End of the line for Floppy Disks?

[1nteger]

Interested to hear your views on this...
The BBC News website a couple of days ago carried an item about the decline of the floppy disk. They seemed to be a little behind the times, because they mentioned that Dell have completely dropped FDDs from their top end systems...I thought they did this some time ago (?)
Anyway...
With CD-RW, bootable CD's, and, now, bootable USB 'pen drives' emerging, do you think a floppy drive has any real function in a new self-built PC?

 

[muckshifter]

...do you think a floppy drive has any real function in a new self-built PC?

I still toile with website design ... it all fits on a floppy.
I have my Excel spreadsheet of retail sales ... it all fits on a floppy.
All my correspondents with family and friends are written using MS word ... it all fits on a floppy.

AND

No way am I going to "Flash the BIOS" without a floppy drive.

 

[Quadophile]

Muckshifter never gives up anything easily, he loves tradition!

FLOPPY RESURRUCTED!

Jokes apart, I would also have the drive in my new machine, it does come handy at times! We have to consider our friends who have machines from stone age era, they always expect us to copy a file on a floppy, the kids still take floppy to school if they have some work.

NOT JUST YET!

 

[1nteger]

How right you are Quad! Muckshifter has already admitted he can't get used to electric screwdrivers ...
I have to admit that when transferring work between work and home, I am so unsure about the email connection that i always put the stuff on a floppy as well (belt and braces)... but I am getting very interested in the new pen-drives...a 128Mb one that doesn't need drivers is really cheap now...no wonder LS120's haven't lasted!

 

[muckshifter]

Ah, the LS120 ... I have two of them, sad to say they never took off.

The problem is cost, they still cost around £50 and as one can get a 48x CDRW for around £30 there is no contest.

As for "tradition" and an old dog with new tricks, my problem really is "habit" ... it took me a long time to "boot from CD" as I would automatically "pop in the boot floppy" ...

Now we have the "Stick" ... a Freecom FM-10 USB-2.0 Stick 64Mb can be had for around £30. and the prices are dropping all the time. One of these items is going to save me a lot of time and trouble at the workshop.

 

[muckshifter]

http://www.asciipr0n.com/archive/0013/bonnie/craft/

 

[1nteger]

...excellent!
Someone must have been incredibly bored one day to come up with that gem!

 

[Ian]

Originally posted by 1nteger
With CD-RW, bootable CD's, and, now, bootable USB 'pen drives' emerging, do you think a floppy drive has any real function in a new self-built PC?

Ohhh! Bootable USB Pen drives? Are there any available already?

 

[Ian]

Originally posted by muckshifter
http://www.asciipr0n.com/archive/0013/bonnie/craft/

I have to make one of those!!!

 

[1nteger]

...attached jpg is my attempt using just my trusty Victorinox Cybertool!! (Please note: this particular starship has just been through intergalactic battle with a Klingon Bird of Prey...that's why it looks knackered)



Ian...bootable pen drives...someone mentioned this to me the other day that either they are available, or they are soon to be. I'm looking into it 'cos i want one!

 

[muckshifter]

bootable pen drives

Yep, no problem ... but you need your BIOS to be able to see it in the USB port.

 

[Ian]

Originally posted by 1nteger
...attached jpg is my attempt using just my trusty Victorinox Cybertool!! (Please note: this particular starship has just been through intergalactic battle with a Klingon Bird of Prey...that's why it looks knackered)

Brilliant!!!!

 

[1nteger]

Might be worth checking out these Zynet USB Flash 'pen drives'...specs look no different from any others and prices seem ok to me.

http://www.digiprintuk.com/

If it wasn't for the ability to make starships out of 'em, my floppy drive would bite the dust today

 

[Quadophile]

Going through this thread I recall having read something very interesting which I think is very appropriate for posting here for all to enjoy!

