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?"

PC Bios updates...

[bmacy]

I don't own a PC that will "officially" allow me to to flash the BIOS from anything but a DOS boot floppy.

Brian Macy

Remember slashdot when the iMac first came out?

[lordpixel]

I do.

The noise!
The fury!
The whining!

It'll never sell, they said. What will people do without their floppy drive!
Hell, I hardly even use the Zip drive on my G4 for anything anymore.

Re:BOOT DISK

[Hollinger]

Why not use a boot CD? Most good cd-burning apps can make a CD bootable.

Along with it...

[chill]

I'd like to see the serial port, parallel port, PS/2 mouse & keyboard port all go away.

Firewire and USB can replace that and more. IDE and SCSI could also go away and be replaced by a Firewire or USB 2.0 bus.

Worst comes to worst, use and adaptor for the USB port to make that must-have serial/parallel device work.

For an interim, an IDE superfloppy, like the LS-120 is a nice way to wean off.

Compact Flash

[Yohahn]

I would be VERY happy if they would replace the floppy with a compact flash receptical.

Same idea as floppy... Probably same lifespan...
Easy.. small.. not as fragile (in my experience)

Yes.. compact flash should be the replacement.

(and how about booting off of USB 2.0 hard drives and cdroms) :)

Re:BOOT DISK

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeap. Refuse to remove floppy drive for fear of DRM only OS on PC.

How the heck would you "flash" a BIOS ? Do you reinstall Windows over linux just to do that ?

Floppy is still Superior in at least one way

[cosmosis]

There is not a de-facto standard for anything else. If we get rid of the floppy, what is to replace its easy re-write characteristics? Zip Drive failed to do it. The CD-RW haven't done it. And as the previous poster mentioned what else can you use for BOOT? The floppy has been such a de-facto standard, that no drivers are ever necessary to make it work. The same cannot be said about the Zip or CD-RW, or any of its equivalents.

Until a new, better, higher capacity equivalent comes along, I can see no sound reason to get rid of the floppy drive.

This is key

[JamesKPolk]

Lots of hardware updates want to run from DOS to get that unfettered hardware access.

FreeDOS forever!

Re:Sure do . . .

[tchuladdiass]

Uh, they do NOT hold "1.44 MB". They hold 1,474,560 bytes, which in decimal is 1.47 MB, or if you are using base-2 (2^20) megabytes, that's 1.406 MB. Either number does not look like 1.44 MB.

The reason that everybody calls them 1.44 is because they hold 1440 (base-2) kbytes, then people shorten this by performing a base-10 division to get 1.44. This mixing of a base-2 (1024) division followed by base-10 is just... weird.

Anyone use PGP or GPG?

[Bonker]

As has been said before, real security comes from when your access to something comes from two of the three:

1. Something you know
2. Something you have
3. Something you are

For example, passwords can be brute forced relatively easy, but if your password has to be accompanied by a retina scan, then your password protected data is significantly more secure.

By the same token, if you have a password, but your PGP key is on your HDD, then your data is only as secure as your password to someone who has your PC. If, however, you keep your PGP on an external disk of some kind, then you go quite a bit further towards making your data secure to someone who has stolen or confiscated your PC. A floppy is pretty good for this purpose for the following reasons:

It's fairly portable. You can reasonably carry a floppy disk in your wallet and pull it out when you need it without fear of destroying it.

It's small enough and durable enough to manipulate. You can hide a floppy in a safe deposit box or ship it overseas if need be.

Despite it's relative durability, it's also easily destroyed. CD's need to be dissolved in acid to be truly unrecoverable and Zip disks are relatively difficult to break into. Floppies, on the other hand, can be broken into and once you've eaten the plastic disk, you're data is forever encrypted.

Userful at certain workplaces

[Racine]

Perhaps some other career programmers here can relate to this.

I use floppies when I want to bring some of my source code home with me from work, and I don't want to answer the questions posed by the sysadmins about why I'm trying to send certain things through the firewall. My company claims ownership of anything I write, but I'd like to keep portions of it for future reference should I ever change jobs.

