Written by Leontien Talboom, Technical Analyst, Cambridge University Library; Andy Jackson, Preservation Registry Technical Architect, Digital Preservation Coalition; Dorothy Waugh, Head of Workforce Development, Digital Preservation Coalition

On the 9th of October, as part of the Future Nostalgia project, the Festival of Floppies was held at Cambridge University Library. It was a day dedicated to celebrating, exploring, and preserving floppy disks and their legacy. These once-ubiquitous magnetic storage devices, so central to the digital lives of the 1980s and 1990s, are now fragile relics of computing history. Yet, they hold a wealth of cultural, artistic, and personal data that remains inaccessible without specialist tools and expertise.

The event was designed not just as a technical workshop introducing the basics of floppy disk imaging, but as a celebration of collaboration and community as well. Members from a diverse range of backgrounds, including digital preservation, libraries, archives, retro computing and conservation, came together. In the morning a group of invited attendees got the chance to experience the process of building floppy disk imaging workstations. In the afternoon these attendees helped the public recover and copy disks. The result was a wholesome, experimental, and highly engaging day that showcased the importance of the work around digital preservation and digital computing.

The day began with an introduction to the Future Nostalgia project (a similar presentation can be found on the NTTW! 9 Livestream and will be presented at the upcoming iPRES Conference). After the presentation we started building the floppy disk workstations. This was done in pre-assigned groups, ensuring that every table had a mix of expertise, experience and different backgrounds.

The steps of building a floppy disk workstation started with deciding what floppy disk drive to focus on. We were lucky enough to have drives for all types of floppy disks at the event. The Centre for Computing History very kindly brought along a bunch of equipment, which included an 8-inch drive! After selecting a floppy disk drive it was important to ensure all peripherals were present, in most cases this included a floppy controller, power cable, test disk and ribbon cable. For our floppy controllers we used a Greaseweazle.

This workflow is also laid out in the upcoming Floppy Disk Guide, which is currently open for comments. A copy of this guide was also provided during the day, to make it possible for attendees to leaf through and add any comments.