Death to the 3.5" Floppy?

BawbBitchen writes "PC World in NZ is running this story about PC makers struggling to try to kill the floppy as a standard PC part. Gateway has started to take $10 off the price of a PC if you order the PC without the floppy. Hum, well my Mac does not have a floppy and I do not miss it & my Linux Server has one that I have never used. Does anyone out there still use their floppy?"

3.5" Floppy

[Anonymous Coward]

I use them to back up my 5.25" inch diskettes.

Fifteenth post!

[Anonymous Coward]

The 20 second delay really sucks.

I use my floppy disks to hold all my mp3's! Then I play them in the car. I can store the first 300 milliseconds of each song!

The only use for a floppy...

[PissingInTheWind]

...is as a boot disk.

Anyone conserving important data on one of those is stupid.
Unless they wrap them in aluminium to protect them from solar flares...

Yeah

[Jonny Ringo]

I using mine as an apache web server.

I would post the link but I really think it deserves its own /. article :-)

The LAW says-

[matticus]

Murphy's law of floppy drives-
Once you get rid of your floppy drive, within three days you will have dire need of it.

Re:BOOT DISK

[gimpboy]

i know the parent was a long comment, and you probably missed this part:

This is particularly true since I still have to boot off a floppy to install Linux (something about autoboot and my scsi CD-ROM)...

which would suggest that he as trouble booting off of cd's and likes the alternative floppy disks give him.

Re:The LAW says-

[unicron]

"I'm going to burn my mscdex drivers on a cd for when I need them".

Re:Fifteenth post!

[martyn s]

That's a really high bitrate you're using for your mp3's. Don't you think that 39,320 kbit/sec is a little high? I mean even CDs use only approximately 1,200 kbits/sec.

Don't need one with kids around

[scott1853]

My floppy died a couple years ago after an unfortunate incident involving my 2 year old son and his recent discovery of coins. The next week my VCR also suffered the same fate.

I thought I had lost a CD-drive after he discovered CDs and a slight opening above the closed CD tray that allowed him to cram 3 CDs into the top of the drive. Later on he discoved a small opening above a drive bay cover and managed to get about a dozen CDs into the inside of my case before he was caught.

Bastard Operator From Hell

[marcelkiel]

Here's the BOFH story about the aluminium foil: The Real Bastard [ntk.net] (Story #6)

"But remember what I said, solar flares are bad for disks and machines. Protect your disks from solar activity to prevent them losing their data"

"How do I do that? Wrap them in tin-foil?"

"NO! TIN FOIL'S THE WORST THING! YOU KNOW WHAT TIN FOIL DOES IN A MICROWAVE DON'T YOU?!"

"Yes.."

"Then don't use it. There's only one thing that protects disks from solar activity.."

"What's that?"

"MAGNETS! Wrap your disks up in a pillow case with lots of magnets - Solar Flares hate that"

"Wow! Thanks"

"No worries at all..."

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[netringer]

I use them to back up my 5.25" inch diskettes

Add I use my 8 inch diskettes to back up my 5.25 inch diskettes.

Jerry Pournelle always set that he never thought his data was safe until it was an 8 inch floppy.

BTW, you need to see an 8 incher to know why they were called floppy.

3.5" diskettes ARE NOT FLOPPY.

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[Kyeo]

BTW, you need to see an 8 incher to know why they were called floppy

too easy...

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[jcronen]

In South Africa they're called stiffies... go figure.

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[Anonvmous Coward]

Heh. A friend of mine useta say: "I have a 5.25 floppy.. and a 12 inch hard drive!"

Although half the surprise of this comment came from his 'proudly' owning a Packard Bell...

Floppy Abuse

[CleverNickName]

This page [rinkworks.com] is full of anecdotes of stupid things people did with their floppy drives.

KISS principle

[sheldon]

Oh blah blah blah... Everybody is mentioned how you can override this with a bunch of custom assembler code.

To hell with that, I'll just stick a piece of tape on your floppy and write on it all I want! Used to do this all the time to those AOL floppies.

But yes, that tab is useful for preventing accidental writing. :)

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[schon]

Like most old-school geeks I saved considerable sums by turning my single-sided double-density 5 1/4" floppies into double-sided with the simple employment of a hole puncher.

Ahh.. those were the days...

I remember when the C1581 came out (that was the 3.5" floppy for the C64..) and one of my (not too bright) friends figured he could use the same trick..

It took me almost an hour to remove the 3.5" disk he had jammed upside down inside the mechanism... but the drive still worked afterwards :o)

He was pretty shocked when I explained that the 3.5" disks were already double-sided (two r/w heads)

Re:The LAW says-

[putrescence]

I still keep a 5.25" around. I've used it a few times. Once I had to bring it in to work in order to upgrade from an ancient version of some accounting package (the accountants were scared of upgrading). To convert the records over we had to upgrade through four versions. It wasn't consecutive either, it went like 3 to 5 and then 5 to 1 (windows versions started from 1) and then on to 5 again.

