In article ,
"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote:

hr(bob) wrote:
I have a dozen old blank 3.5 inch floppy discs. They're not much good
for wind chime sounders, anyone got any good uses? I can always
scrap and recycle the sliding metal covers, but that's about all I can
think of doing.

You should offer them on your local free items list.

There are people around who still use them.

Preparing for a move and significant downsizing, I am going through my old
disks and finding about half are no longer useable.

Seriously if you are into ham radio you know that as of Jan 1, 2013 it will
be illegal for nonhams to use wideband (25kHz channel spacing) two way
radios in the US.

This means there are lots of radios coming on the surplus market which were
made in the 1990's. They are programed using DOS software, which will not
run on a modern computer, or under any version of Windows.

Most people using these computers use floppy disks to install software and
transfer data.

There are also people who collect old computers, such as Apple II,
Comodore 64, early Macs, etc. Some use 5 1/4 disks, some 3.5.

Geoff.

I work in a machine shop with some 1990's vintage milling machines. The
quickest way to load programs into them is with a 3.5" floppy. Since
they used custom controllers, there is no easy path to upgrade to
anything else. Fortunately I have a stock pile of old disks that had
been used for backups, so I don't fear running out any time soon. I'm
more worried about someday not being able to get a motherboard that I
can plug a drive into.