Taiwan's iPass Releases Floppy Disk Pre-Paid Cash Card

Taiwan's iPass has released a limited-edition prepaid payment card shaped exactly like a 3.5-inch floppy disk. The company, perhaps rightly so, felt the need to include a warning on the product listing: "This product only has a card function and does not have a 3.5mm [sic] disk function, please note before purchasing."

The NFC-enabled novelty card went on sale starting Christmas Eve and comes in black or yellow finishes at 1:1 scale. It works across Taiwan's public transport network -- buses, trains, subways, taxis, and bike rentals -- as well as convenience stores like 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, supermarkets, pharmacies, and fast-food chains including McDonald's and Burger King.

The floppy disk joins an increasingly absurd lineup of iPass form factors. Previous releases have included, Tom's Hardware reports, a Motorola DynaTAC replica, model trains, a flip-flop, an LED-lit Godzilla snow globe, and a blood bag. Taiwan's PCHome24 online store currently lists 838 different iPass card designs. A standard card costs NT$100 (about $3.20) and comes without stored value.

aka: 90 mm

[evanh]

It was commonly labelled as 90 mm, you/d think they could've got that right.

Re:

[Fuzi719]

You are so wrong. It's like you've never sucked penis in Kaohsiung before.

Not a "floppy disk"

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

A floppy disk case, mimicking the form factor that was already hard, if somewhat fragile.

Where can I get my 8-inch version, the one that actually flopped?

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Where can I get my 8-inch version, the one that actually flopped?

Try downtown.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

This brings back memories of novice computer users incorrectly referring to 3.5" floppies as "hard disks".

Save icon

[gwjgwj]

Awesome! They have made giant "save" icons out of plastic.

Decorative shape

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

The shop-front lists iCash, iPass and EasyCard: The difference is not explained although the name suggests that iCash and iPass access different services.

The price for decorative form-factors varies from $95 to $1,100 with the EasyCard bearing the higher prices.

We really need new floppies

[xack]

The situation is that there is one company with a stockpile of now 15 year old floppies (when they were last manufactured in 2011) and whatever shows up on auction sites. There was someone experimenting with making their own a few months back but for the sake of legacy system presentation it would be good to get real floppies again. Yes emulators exist but not all legacy devices are capable of using them and nostalgia wants the real thing.

Enthusiasts kept audio cassettes in production, the same thing nee

why

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is making new floppy drives. Nobody is making new systems with floppy drives. The guy who stockpiled all the floppies (and good for him, otherwise they would have been trashed, because nobody has the patience to liquidate stockpiles of obsolete technology over decades unless that is specifically the business you're in) has plenty for the rest of time. When floppies were made, they were made using machines which were state of the art for the early 2000s which is to say, pretty freaking state of the ar

oh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to say, the "impossible" polaroid film was made using original machines. They "just" had to recreate something close to the old chemistry. Floppy disc-making machines don't exist and there will never be economic demand to make new ones.

As far as chemistry and process, I knew a guy who worked at 3M in the 1990s. Most of the technology they invented was never patented, because once you patent the technology you're disclosing it to the world. The expertise to make floppy discs is in the archives of comp

Re:

[test321]

One difference is the 60-120 minutes play length of audio cassette is still as useful today as it was at the time, while the 1.44 Mb capacity of HD floppy discs wouldn't be useful for nearly anything. Also the cassettes were reliable for hundreds of reads of the music, while floppy discs were randomly failing.
Or you'd need to make floppy discs better enclosed and in high densities. We've travelled through that timeline already.

Re:

[EvilSS]

The situation is that there is one company with a stockpile of now 15 year old floppies (when they were last manufactured in 2011) and whatever shows up on auction sites. There was someone experimenting with making their own a few months back but for the sake of legacy system presentation it would be good to get real floppies again. Yes emulators exist but not all legacy devices are capable of using them and nostalgia wants the real thing. Enthusiasts kept audio cassettes in production, the same thing needs to happen with floppies (and a lot of other legacy tech too).

Well then break open your piggy bank and fund a new factory. That's the only way it's going to happen. There are fewer and fewer uses for them every year. It is, how the kids say, "not a growth industry". If it were economically viable someone would have kept or bought a factory to keep it running.

Re:

[Powercntrl]

Enthusiasts kept audio cassettes in production, the same thing needs to happen with floppies (and a lot of other legacy tech too).

Current production cassette tapes are all ferric oxide garbage, and don't even get me started on playback/recording mechanisms. Nobody is using these things for anything serious anymore, they're just something for hipsters to waste their money on.

Seriously. Try any cassette gear sold today - it's way, way worse than what was sold back in the format's heyday.

Hrnghghh do want

[BlacKSacrificE]

I need a handful of these for my various NFC based projects around the house. Would be nifty to try and clone them to work on some public systems as well. Fecked if I can work out where to buy them though, only seems to be standard cards available via the few websites I have been able to successfully cram through a babelfish.