it might cause data to be erased. With a canister vacuum, with a hose and a nozzle or plain brush on the end, the motor is pretty far from the working end and I think it would be safe. But a canister vacuum with a "beater bar" attachment on the end (for floors, although my vacuum came with a miniature one too, I guess for getting into narrow spaces between furniture) could erase diskettes or tapes because there is a motor in the attachment to turn the brush and beaters.
shareVacuums do not have a magnetic field sufficient to erase a floppy.
shareThat is an urban legend that was caused by ignorance.
While a CRT monitor does have a magnetic field, it is not strong enough to erase a floppy if the floppy was left on top. There are several magnetic fields inside of a computer, including the power supply and a hard drive. If magnetic fields were an issue then computers wouldn't be able to use floppies, nor would they be able to store data on a hard drive.
The only time that a CRT monitor has a heightened magnetic field is if you degauss it, which momentarily increases the magnetic field. Even that increase is not enough to erase a floppy.
Commercial operations that wipe data use electronic magnets that are 100 times more powerful than a CRT monitor.
Everyone that was told that by their computer teacher back in the 80's, received bad information.
As far as the person who commented on the teacher saying that floppies shouldn't be near a vacuum....did your teacher think the vacuum could just vacuum the information off the floppy? I use a vacuum to clean out computers all the time. No data has ever been lost; however, I don't think I have used a floppy in over 10 years.
did your teacher think the vacuum could just vacuum the information off the floppy?
I know a floppy drive has two motors inside (to spin the disk and move the heads) and a hard drive also has motors inside - sometimes including a large, very strong rare earth magnet as part of the mechanism that moves the heads. But the hard disk platters, and the floppy disk when it is in place, are shielded from those magnetic fields. A floppy disk is at risk when it is not in a disk drive. I use vacuum cleaners to clean computers and other equipment inside and out, I just keep the canister away from anything sensitive.
I worked for a company that had several factories around town and a co-worker told me he was sometimes sent to other factories to maintain their computers with (then fairly new) hard disks. One factory called him several times because the hard disk would stop booting up and the floppy disk that was used to re-install the hard disk wouldn't boot either. He would find nothing wrong with the hardware and he would make them a new floppy and re-install the hard drive. After several such trips he asked to be shown where they kept the floppy and they showed him a filing cabinet where they kept the diskette stuck to the side with a big magnet! (it was a speaker factory)
One other thing I learned about magnetic fields: the Earth's magnetic field can move the image on a computer screen about a quarter inch if you move the monitor from facing east to facing west. This was a small built-in monochrome monitor with about 12 kV accelerating voltage. The factory was thrown in a tizzy when the Quality Assurance people found that the displays weren't centered properly. Someone in charge declared there would be zero tolerance on this issue! The recommendation of the manufacturer of the display assembly, that you always orient the display a certain compass direction when checking this parameter, had somehow been ignored.
I've heard that with Apple II's, with the separate monitor and external floppy disk drives, stacking the monitor on top of two disk drives on top of the computer could cause problems with using the disk drives because the magnetic fields from the monitor, while not strong enough to alter the data on the diskettes, were strong enough to interfere with the signals picked up by the disk drive heads when reading the disk.
In the early days of personal computers, especially those with CRT monitors, a lot of myths started to float around because of the static electricity when people touched the screen. There was a lot of speculation that the problems people had with floppies was because of a magnetic field; however, once they started measuring the magnetic field they realized the measurable magnetic field was miniscule.
Actually the thing that affects things more are the big dynamic speakers that people now have hooked to their computers. Speakers have much more powerful magnets in them than people realize.
The thing that affected floppies more than anything was static electricity, for which we as humans are great conductors. Static electricity, when transmitted to a floppy could affect the ability to read the floppy. But that was easily remedied by rubbing the floppy several times in one direction on clothing (not polyester). And people wonder why us computer geeks wear Levi's and other cotton clothing, and only wear tennis shoes. Being grounded is important!
I love the story about the boot disk being held to a filing cabinet with a magnet. One of my favorite stories I heard when I was attending UCLA came from one of my programming professors. In the days of 5 1/4" floppies he had a student turn in her homework for a programming class on the requisite floppy. To make sure that he knew that it was her disk she stapled a note to the disk. Needless to say, she failed the class.
Edit: On a side note I graduated from UCLA 7 years ago. Throughout my tenure all of my assignments were handed in on a Thumbdrive, or were posted to the campus server.
I dropped out of college around 1978 (harder to quantify than graduation!) and the computer courses I took used punch cards. I was told there were some interactive terminals somewhere on campus, but that they were reserved for people who were playing Star Trek. We had a programming course in my junior year of high school in 1972. The equipment was a teletype connected to a special phone line. We didn't have to dial to connect, so I guess it was a dedicated line. The computer wasn't on the school grounds. It was an HP minicomputer, spoke Basic primarily, although there was a limited Fortran (simulator?). The only local storage was paper tape, but we each had an account on the computer.
The biggest difference between then and now (disregarding the power of the computers!) is that the computer was nowhere to be seen. In college I stepped up to being able to see the computer - behind big glass windows, if you wanted to go to that building and look at it. It was actually a pair of computers, a Control Data Corporation CDC 6400 and a CDC 6600. I took a journey through the past recently and read all about Control Data and Seymour Cray. Those two computers were frequently paired together. The 6600 was the fastest computer from 1964 to 1970 (I think) and when it was announced the head of IBM sent a memo to everybody saying something like "How did 27 people including the janitor do this?"
Back in high school, the HP rep also brought us a desktop programmable calculator with a plotter, I spent some time with that and I still wonder what model it was - the 9100 that had a small CRT that displayed three numbers, or one of the next generation that had LEDs, to display the same three registers, I think.
if you degauss it
Google images to the rescue! I searched for "floppy diskette warning labels".
This page has pictures, front and back, of many diskette envelopes! The ones that have warnings don't all have the same ones:
http://www.kmoser.com/computerhistory/?id=disks
(BTW, I didn't notice any warnings on pictures of 3.5 inch diskettes - high coercivity?)
This one has a set of comical warnings (about 16 articles down):
http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html
T-shirts!
http://www.zazzle.com/floppy+disk+tshirts
Things to do with floppy disks (#7 - wall clock - was among the first few Google images):
http://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/10-ways-to-reuse-3-5%E2%80%B3-floppy-disks/
I don't know whether it is true or not but the same professor I talked about in the earlier post, told us one of the biggest reasons for giving 3.5" floppies a hard shell was to keep people from trying to fold them so they would fit into a standard envelope.
That at least explains one of the warning pictures.
But like I said I haven't used a floppy disk in the last 10 years and the last time was probably when I was in high school. When I started taking classes my senior year of HS at UCLA, everything was on thumb drives.
Thanks for the fun discussion. I have enjoyed this.
Me too!
sharelmcsjb, thanks. I had forgotten about the warning that were on floppy disks. So many warnings. I love the tshirts. I just bought one for my older brother for Christmas. He will love it.
"Sometimes life hands you lemons that are worth 2 in the bush, I like kittens."
I'm glad you liked it - hey, I helped make a sale!
share