They are very strict about such things were I work, so I find it easier to bring things that I've written like useful functions and such home on floppies.

That is more or less the only use I have left for them, but I'm glad they're available for it.

School

[Anonymous Coward]

In school these things are invaluable. You can work on papers and assignments in the computer lab and then go somewhere else and work. As it is, some of the computers don't have network accounts so transfering with a network is not possible.

They're required for Windows boxes...

[terrywin]

From my experience, you *must* have a floppy
capable of booting DOS when a Windoze box
takes a dump and doesn't revive itself.

I always carry a modified Win* emergency
boot disk in the briefcase.

Unfortunately, I don't currently have one
for my Mandrake or FreeBSD boxes. But then
again they haven't trashed themselves enough
to require a floppy to restart :)

Terry

Re:BOOT DISK

[Enonu]

This isn't a movement to remove floppy drives from your system, it's a movement to remove floppy drives from new systems.

I'm fully confident that I will never need to boot from a floppy simply because I own a CDRW. To boot (har har!), it has Mt. Rainer support.

I'm quite certain that floppy disk support won't die out for the useful life of your machine.

Still the best to boot from

[Lord Bitman]

Maybe you live in a mystical world where computers always boot up by themselves, and new kernels never in any way prevent this. Or maybe you just live in a world where you'd rather edit a configuration file or three for getting to try something you only want to do once, and then do that every time you want to do that time. Maybe your system never fails at all. Maybe it came to you in a nice little box and all you had to do was plug it in. There's no step 2!
For everyone else who doesnt want to worry about getting driver support for a CD-R on a system that you already need a boot-disk for.
Need I go on?
I have one floppy drive I use between three systems, but I still have that floppy drive. Whenever there's a problem that requires the use of a boot disk, it usually entails opening the case anyway, so no harm done in one extra plug.
But I still have one, and am currently using it every day to boot up. I'll be free of it again in a couple weeks, and then won't use it for a few months, most likely. After that, something will come up. I'll need to change my primary HDD or something like that.
If there were some universally accepted standard for writing to CD's, I'd probably think differently. Last I tried to get my CD-R to work, seems there wasnt.

CD-RW too hard to use

[foo fighter]

CD-RW won't replace the floppy until it is unecessary to use a 3rd party utility to write and delete from it.

Maybe it's changed in Windows XP or MacOS X. But for Windows 2000 and Redhat Linux 7.2 I have to install and run a separate program and laboriously pick out which files I want to burn and finally say "go".

I don't care if it's the OS writer's fault, the BIOS writer's fault, or whose fault it is. It's ludicrous that I can't simply type "copy foo.txt d:" the way I can type "copy foo.txt a:"! CD-RW drives have been out for years, get your shit together people.

I've been trying to convert my company over to strictly CD-RW since we've had several disastors where the only copy of important data was on a floppy. (I know, I know, but users are users.) It's been completely unsuccesful because the burning programs aren't integrated with the OS the way floppy drivers are. Don't get me started on the burning program's horrible interfaces if you have anything else you want to do today.

Until I can pop in my cd-rw, click-and-drag my files onto it, and pop it out to be used anywhere a cd can be -- without having to go through a 3rd program -- I and everyone else will still have a use for floppies.

boot devices

[sPaKr]

As long as floppys are used for boot devices we cant get rid of them. Bootable CD's are great.. but many bios dont have them. And when you have an old machine that needs to boot off of floppy, where are
you going to make said bootable floppy. Yes I have been stuck up sh*t creek whithout a paddle.. a room full of computers.. and only one with a floppy that can only boot from a floppy. Yanking a HD just becouse you cant format a floppy to be bootable suckx my nutz.

3.5" Floppy Drives are a necessity

[Anonymous Coward]

As an IT Professional (someone that has to do creative problem solving on computer systems) I feel that the floppy drive is an absolute must have for fixing major problems on desktop systems. From my linux floppy that lets me hack into and modify NTFS hive files to reset admin passwords to the lowly Win 95 bootdisk with cd support I still use them all on at least a weekly basis. Yes I know much of this can be done with bootable CD's but if I need to customize the bootable CD I have to do it at a functioning system that contains a CD burner and I still need to supply the boot files. If I have a bootable floppy, I can boot off of the floppy, modify the necessary boot files directly at the broken machine and away we go. Long live the floppy!