It was fun opening all those accounting package upgrade boxes that had collected over the years. Everything on the inside looked so clean and new but old at the same time.

It was also fun talking to people on the tech support line:

Me: "Hey, I need to import records from version 3.0 of your software".

Them: "Ok. Click on file..."

Me: "Click? There's no click. There's no file either."

Them: "What do you mean?"

Me: "I mean version three for DOS."

Them: [long pause] "We haven't supported that for twelve years."

Ugh. Wish I had one.

[dasmegabyte]

I have not used a floppy disk in nearly 6 years -- I haven't had one in my computer since my 486 66 died. But on several occasions, I've wished I had one.

Most recently, I could have used one yesterday. I found myself on a state university campus with my mac laptop. The one wireless network doesn't allow open wireless, and don't "support" macintoshes so they wouldn't give me a wireless password. Their wired network is set to boot off a Novell network and won't give out ips unless the OS was downloaded from the server. Furthermore, the only mac they had was not networked.

The presentation I was about to give was stuck in that macintosh due to the archaic, bigotted network. I had to read from the opened laptop, with lights blaring down on the screen. I did not look poised and lost my place every time I scrolled.

What I wouldn't have given for a simple, archaic floppy drive...or even a slow, snail's pace serial card to null the file over to an nt box.

Floppies are good for one thing: last resort. They're airbags on the info highway.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

And THAT is the reason why Windows will never make it on the desktop.

10 reasons why we still need the Floppy

[twoslice]

1. It makes you look so knowledgeable to end-lusers when you miraculously get their system to boot by ejecting the non-system boot floppy that was left in their drive.

2. When you want to boot a mini-Linux kernel on your Windoze system to see what a real operating systems can do

3. How in the world would I restore my multiple zip disk backup that I did in the 80's when it was all the rage?

4. When you want to upgrade your systems BIOS and it requires a Floppy to do it.

5. What in the world would I do with the +1200 AOL floppy disks that I have collected?

6. Making duplicate boot floppy for my dufus co-worker who, if I gave him my original, I would never see it again?

7. Microsoft's certificate authority which tells you to use a Floppy disk to store the key on? (now that is just whack!)

8. You take away the ability to recover your forgotten admin password easily!

9. When you want to send a pron image to your buddy and don't want that snoopy sysadmin telling the boss.

10. When you HDD goes kablouie you can still recover with a boot floppy and FDISK

Re:Your secret is out!

[reverse flow reactor]

What they don't know is that the floopy disk is stored in my safety deposit box at the bank, and the actual private key is on multiple encrypted [kerneli.org] loopback [pgpi.org] devices [pgpi.org]. Oops. I shouldn't have said that. Now I have to bury the disk behind the barn. I shouldn't have said that either.

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[The Turd Report]

Punch-cards. Lots of punch-cards.

Re:All the time

[timeOday]

Repeat after me, "not everything round is a frisbee. Not everything round is a frisbee..."

Re:Don't need one with kids around

[cca93014]

Sell your child.

Re:Don't need one with kids around

[CrazyDuke]

"My floppy died a couple years ago after an unfortunate incident involving my 2 year old son and his recent discovery of coins. The next week my VCR also suffered the same fate."

Umm...I guess its a good thing he aparenly hasn't discovered power outlets

...But then again, maybe he would have learned something.

Re:Don't need one with kids around - Impressive!

[MahouButa]

You sir, are the proud parent of either:

A. A future engineer

B. A future pr0n star

In either case, congratulations. ;-)

-MB-

Re:Don't need one with kids around

[Anonymous Coward]

if i were you, i'd have beaten the living fuck out of this kid and thrown his body in the backyard. let's see him cram coins into slots when he's lying face down in the grass with a broken arm, internal bleeding, and maybe some vultures circling around his head.

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[DavidRavenMoon]

BTW, you need to see an 8 incher to know why they were called floppy.

No, the proper word for that is flaccid. ;)

Re:Don't need one with kids around

[Anonymous Coward]

My kid did the exact same thing. He quit when I started shoving coins in his slot. ;-)

Re:Don't need one with kids around

[Polo]

Ok, I can see the floppy drive slot and the coin - at least the height of the opening is fairly close.

But in the VCR too? I would think he'd catch on that Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches are a much better fit.

Re:Sony Mavica

[Bytal]

Yes and then sit for 2 hours transfering 2 images at a time out of a 10 lb stack of floppies that let me take less pictures then a postage stamp sized flash card. No thanx but I'll stick to card.

Re: 3.5" - NOT Floppy

[gorilla]

Isn't it much more significant that the spindel is only visible on one side of the disk, with the opposite side being solid plastic?