[Concept] Custom Floppy Disk

[TotalTS]

Since I cant' afford a original floppy disk, I've decided to make my own version, containing the shareware release, in the label I've added the Baron concept art by Adrian Carmack.
Now, I've seen a mod of the floppy disk to expand the capacity modding the drive and the disk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IZcP0oP0OU
And I imagine building a 16 GB floppy containing wads, source ports, and bunch of stuff.
I wanted to share this because is a project I want to concrete in the future, and it maybe inspire some other people, for the moment is just a concept.

Credits to: ss2man44 on Reddit for the label. Unblast site for the psd.

Edited May 18, 2020 by TotalTS

[Chip]

Great job! 

 

(maybe one day you could sell those online for a nice dollar or two)

;)

[TotalTS]

Just now, LiT_gam3r said:

Great job! 

 

(maybe one day you could sell those online for a nice dollar or two)

;)

Thank you!

Yeah I'm not sure if it's legal to make profit of it.

[insertwackynamehere]

On 5/18/2020 at 8:17 PM, TotalTS said:

Thank you!

Yeah I'm not sure if it's legal to make profit of it.

The original distribution of the shareware if I’m not mistaken was that it could be distributed in any way a “publisher” desired. It could be sold on floppy, downloaded from the internet, etc. Id based the entire distribution model on letting other people do the leg work of marketing, selling, hosting and otherwise popularizing what they gave out for free with no restrictions. Then, they would hook people and get them to buy the full game. That was the idea of shareware at the time in general. The people selling floppies were bound by the fact a competitor could easily pop up so they had to profit after taking out the fixed costs of floppies + packaging and then only mark up in a way where it was to entice a consumer over keeping their phone lines clogged up all night.

 

To put a price to this, I was on a school trip to the science museum in Philadelphia sometime in the mid-90s, probably a few years after Doom’s release (but things moved slower back then, it was still popular) and I bought the shareware floppies from the gift shop (because I guess a wall of shareware games in baggies was “science-y” still at the time) for my lunch money (so probably like $3 my mom had given me). I was a single digits age kid buying what would eventually become an M-rated game, and the “AAA” game of the time, from a science museum gift shop for $3.

 

That being said, I don’t think that trying to sell Doom shareware floppies today is a great venture but as far as I know it would be legal.

Edited May 20, 2020 by insertwackynamehere

[happy_mac]

This Looks cool. I like it Alot. Keep it up!

 

[Fonze]

 

This looks kinda cool! I hate to have to say something negative here but I'm fairly sure that one of the conditions of distributing and running pwads is that they are not supposed to be paired with the shareware, which would make distributing this both illegal and probably fruitless, as pwads cant be run with the shareware anyway. Alternatively you could package in freedoom and probably be better off, but even then you might get in trouble for distributing a disk that is essentially a bootleg mascarading as the real thing with the registered doom logo, some of its art in the form of a monster, and copyright info on it. 

 

Still, the project does look cool and I wish you the best as you go forward!

 

 

On 5/18/2020 at 8:19 PM, LiT_gam3r said:

you can sell things illegally. 

how do you think I got rid of my dog?

 

What a shitty attitude to have towards this hobby.

[Pegleg]

On 5/18/2020 at 8:17 PM, TotalTS said:

Thank you!

Yeah I'm not sure if it's legal to make profit of it.

 

As insertwackynamehere wrote, that's the general concept behind shareware. If all you have on the floppy disk is a copy of the shareware episode (presumably version 1.9), then you are no different than any random company in 1993-1994 that sold shareware.

 

That being said, I don't think this is the type of thing you will make much, if any, profit from. It does look nice, so someone might buy one just for the look, or to add to a collection of some sort. But this sort of thing seems to be grounded more in the hobbyist realm, which is perfectly fine.

[Doomkid]

I think this is an admirable and fun project.

 

You may already be aware of this, but common 3 1⁄2-inch floppy drives will not read these modded disks. You'd need something like the SuperDisk LS-240 drive to be able to read such disks, and even then compatibility with other high density floppy variants is pretty unlikely. These discs also have to be formatted every time they're written to, but that shouldn't matter for disks that are intended to be read-only.

 

I think a better approach for this kind of thing (if one was inclined to put the required effort in) would be to essentially just use the floppy disk as a passthru, by building a micro SD port into the disk itself somehow. Well beyond anything I'd be capable of or understand fully, but this would be a future-proof mod as micro SD can hold up to 128 GB and possibly more in future, assuming the format isn't abandoned. Even then, 128 GB is a hell of a lot more than 1.44 MB. And hey, most computers don't come with micro SD slots, so this could almost be a convenient general purpose converter.. Well, if computers still came stock standard with floppy drives, anyway.. Maybe it could be a good way to get loads of data onto older PCs more easily or something?

 

Then again there may be something about floppy technology that I don't understand which renders this approach impossible. I dunno.

[TotalTS]

A little update on my project. Decided to change the label design, improved it a little bit to resemble an original floppy disk and now it reads "Master Disk" (Instead of Shareware/Registered Disk). This how the label looks printed.



Now I'm forward to decide if I should put a USB drive (like the Sigil floppy disk) or a microSD to fill it with data.

Edited September 10, 2020 by TotalTS

[DooM Bear]

That looks super cool! If you do start selling them, I want one!!! :-D

 

On selling them, you may be able to sell them clearly stating the price if for the materials (the floppy, sticker and labor of putting it all together)  and that you are not charging for the software that is loaded on the floppy. That way you are not selling the software, you are selling a cool looking floppy disk that has DooM on it. I believe this may be ok as believe you can distribute shareware (I.e. you can give your friends copies etc.) and you just can’t sell it.

 

Or, depending on how you want to distribute them, you could go down the “donation” route where someone makes a donation and in return you gift them a copy of the floppy (although this model is pretty dodgy and requires very specific wording in the T’s & C’s as to not inadvertently end up doing something illegal).

 

Oh third option, if you wanna be 100% safe, would be sell the disk with nothing loaded on it and then include instructions and directions for the customer telling them how to download the software and load it their self :-) Just make sure the artwork has no copyright implications:-)

 

Hope that helps :-D

 

Note: this is not legal advice. Check your local and national laws and if in doubt, don’t do anything without consulting with a lawyer.

Edited September 11, 2020 by DooM Bear

[TotalTS]

Well I could consider to start making more to sell if anything works right.

I saw that in most floppies the metal shutter cames printed with the name of the brand.
I'm not very cool with this because in order to make it look more legit (or at least if I want it to look nice), I need the shutter clear. Not sure if there's a way to remove it, or if it's some brand out there that sells floppies with clear shutters. I have more floppy disks with the metal shutter written than clean, but if I invert that I could have more stuff to sell.

Recently I saw an interview with Romero which he said they allowed the people to keep the money gained from the Shareware releases. It's possible it was just a strategy at the time to make it viral, and with Bethesda, things had changed since then. But yeah, maybe I would consider consulting a lawyer. Anyway here's the interview: https://youtu.be/9v_0HD7iOz4?t=249