Death to the Floppy! Hurrah!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tuberski
For somebody who knows so much about computers, it's kind of funny that you got this wrong.

The old floppy was 5.25" , the newer floppies are 3.5" .

My,my,my....

ACK!

Yeah yeah, semantics.
Both were well before my time.

I'm a new age freak.

Is ASHER an acronym for Apolyton's Slashdot Headline Entity Retriver?

Nah, I only post the interesting ones. Most of the stuff posted on Slashdot is crap, and half of them are duplicate posts.

Come, join the Apple faithful. You'll fit in with us, as we're always ahead of the curve. We've been floppy-free for years now. Join us...

Apple went floppy-free well before alternatives were easily available, cheap, and fast. Plus, for being "ahead of the curve", Apple seems to be about 10 years behind in the mouse and keyboard department.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Asher

Yeah yeah, semantics.
Both were well before my time.

I'm a new age freak.

Unfortunately, I remember using 5.25" disks in high school programming class.

BASIC and PASCAL.

ACK!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Tuberski
Unfortunately, I remember using 5.25" disks in high school programming class.

BASIC and PASCAL.

ACK!

Basic is still somewhat used in a couple forms these days, Visual Basic and Real Basic.

Pascal not so much, but it's still a popular academic language. My school insisted on teaching Pascal in our first semester CS class to serve as an intro to people who never programmed before, since Pascal's syntax can be printed out on a single page.

[mindseye]

I hope all of you who are archiving to CD have taken notice of the impending death of the floppy.

What do you think is going to happen in fifteen years when someone shows up waving a CD and asking who can print out the copy of their will, great American novel, or other invaluable file. "Dude. what's that? Did you find it in a museum?"

[Asher]

Originally posted by mindseye
I hope all of you who are archiving to CD have taken notice of the impending death of the floppy.

What do you think is going to happen in fifteen years when someone shows up waving a CD and asking who can print out the copy of their will, great American novel, or other invaluable file. "Dude. what's that? Did you find it in a museum?"

Well, that and the fact that the content of CD-Rs and CD-RWs supposedly begins degrading after ten years...

[Thrawn05]

I will never buy a computer without a floppy drive. I always use it from, say when something criticaly goes wrong with the OS and I need to formatt and reinstall the entire OS, or if I need to run a program outside a Windows shell, or just transport documents, it comes very handy. Not every computer out there has a ZIP drive, and not every CDROM drive can read Adaptec formatted CDRWs.


BTW, I bought an external 5" floppy drive (serial port) since I have a lot of those that I STILL use.

I don't use MS Word... I use SAMNA!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
I will never buy a computer without a floppy drive. I always use it from, say when something criticaly goes wrong with the OS and I need to formatt and reinstall the entire OS

Put in your Windows XP boot disc. Use its recovery console to format and reinstall...don't need a floppy at all.

or if I need to run a program outside a Windows shell

Use a DOS boot CD-ROM, rather than a DOS boot floppy...

or just transport documents, it comes very handy. Not every computer out there has a ZIP drive, and not every CDROM drive can read Adaptec formatted CDRWs.

Again, Windows XP standardized the format for reading files off a CDRW, rather than using Adaptec's DirectCD.

If you need to transfer something via floppy to old computers...well, then you can buy a computer without a floppy and install your own drive.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
I will never buy a computer without a floppy drive. I always use it from, say when something criticaly goes wrong with the OS and I need to formatt and reinstall the entire OS, or if I need to run a program outside a Windows shell, or just transport documents, it comes very handy. Not every computer out there has a ZIP drive, and not every CDROM drive can read Adaptec formatted CDRWs.


BTW, I bought an external 5" floppy drive (serial port) since I have a lot of those that I STILL use.

I don't use MS Word... I use SAMNA!

In my case, Thank God for floppies. It allowed my to download your Mingapulco mod for morrwind at work and take it home.



ACK!

[mindseye]

Unfortunately, I remember using 5.25" disks in high school programming class.

