SAVE THE FLOPPY 2

[langleymass]

Naturally I am curious as to what everyone thinks, but I am considering starting a new campaign. Maybe I am just a sucker for lost causes, but I think this is quite worthwhile. We need to SAVE THE FLOPPY.

Yes, it's a technology that is at least 15 years old. It's slow and noisy. But the truth is that the floppy disk still provides a combination of conveniences that we simply do not have with other media.

1. Floppies can be injected and ejected with the power off, unlike CD's.
2. You don't need special software or even special drivers to use a floppy, unlike CD's.
3. A floppy does not a need a jewel case, unlike CD's.
4. The floppy can be used on computers that are ten years old if you happen to have them.
5. The drive only costs about $10. The disks are often free with rebates.
6. It uses less power than a CD-ROM.
7. Often 1.44 MB is still all you need.
8. You can write on floppy-disk labels with almost any pen. You can use a Sharpie on a CD, but it often smears.
9. You can put labels on floppies over and over. This is not as easy with CD's.
10. Floppy write-protection is easily switched on and off.
11. The floppy disk still easily fits into your shirt pocket.
12. Floppy drives work well even if the drive is on its side.
13. Floppy drives use less power than CD-ROM drives.
14. Duplicating floppies is easy with just one command.
15. Floppy drives do not use jumpers.
16. Floppy drives take up less space then CD-ROM drives.

Feel free to add more of your own reasons. But I hope you agree that we need to SAVE THE FLOPPY.

 

[mrdenny]

Yes, newer machines can boot off of a USB drive. At a previous job we had a 128 Meg USB drive that we'd use to upgrade very old RAID cards firmware where you were supose to boot off a floppy. We just put all the boot files on the USB drive and booted the machine off the USB drive, and did the install. It was about 30x faster to do the upgrade off the USB drive. First no changing floppies, and second the USB drive was just that much faster than the floppies.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

(Not quite so old any more.)

 

[langleymass]

Let me know when that USB drive costs what a floppy costs.

 

[flapeyre]

Cheapp floppies wear out after 3 or 4 uses. I've never yet had a USB drive (which has no moving parts) fail on me yet. The fewer mechanical parts, the better. No mechanical parts = greater reliability = lower overall cost.

Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni!

 

[jsteph]

Let me know when that USB drive costs what a floppy costs.

They were giving free 32Meg sticks at either Best Buy or Tiger a while back--and although 32M is basically obsolete for USB, it's still over 20 times the capacity and 10 times the speed of floppys...
--Jim

 

[DrJavaJoe]

langleymass you forgot this one:

17. The floppies make great coasters.


Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'.

 

[jrbarnett]

-So do unwanted ISP CD's.

John

 

[Glenn9999]

Let me know when that USB drive costs what a floppy costs.

and I'm looking around now and finding 256MB USB key drives for around $22 and 512MB drives for around $45. And I see them much cheaper than that when sales come around on them.

A USB key drive is so much better all the way around than the floppy for general needs.

 

[DrJavaJoe]

jrbarnett, they have a hole in the middle leaving little round water marks on the desk


Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'.

 

[mrdenny]

Here is an interesting article on this very topic

http://www.flexbeta.net/main/articles.php?action=show&id=98

(Thanks /.).

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

(Not quite so old any more.)

 

[johnherman]

The 5 1/4 inch floppy is comparable to 8-tracks or Beta video tapes. Rare and nearly extinct.

The 3 1/2 inch floppy is comparable to audio cassette or VHS video tape; it will be around a long time.

-------------------------
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

 

[chiph]

The 3 1/2 inch floppy is comparable to audio cassette or VHS video tape; it will be around a long time.

I don't think it will disappear overnight like the LP record did when CDs became available. But it will become increasingly rare as time goes by.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[lespaul]

the osborne,, it would be wonder if some had working machines around somewhere

Not only does my dad have a working Osborne (with all the software), he also has a KPro, both of which I'll get someday!

 

[RussBlakeman]

I have floppies back to 8" and still in use but for specific antique machines. Boxes of 5.25" 360k and 1.2mb as well, also in use.

Shirt pocket sizing doesn't matter as a reason to keep 3.5" floppies - just the damage aspect from magnetics and moisture/dust is enough to say bye to them for modern machines and there are 3" CDR that hold many times more than even 2.88mb floppies and they play in a standard cdrom (hence the small circle in the tray).

I still use 3.5" HD 1.4mb floppies due to the software for diags I use being imaged for that size especially at places where there is no bootable cdrom. I also have a Mavica camera with 1.44's that works well - but on the camera I prefer to stay with floppies for cost - 3" cdr on the newer ones gets expensive.

 

[RussBlakeman]

I also have an Osborne and a few Commodores and a Sanyo PC and a couple tandt TRS-80 cp/m machines and an original IBM 5150 PC, 5160 XT and 5170 AT all with original drives and in use from time to time and while some source for new media would be nice it's not imparative that we keep old media around - if it were many would still have 9 track tape racks around (no not 8 track music, 9 track data).

My feeling is that all mechanical storage will be gone by 2010 and it will all be memory based and superfast, supercheap. Memory sticks and USB drives are just the beginnings

 

[RussBlakeman]

15. Floppy drives do not use jumpers.

uh - they sure do. DS0, DS1, DS2, DS3. Thanks to the cabling scheme on MFM floppies you leave everything at the factory DS1 (B) and the twist in the cable reconfigures the drive designation. Older machines HAD to use the DSx settings or the controller would croak on you - anyone that has used an early PC, non-conforming PC (liekthe Sanyo MBC-55x series)or pre-PC type machine like c64, Osborne/Kaypro, Sinclair, etc can tell you all too well of the nightmares of MFM and RLL setups for floppy and hard drives. You are aware that there is also a SCSI floppy right?

Besides all you have on an IDE (ATA) cdrom is master and slave anyway, how hard is that especially on a controller that has CS / Cable Select ??

 

[chiph]

You are aware that there is also a SCSI floppy right?

I remember seeing that option in some of the SCSI specs, but I've never seen one in person.

Chip H.


____________________________________________________________________
If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[langleymass]

RussBlakeman,

Why did you bring up all this irrelvant stuff?

 

[Sympology]

There was also a TRUE alternative to the floppy that never took off - the LS120 drive.
This was a 3 1/2 inch diskette that held 120mb of data but unlike the ZIP, was completely backward compatible. I had one for a few years but dumped it on the last pc build.
Odd how sometime the backwardly compatible stuff never takes off
Anyone remeber Phillips DCC? A tape player that was backwardly compatible with odd audio cassettes.
This summed up up the problem that the LS120 (and floppy has), speed.
We're now used to sticking in USB / CD and jumping straight to that file and grabbing it. No waiting 2 minutes to load a small file.

The floppy will die, slowly but surely. Just got to persude the other half that!

Stu..

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[johnherman]

Thanks to RussBlakeman for making me feel slightly less stupid for being an early adopter of the digital camera and winding up stuck with floppy disks 4-ever. Yes, I know newer cameras are getting cheaper, but if I get rid of the Mavica, it will likely stay in the family so I'll still be stuck supporting floppy disks.

-------------------------
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

 

[Sympology]

Johnerman.

I'm Mr Betamax,Atari Jaguar,Philips DCC and LS120 man. You want it to fail, just sell to me!

No longer an early adopter !

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004