SHOCK! HORROR! Death of the (Floppy) World?

[shaithis]

Hehe, AFAIC, they were dead a LONG time ago.

I remember that they became public enemy no1 with me when I was at school and we would copy each others games, using PKzip to span the game over 20+ discs.....there would always be 1 disc that wrote properly but would never read properly making your entire multi-disc archive useless.

Good riddance!

[[GSV]Trig]

Anyways this isnt news, didnt Apple say floppies were dead years ago and stop putting FDD's in Mac's?

[Ferral]

I remember having the disk and casette drives for the Commodore 64 (tape drive came as standard). The disc drive I owned was nicknamed the Vic 20 brick. It could only read one side of the disc so you had to turn it over occasionally when loading.

The reason behind the brick nickname was it was nearly the same size as a breezeblock ! Worked a charm though and still does to this day.

[GeorgeTuk]

Anyways this isnt news, didnt Apple say floppies were dead years ago and stop putting FDD's in Mac's?

Sorry Trig but Apple saying floppies are dead isn't news compared to the Windows user base which continue to use floppies and some people may still use them after the they are dead (the floppies that is!). But then neithe ris DSGi saying they are not going to stock them.

They have been steadily re-climbing in price though as mass production is reduced.

I do acknowledge the failure rate but in the days before the internet there really was only one way to have portable data. The failure rate on CDs is high two since they are no longer handled correctly but that always happens when a product reaches mass market adoption, they cease to be coveted! I remember being ever so careful with CDs and would wince when I dropped them and panic the data was gone! Not anymore though.

[Moby-Dick]

I always felt that MINIDISK was the way forward. Instantly re-recordable, as big as a CD (thanks to a good compression algorithm) and pretty much unbreakable.

usb sticks

[chicken]

I always felt that MINIDISK was the way forward. Instantly re-recordable, as big as a CD (thanks to a good compression algorithm) and pretty much unbreakable.

What was wrong it with?

Sony.

I agree on this completely, what were Sony doing not taking advantage of this technology?

Although I think you may be a bit out with the "as big as a CD" thing. In music yes, because they had music compression but for Data I seem to remember them quoted at 140MB.

HD MiniDisc however are 1GB, but they've kinda missed the boat for data use.

[iranu]

Are yes the old floppy. The individual is not really a connoisseur unless they have experienced they joy that was the 3,5" (9cm) floppy. And I mean that!

Who remembers the 5 1/4" "magnetic disks" that the floppy replaced? You could save a whole afternoons worth of work on those only to not have them function after you had thrown them (frisbee style) across the room to a friend.

Many a blastfurnace/thermodynamics/whatever, spreadsheet (after 30 mins of pre 286 calculation) was lost due to comming home and either chucking said bag containing important data into a corner (for it to bend) or accidentally storing the disk on top of the 15" telly or loud speaker that happened to clutter the student's room along with the horror of finding that the damn thing did not work the next day.

Oh for the joy of carefully typed dissertations being stored on the reliable floppy complete with last night's beer spillage and chewing gum only to work in said tutor machine.

The days of operating systems fitting on less than 10 of them or "The day of the Tentacle" computer game on the old Amiga requiring around 40 floppys, each of which was loaded into the "drive" depending on which screen was loading or required. What about x-wing or Doom fitting on around 6 of the lovely wee blighters!

Those that mock the noise of the disk drive never really had the "opportunity" to experience the "way that computing once was"

I last used one of those hallowed squares of plastic to update a bios last year and she proved sturdy and true - just like her maker intended.

I shall shed tears when the world finally has no use for our dearest floppy but like those whom have done their duty and fallen;

we shall remember them.

[BEANFro Elite]

As I was going to point out, and Iranu has just, unless your motherboard can emulate a floppy disk drive, you'll still need a floppy disck drive and floppy disks for flashing your motherboard and / or graphics card BIOS.

In FACT, I believe its time to flash my BIOS

[chuckskull]

Been expecting it. I remember using a pile of floppies to install games

Oh well. technology moves on, you couldn't even fit one MP3 on a floppy now.

[[GSV]Trig]

I remember my first installs of Win95 from floppy disk, that was fun
Until ALL motherboards boot from USB pendrives that emulate the A: drive then there will be a use for floppy drives for flashing bios n stuff

[Funkstar]

yawn. Another pointless press release from a DSG company that will get them loads of free publicity, TV time and column inches.

They were the first to say they were discontinuing VHS recorders and CRT TVs. I'll put money on them announcing they will stop selling VHS tapes in the near future.

[merdat]

Yes , still a place for floppy's . In all the hundreds that I have used I had very few bad ones but then I tried not to buy 'crap' ones. Seen boy's buy computers without floppy drives and then be totally stuck when they required a boot disk . Like the 'pen drives' though.

[charleski]

Who remembers the 5 1/4" "magnetic disks" that the floppy replaced?

I remember reading Jerry Pournelle in BYTE saying that only 8" floppies were good enough for backing up his precious verbiage, no way he'd trust these new-fangled 5¼ jobbies.

[Whiternoise]

I agree on this completely, what were Sony doing not taking advantage of this technology?

Although I think you may be a bit out with the "as big as a CD" thing. In music yes, because they had music compression but for Data I seem to remember them quoted at 140MB.

HD MiniDisc however are 1GB, but they've kinda missed the boat for data use.

I totally agree about minidisc's too.. Sony were idiots to go with BluRay - they would have made a packet by making larger capacity HD Minidiscs - it would have been cheaper i imagine..