My first program was written on ticker tape. Later I graduated to punch cards.

I also remember the 7" floppies that preceeded the the ubiquitous "five-and-a-quarters".

You kiddies can go back to your cartoons now.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by mindseye

Unfortunately, I remember using 5.25" disks in high school programming class.

My first program was written on ticker tape. Later I graduated to punch cards.

I also remember the 7" floppies that preceeded the the ubiquitous "five-and-a-quarters".

You kiddies can go back to your cartoons now.

I remember the 7" floppies and have seen Tape and punch cards, but never used any of them. My friends father had all kinds of that stuff in his workshop at home.

Some of it even in working condition.

ACK!

[Thrawn05]

QUOTE:
__________________________________
Originally posted by Asher

Put in your Windows XP boot disc. Use its recovery console to format and reinstall...don't need a floppy at all.
__________________________________

One prob, it doesn't work since my HD doesn't have an autoexec.bat (well, it does but it's empty) so I have to make it on my own.

__________________________________
Use a DOS boot CD-ROM, rather than a DOS boot floppy...
__________________________________

And what if I need to use programs on other CD? And plus why should I bother changing the boot order in my BIOS?

__________________________________
Again, Windows XP standardized the format for reading files off a CDRW, rather than using Adaptec's DirectCD.
__________________________________

Not every computer I, or people I know, have WinXP.

__________________________________
If you need to transfer something via floppy to old computers...well, then you can buy a computer without a floppy and install your own drive. [/QUOTE]
__________________________________

That's IF they make computer that have the 3" bay that I can take a panel off to slide it in.

Asher, go ahead if you don't want floppies. Like having a computer without one is really going to save you money. Pay the man $10 along with the rest of the cost of your computer and move on. Forceing everyone not to have floppies is wrong.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
One prob, it doesn't work since my HD doesn't have an autoexec.bat (well, it does but it's empty) so I have to make it on my own.

I don't understand why this is a problem? Everything you can do with a floppy can be done with the CD-ROM...

And what if I need to use programs on other CD? And plus why should I bother changing the boot order in my BIOS?

Boot discs are only needed for booting the system. Once it's done booting, you can remove it. It doesn't run the OS off your floppy you know.

Not every computer I, or people I know, have WinXP.

That's true, which is why if you're going to transfer data to a legacy computer you'd use a CD-R, the internet (FTP, email, HTTP, whatever), possibly a USB device, or even a floppy disk. As you can see, the only purpose floppies have is for old machines, which is why they shouldn't ship by default on new ones. Those that need them can use them, we need to cut away from floppy for general use now.

That's IF they make computer that have the 3" bay that I can take a panel off to slide it in.

If they don't have a 3" drivebay (why wouldn't they??), spend $1.00 on a 5"-bay mounting bracket.

Asher, go ahead if you don't want floppies. Like having a computer without one is really going to save you money. Pay the man $10 along with the rest of the cost of your computer and move on. Forceing everyone not to have floppies is wrong.

Forcing everyone to *HAVE* floppies is wrong. They're just horrible.

I'm not forcing everyone not to have floppies, they can freely and easily install them on their own (hell, did you see the USB->Floppy adapter I linked to?). Floppies are obsolete. The only reason we need them around is for old computers, and at some point or another we have to stop shipping them on new computers and replace the technology with something more reliable, with a higher capacity, and faster. That time is now, since there's ample replacement media out there that are dirt cheap. Did you know it costs more to manufacture a floppy disc than a CD-R?

And for the love of God, please find out how to quote properly.

[MattHiggs]

CDs are too big. I prefer something I can carry in my pocket. I'd like to see Mini-Discs make an appearence on computers.

[Lefty Scaevola]

Most current CD drives can run minidisks as well.

[Asher]

Originally posted by MattHiggs
CDs are too big. I prefer something I can carry in my pocket. I'd like to see Mini-Discs make an appearence on computers.

So buy one of them USB doohickies.