I've gone through a lot of floppy disks. Since I started this hobby a few years ago, I've been lucky enough to find a good number of bulk listings for floppies online, usually people cleaning out their offices, and almost always being listed as "junk" (unchecked electronics that the seller can't confirm will even work).

It's much rarer to find good things on floppy disks compared to other storage media! They simply can't hold much data in comparison, and the chances of them being at least partially unreadable are decently high (though not as high as you might think - some boxes I've got have almost all been functional).

But when you do find treasure amidst the stacks of floppies... It feels all the more special!

Let's take a look at some of the things I've found so far!

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Icons

The front of the Icons floppy disk

When I saw that this disk was labelled "Icons", I was so excited... I love little pixel icons, especially from the early years of the internet.

I was really hoping that the label was actually accurate to the content of the disk, if there was even any content at all... Maybe there'd be at least 4 or 5 cute pieces of pixel art...


Oh wow...! There's over 1000 icons on here!!

So many recognizable characters... Final Fantasy, Evangelion, Ghibli movies, Doraemon, Parappa(!), Puyo Puyo, Pokemon...!

There's also a whole other folder just for Gundam type icons, which actually makes the bulk of the content:


This is not normal for a floppy find!

So many unique little icons... I can only imagine the original owner of this floppy had collected these from various sources and put them all together safe...

I'll be linking these and the other floppy disks at the end of the article if you'd like to look through them all for yourselves!

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Wallpapers

Wallpapers are always great to find. There's something about an image that's been set up to use as a wallpaper that's so endearing to me...

The front of the Wallpapers floppy disk

I was guessing I was in for some serene landscapes or maybe some tiled textures...

The files on the Wallpapers floppy disk

Oh...?

Snoopy? Sun...?

Snoopy.bmp

SUN!SUN!SUN!SUN!SUN!.bmp

Oh... Oh!!!!!!!!!

These are hand drawn!! Someone drew these...! On their computer!

When I was going through the floppies that came in the same box as this one, I actually found these images multiple times, across different disks...

It made me strangely emotional... Someone had really wanted to keep Snoopy.bmp and SUN!SUN!SUN!SUN!SUN!.bmp safe...

Well, I will continue the fight... I will keep them safe!

These images were some of my first finds when I started this hobby, and they made me so, so happy. And they still do. I love to find things like this so much.

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Screensavers 1

You can't go wrong with some screensavers! If I see "screensavers" on a floppy disk, I have to get it. There could be screensavers on there!

The front of the Screensavers 1 floppy disk

It's usually more likely to get screensavers from a floppy that was manufactured and sold for that purpose, I haven't seen as many user made screensaver collection disks, so I was looking forward to seeing what was on here...

The files on the Screensavers 1 floppy disk

A promising start! I could pretty much picture that "Snow" screensaver already.

Let's see what we have!

A video of the Snow Screensaver

Yeah!! That's pretty much what I expected! But, honestly? Even better. The snowman is a nice touch.

There's something about all the snow particles starting together in a line at the top that's charming to me...

A video of the Waving Hands Screensaver

Ahh... Wow! Yeah!!

Early CG hands reaching out from the darkness, but don't worry! They're simply waving nicely.

I think I had this set as my screensaver for a few months after finding this one.

By the way, sometimes you can change the .scr extension of a screensaver to .exe and simply extract the files from the screensaver:


For Waving Hands, I was able to extract the Hands no problem:


Great!! Useful!

Let's check out the next screensaver...

A video of the Kuppyu-kun Screensaver

This one was... Kind of a mystery.

With the little creature icon and shaking eggs that appear, I was waiting for one of the eggs to hatch into a guy of some kind... But it never seemed to happen!

A video of the Kuppyu-kun Screensaver Settings

Looking at the settings is kind of perplexing too...

I think when I first found this screensaver, I figured out it was a trial version, or something...? Maybe I'll come back to this in a while with more info.

Shaking eggs that appear and leave holes in my desktop is fine for now.

A video of the Warneba Screensaver

This is a cute one! I love to see little people walking around...

From the title "Warneba", my best guess is that this is related to the game Warneba Island for Playstation. I don't know anything about it! But I still like this screensaver. The little animated speech bubbles are really nice...

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Screensavers 2

That's right! Screensavers 2!!

The front of the Screensavers 2 floppy disk

Would I get lucky a second time and find even more screensavers...?

The files on the Screensavers 2 floppy disk

Looks like it!!

Let's start with "Decay"! Sounds nice!

A video of the Decay Screensaver

Ooh, a pretty cool effect... It's unsettlingly slow, which I think works to its advantage and makes for a good screensaver that gets slowly more and more wrong, but I like it sped up in the settings too:

A video of the Decay Screensaver Settings

Let's try the next one!

A video of the Leonardo Screensaver

Oh! This one's pretty fun!! It seems to go on for a while - I'm not even sure if I recorded all the things he can do here.

I like the idea of LLeonardo Da Vinci being a guy who lived in a circle of light, standing there and Thinking, pulling out his box of toys and trinkets now and then. It seems like this screensaver actually came loaded with information about Leonardo, but I don't need to learn it. I've got the real thing... (she means the screensaver).

We have one more screensaver that works on this floppy...

Hello? Hello??

This is a really good screensaver.

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Pikachu

You can only imagine my joy of finding a user made floppy disk titled "Pikachu".

The front of the Pikachu floppy disk

There had to be something on here... I'd be so sad if I couldn't get Pikachu outta there...!

The files on the Pikachu floppy disk

Looks like we have... Another screensaver?

Yes... Yes!!! That's Pikachu!!

I feel like I saw that looping gif of Pikachu balancing on a pokeball so much online back in the day... Are you telling me I can look at multiple of them whenever I don't use my PC for a while now? Let's gooooooo!

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That was a quick look at some of the things I've found on second hand floppy disks so far! For disks like these, I think it makes the most sense to bundle a few together in articles like these...

Look out for Random Floppies - Volume 2 in the near future!
If you'd like to download the files covered today, you can download them from Google Drive uploads here:
Icons
Wallpapers
Screensavers 1
Screensavers 2
Pikachu

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Edit: 04/06/24: Thanks to the commenter that pointed out a mistake!