Building PC, to floppy or not to floppy?

[Scott]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

 

[Roy Coorne]

Dr Teeth a écrit:
....

** Amateurs built the Ark, but professionals built the Titanic.**

.................................................without floppy DD

I use my floppy DD often for Maxtor PowerMax, IBM DFT, memtest... and
even with the good ol' W98 boot disk!

Roy

 

[Egil Solberg]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.

I second the 2 above.

Additionally I can tell this:

My friend insists on not having a need for floppy and he hasn´t got one
installed.
I happen to own a spare one which I keep in my desk. My friend there and
others have to bite the apple from time to time to borrow it.
You need a floppy.

The stupidest thing I´ve heard of are those Abit mobos without serial and
PS2. What do people do if they need to access their DSL modem via management
cable?
And a normal external 56K modem cannot be used without serial.

Best to have it all installed. Costs next to nothing.

 

[Big Daddy]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.

Failsafe BIOS upgrades...

 

[Big Daddy]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.

Failsafe BIOS upgrades...

 

[David H. Lipman]

Dr Teeth:

No True. there are Floppy controller based tape drives. good only for Win9x/ME
however but its worth noting.

Dave

| They are cheap and you never know when you may need one...when you
| cannot go out and buy one. Also, AFAIK, nothing else can be connected
| to the floppy connector on the motherboard.

 

[Matt]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

It's possible to build a PC without a floppy that is internal. Most
motherboards today support USB floppy. Thats what I use. I got Teac USB
floppy. As for PS/2 keyboard and mouse - these are all emulated through the
USB ports. You no longer need PS/2 ports. And you don't need serial ports
either as USB takes care of that. There are USB drivers for DOS that let you
take advantage of a mouse and keyboard or other USB devices. I try to avoid
DOS as much as possible. Crossing my fingers I haven't used it in the last 6
months. The onlything I need DOS is for Symantec Ghost 2003 which by the way
supports USB and firewire now. Do I use a PS/2 keyboard, mouse or serial
devices anymore? NOPE! All gone. Never had a problem. Although I keep my
USB floppy around in a bag somewhere. And it works just like an internal
floppy to boot! My .02

Matt

 

[Matt]

It's possible to build a PC without a floppy that is internal. Most
motherboards today support USB floppy. Thats what I use. I got Teac USB
floppy. As for PS/2 keyboard and mouse - these are all emulated through the
USB ports. You no longer need PS/2 ports. And you don't need serial ports
either as USB takes care of that. There are USB drivers for DOS that let you
take advantage of a mouse and keyboard or other USB devices. I try to avoid
DOS as much as possible. Crossing my fingers I haven't used it in the last 6
months. The onlything I need DOS is for Symantec Ghost 2003 which by the way
supports USB and firewire now. Do I use a PS/2 keyboard, mouse or serial
devices anymore? NOPE! All gone. Never had a problem. Although I keep my
USB floppy around in a bag somewhere. And it works just like an internal
floppy to boot! My .02

BTW. For a true USB solution - use a flash card reader and boot from it!
Thats what I do most of the time. The 1.44MB size of a floppy is not
important when booting with a CompactFlash card. As a matter of fact my boot
CF card is 256MB! Do you need a floppy nowadays? No.

 

[Jeff Labute]

yeah..generally, you don't need a floppy... but, you'd probably feel better
having one..just in case
you need to boot off one, or make a floppy with something on it for someone
else... if you stay in your
own world..then, not much need for a floppy drive... so long as you have an
alternative boot device to
your hard disk.

jeff

 

[RMS]

I agree with the "don't need". On my own computers I have barely used a
floppy in a couple of years. I do all BIOS flashes from the HD in safe mode.
Frankly, my favourite device for replacing the floppy is the USB thumb
drive. If you have a recent BIOS, you can boot from any USB mini drive as
well. Now that they are so cheap everybody should have one.

64-128MB for around 35-45 dollars CAN...
http://www.canadacomputers.com/storage.html#usb
64MB for $14.99 US, the same as a floppy!
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_slc.asp?CatId=900

Same price, way faster, can hold 50x the data and the drive is portable. Now
that's a good argument

bye, Rick

 

[R_Supp]

last


BTW. For a true USB solution - use a flash card reader and boot from it!
Thats what I do most of the time. The 1.44MB size of a floppy is not
important when booting with a CompactFlash card. As a matter of fact my boot
CF card is 256MB! Do you need a floppy nowadays? No.

There are quite a few reasons that pop into my mind to have a floppy drive
installed, however, the choice is yours.
If you can afford the $15 put one in.

 

[R. Pazderski]

Why even bring up such a trivial matter in a news group? Why even worry
about adding such a inexpensive item to your computer system ? If you need
it or use it one time, it will have paid for itself. If you never use it,
you will have lost nothing.

If your new build is that tight on budget, suggest you look at a Dell
catalog.

Regards,

Rick P.
====================>>>>

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

 

[jaeger]

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

I haven't used one in almost 4 years, there is nothing you need it for.

 

[jaeger]

The stupidest thing I?ve heard of are those Abit mobos without serial and
PS2.

That was a great idea, shedding useless and archaic ports. A shame they
abandoned it.

 

[jaeger]

I believe you, but how does DOS recognize the USB at all. DOS doesn't
natively support USB. This is a question, not a criticism.

Legacy USB combined with USB emulation.

 

[Nick]

For less than $10 why not do it up? You never know when you'll need it eg. BIOS flashing, Win98 startup disk etc. and if the time comes and you don't
have it you'll go nuts and go and spend twice that much at CompUSA or BestBuy.

BTW I still have my 3/12" and 5 1/4" floppy combo drive from my first Gateway purchased back in 1994 and it still works!

My 2 cents.

Nick

 

[Snickers]

I haven't used one in almost 4 years, there is nothing you need it for.

Wrong. There are situations where you might need it. I still have to
use mine occasionally.

 

[jaeger]

Wrong. There are situations where you might need it.

Name one.

 

[Jesse]

Name one.

Adding 3rd party hard disk drivers or raid drivers during setup
System recovery using partition magic, nortons, others.

 

[jaeger]

Adding 3rd party hard disk drivers or raid drivers during setup

You can add the drivers to a custom WinXP CD. In fact, this is the
smart way to do it since you can add all your drivers, plus you can set
the switches so that you don't have to babysit the install.

System recovery using partition magic, nortons, others.

Partition Magic will recover from the install CD. Ghost is crap unless
you do enterprise deployment, but the image disc itself is bootable.