You know you are an Old Timer in the small computer world when:

You know that IBM did not invent the desktop computer
You remember names like Osborne, Sol, AIM, Pet, Sinclair, Altair, Elf.
You remember numbers like 8008, 8080, 1802, 6502, 6800.
You remember when a cassette tape system was an upgrade.
You remember when a floppy drive was a major upgrade, and two was HEAVEN.
You remember when a 250k 8" floppy seemed like SO MUCH STORAGE SPACE!!
You remember operating systems other than MS-DOS and Macintosh.
You once had calluses on your finger tips from flipping toggle switches.
You remember when a mouse was the creature that built a nest in your OLD computer.
You remember when an operating system, a word processor and a document all fit in 48K of RAM.
You remember trying to figure out what you would do with 64K of RAM.
You remember coveting your neighbors 1200 baud modem.
You know that PIP is more than a printing shop.
You remember when Meg was a woman's name and had little to do with computers.
You remember when Gig was something that a band did, and any connection with computers was inconceivable.
You paid over $3000 for a machine with just floppy drives and 256k or less of RAM.
You invested over $5000 in the above machine before it was retired.
You have to fight the urge to smack someone who complains that $1500 is a lot of money to spend for a machine with 128M of RAM and a 16G hard disk and a 64 bit processor.
You recall paper tape. (bonus: have USED paper tape!)
You once calculated how much paper tape it would take to back up the new, cutting edge, 10M hard disks (hint: 10 bytes per inch) and laughed about how far we had come.
You remember the videotape backup system.
You laugh at those that call 5.25" disks "The BIG disks".
You have seen a computer boot an OS completely off floppy disk in 4 seconds -- computers that today are called "slow".
You have seen a useful application that fit in 2K of RAM.
You have programmed a computer with less than 4K of RAM
You consider a soldering iron a program development tool.
You recall what CP/M is.
You recall when an operating system took up a trivial part of a hard disk's storage.
You recall when data took up more space than programs.
You recall when commercial programs didn't just crash for no apparent reason.
You know hex is not just a curse.
You know split octal is not bifocals.
You know the difference between Hard Sector and Soft Sector floppies.
You consider assembler a High Level Language.

by Nick Holland


:brow: :brow: :brow:

 

[Quadophile]

What about this one?

Do you remember when....

A computer was something on TV,
From a science fiction show.
A window was something you hated to clean.
And ram was the cousin of a goat.

Meg was the name of a girlfriend,
And gig was your middle finger upright.
Now they all mean different things.
And that really mega bytes.

An application was for employment.
A program was a TV show.
A cursor used profanity.
A keyboard was a piano.

Memory was something that you lost with age.
A CD was a bank account.
And if you had a 3½ inch floppy,
You hoped nobody found out.

Compress was something you did to garbage,
Not something you do to a file.
And if you unzipped anything in public,
You’d be in jail for a while.

Log on was adding wood to the fire.
Hard drive was a long trip on the road.
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived.
And a backup happened to your commode.

Cut you did with a pocket knife.
Paste you did with glue.
A web was a spider’s home.
And a virus was the flu.

I guess I’ll stick to my pad and paper.
And the memory in my head.
I hear nobody’s been killed in a computer crash,
But when it happens, they wish they were dead.

 

[Ian]

Originally posted by Quadophile
You know that IBM did not invent the desktop computer

The room at University where I'm getting all of my lectures was the room where the very first programmable computer was invented - now there's a random fact! (Found this out the other day )

 

[1nteger]

Ask Muckshifter what it was like to work with!!

 

[Quadophile]

I remember my first computer was a Sinclair ZX spectrum!

The funny part was that if you wrote a program in Basic of 4 lines the output was just one line!

The HARD DRIVE use to be my tape recorder!

Good ole' days8)

 

[muckshifter]

The Programmable Electronic Computer was invented in Great Britain by Sir Harold Thomas Flowers in the 1930's & early 1940's (NOT BY the UNIVERSITY of PENNSYLVANIA or Drs. ECKART & MAUCKLEY as claimed!)

History has been altered by human greed, and this remarkable event that very likely saved the world has been lost in time, buried behind Official Secrets Classification for 40 years and stubborn false marketing efforts by Unisys Corporation, the ACM and the University of Pennsylvania.

It's time to correct the record and honor the Father of the programmable electronic computer: Tommy Flowers.

Because the British had classified Colossus under the shield of England's Official Secrets Act, it's existence wasn't ever revealed to the public until Colossus was declassified late in the 1970's, long after the world INCORRECTLY gave credit for the programmable electronic computer's invention to the University of Pennsylvania, Eckley and Mauckert, ENIAC and later UNIVAC.

A subsequent derivative British computer, called: AJAX, introduced features such as virtual memory, disk storage, and fast communications, that took decades to emerge in the public sector in the burgeoning American computer industry of the 60's.

8)

 

[Ian]

Ah... this was the one I was thinking about : http://www.computer50.org/mark1/mark1intro.html