Windows 2000/NT/XP (possibly Linux) Install/Repair

[Anonymous Coward]

I used them last night, in fact. I had fudged up Windows 2000 (my default opsys, and be quiet, I need Photoshop) and had to attempt to repair it by loading a kernel using the installation CD.

To install Windows 2000/NT/XP on a machine that utilizes a RAID or SCSI card that is not on the default list (there a a few, but not enough) you must have a floppy drive. Unfortunately you cannot specify the drive to search from to "Add Additional Devices" drivers, you MUST use the floppy drive. You also need one diskette per driver, or rewrite the .inf file to have multiple driver choices on one diskette.

This was a minor issue, since I have the two disks in the case with Win2000. But, if I recall correctly, I needed floppy disks to do the same thing installing Redhat Linux 7.3. Unfortunately my RAID card isn't on the list, and I am having troubles hacking a driver to work so I'm not sure what happens after the prompt. (I just reset the comp) =]

Re:PC Bios updates...

[Just Some Guy]

I ran a flasher today for an old Voodoo 3000 card. The program's first step was to write a dump of the current BIOS image to a file on the floppy in case of catastrophe during later steps. I don't think it's reasonable to expect my system's BIOS to know enough about CD-R{,W}s to enable them to emulate a writeable floppy.

powerpoint?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what kind of presentations he's giving, but the author of the original article thinks floppies are useless for Powerpoint? That is ALL I use floppies for these days. My 20-minute technical chemistry talks are only 300kb, max.

Exactly.

[Chris Burke]

There's nothing as convenient or as likely to -just work- as a floppy. I consider it the "low tech" option, when all else fails. Or for bios flashes...

Anyway, though I do want one, I use it so infrequently that I only have 1 floppy between my 3 machines. For those rare times I need it, I just move it around. :)

Re:Along with it...

[blamanj]

I'd like to see the serial port, parallel port, PS/2 mouse & keyboard port all go away. Firewire and USB can replace that and more.

It's called a Mac. Mouse/KB/Printer are USB. Even the speakers and microphone are USB. Other ports or Firewire and Ether.

Re:This is key

[twilightzero]

Absolutely, the only problem here is that it's the PC makers that want to get rid of the floppy, not the hardware manufacturers. As you pointed out, many hardware updates (BIOS update for mobo and video/ide/scsi controllers mainly) require DOS for direct hardware access - these kinds of things won't work at all from newer OS'es like XP because they specifically prohibit direct hardware access.

However, the PC makers generally don't want to worry about hardware updates. Call Compaq about an older system that needs an update - first thing you're suggested is buying a new Compaq. Trying to install a new, gigantic hard drive on an older computer? Depending on your OS and system config, your main options probably include using a DDO provided by the drive maker on a floppy or getting a BIOS update, which has already been discussed. But after you've done hardware upgrades on your system, many PC makers will not support the system any more due to the fact that it's not in its original configuration any more.

Personally, I'm constantly amazed that Iomega or Imation didn't apply for standardization of the Zip or LS120 (respectively). I realize that they want to jealously guard their IP, but if they standardized it, there would be even MORE orders for the darn things. They would still have the benifit of the name brand to aid their selling, and generally name brand and the original manufacturers (in my experience) produce a better quality product than hardware clone makers. Just about every newer BIOS can boot from LS120 or Zip, so to me it would be logical evolution...but they didn't ask me :(

Old samplers and synths

[Maxon]

Those of us who use music equipment from the 80's need 3.5" floppys to transfer data to the and from the equipment. I have an Akai S-950 sampler that I backup the disks to my hard drive. I also transfer samples I got off the Internet or process on my computer to the S-950 with the floppy.

Granted, if my computer didn't have a floppy drive I could add one. But if it didn't have a floppy controller I'd be screwed. The software to transfer data to and from the Akai formatted disks ONLY works in DOS, so that rules out using USB drives.

