“That stuff was expensive. I still have an unopen box
of 5.25 floppies.”
Use’em as coasters or find some way to use them as “art”.
Things WERE expensive back then. My old 386 had been upgraded a couple of times. It had come new with a 5 mb drive, was upgraded to a 10 then finally to a 20 just before I got it.
I later added a, at the time, blazing fast 14k modem.
The $30 phone I’m using to access the net now has MUCH more ability than that old 386 Sx.
I have hundreds of 5.25” floppies along with old computers all the way back to XT clones that have the drives. I have an expansion box for a TI-994A that uses 5.25” floppies, Commodore 64s with 5.25” floppies, and Atari home computers all formatted to a different standards of course. One of these days when I get the time... I am going to see if I can some of them to work. I of course have emulators for all of them, but the old physical computers are more fun.
As for the expense... it depended mostly on who you bought them from. Thee was always vendors selling them cheap through computer shopper or other magazines.
I had a 2400 baud modem.
The boards were a hoot.