---
Geoffrey
Project AKO - http://ako.sf.net

Re:You misrepresent the issue & Apple reversed

[lordpixel]

Nah, it was too soon when Steve did it at NeXT with the NeXT cube.

As for misreprenting the issue. This is 1998 we're talking about. CD-R maybe, CD-RW? Not on many of the PCs I saw. Hell, even today, what % is CD-RW?

That said, Apple were late to the party shipping CDRW in a machine, something Steve said on stage. You can pull him on all sorts of bullshit, but that's not one of them.

Arguably they were busy being early(ish) to the party with DVD as standard. Choice would have been nice though...

Students use floppies

[Anonymous Coward]

Students often use floppies for easy transport (your average student doesn't understand FTP; hey, your average student can't even find his/her bunghole with both hands).

In programming classes, for example, profs typically require a hard-copy and a soft-copy of code, and e-mailing the soft-copy is not always convenient for the teaching assistants/markers. Especially when some dumbass students include the source in the body of the e-mail instead of as an attachment.

Why would anyone want...

[sunset]

... a universally accepted, cross-platform, dirt-cheap, pocket-sized, rewritable storage medium? Beats me.

Re:3.5" Floppy

[thefalconer]

Until a solid replacement comes around to take the place of the floppy disk as a general utility disk, it will never die. It might find itself a nominal part, but it will never die. Super disks are ok, but they still require too much to get them running. A floppy is nice because it's supported in the bios and does not need to have any special programs or drivers loaded to make it work. Until another media can match or exceed that ease of use and simplicity of instalation, the floppy will never go away. I nominate flash data sticks. They're easy to use, they hold large amounts of data for their small size, and although they're not within the price range of a floppy, they still can easily be made to operate as simply as a floppy and it would be very simple to implement bios support for them to make them as plug and play simple as a floppy.

Re:Floppy is still Superior in at least one way

[kiwimate]

Couldn't agree more. It's a standard bootable, writable device. It's quick and convenient.

And if you're on the train with your colleague on the way to a meeting and you need to share a file*, how else are you going to do it? Yes, I know there are other ways, theoretically. Spare me -- I'm not going to burn a CD while juggling my laptop just to hand over a 300K document. For sheer convenience, I love the floppy.

* And if you tell me you should be prepared, consider yourself knocked with the clue stick! We're geeks, and we don't prepare.

Re:Floppy is still Superior in at least one way

[Dixie_Flatline]

While I agree, I think that this is the way to go. We're FORCING a change this way, so the easy, new, better, higher capacity drive can come along. If you insist on clinging to floppies, even on newer machines, things will never change. T'be sure, on older machines, they're the only game in town, but they have no business being on newer boxes.

Nice for small, ultra-secret data like gpg keys

[ry4an]

I keep my gpg private key on a floppy. My ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg file is a symlink to /mnt/floppy/secring.gpg. When I need to sign or decrypt something I push the floppy in, mount it, use the key, unmount, and eject.

My box has been hacked a few times, but I like knowing for certain that the key wasn't taken.

students

[lo_fye]

i teach at a community college and i must say that students by and large only know how to use a floppy. burning cds is too compliated for some. FTP is beyond the capabilities of most. for this market I believe USB keychain drives could take over thanks to their ease of use... but anything more technical than that will not.

Re:650 MB zipdisk perfect size to bootleg a CD.

[Lord Custos]

650 MB on a new Zipdisk, 650 MB on audio CD. Perfect size to sneakernet a bootleg
Coincidence...or Conspiracy.
Just wait for Hillary Rosen to notice this an try to prevent Iomega from selling them.

Re:Floppy is still Superior in at least one way

[SEE]

It didn't take any forcing to go through the transitions from the 360KB 5" to the 1.4MB 3" floppy. If somebody had come up with a good alternative (which also means open and inexpensive) to the 1.4MB floppy at any point in the last fifteen years, we'd have them by now. Backwards compatibility wouldn't have been important; we'd have had dual drives during the transition period, just like in the 5-3 transition.