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Death to the 3.5" Floppy?
BawbBitchen writes "PC World in NZ is running this story
about PC makers struggling to try to kill the floppy as a standard PC part.
Gateway has started to take $10 off the price of a PC if you order the PC
without the floppy. Hum, well my Mac does not have a floppy and I do not
miss it & my Linux Server has one that I have never used. Does anyone out there still use their floppy?"
I use them to back up my 5.25" inch diskettes.
Maybe I'm the only one left, but I find my floppy drive real handy for booting the computer still; particularly for installing operating systems...
This is particularly true since I still have to boot off a floppy to install Linux (something about autoboot and my scsi CD-ROM)...
What is your Slash Rating?
I do.
The noise!
The fury!
The whining!
It'll never sell, they said. What will people do without their floppy drive!
Hell, I hardly even use the Zip drive on my G4 for anything anymore.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
I using mine as an apache web server.
/. article :-)
I would post the link but I really think it deserves its own
Murphy's law of floppy drives-
Once you get rid of your floppy drive, within three days you will have dire need of it.
I'd like to see the serial port, parallel port, PS/2 mouse & keyboard port all go away.
Firewire and USB can replace that and more. IDE and SCSI could also go away and be replaced by a Firewire or USB 2.0 bus.
Worst comes to worst, use and adaptor for the USB port to make that must-have serial/parallel device work.
For an interim, an IDE superfloppy, like the LS-120 is a nice way to wean off.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I would be VERY happy if they would replace the floppy with a compact flash receptical.
:)
Same idea as floppy... Probably same lifespan...
Easy.. small.. not as fragile (in my experience)
Yes.. compact flash should be the replacement.
(and how about booting off of USB 2.0 hard drives and cdroms)
I find that 2 floppy disks work great for installing Debian over the 'net.
~.Evanrude
That's a really high bitrate you're using for your mp3's. Don't you think that 39,320 kbit/sec is a little high? I mean even CDs use only approximately 1,200 kbits/sec.
It's nice to be able to pop a floppy in and reboot when you do something like misconfigure a kernel or (OOPS!) forget to edit /etc/lilo.conf after installing a correctly configured kernel.
utter rubbish
and you can eject it with the touch of a button (risking a corrupt fs if it is mounted rw though, but at least you can eject the floppy and take it with you when you are not siting at the computer).
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
My floppy died a couple years ago after an unfortunate incident involving my 2 year old son and his recent discovery of coins. The next week my VCR also suffered the same fate.
I thought I had lost a CD-drive after he discovered CDs and a slight opening above the closed CD tray that allowed him to cram 3 CDs into the top of the drive. Later on he discoved a small opening above a drive bay cover and managed to get about a dozen CDs into the inside of my case before he was caught.
As has been said before, real security comes from when your access to something comes from two of the three:
1. Something you know
2. Something you have
3. Something you are
For example, passwords can be brute forced relatively easy, but if your password has to be accompanied by a retina scan, then your password protected data is significantly more secure.
By the same token, if you have a password, but your PGP key is on your HDD, then your data is only as secure as your password to someone who has your PC. If, however, you keep your PGP on an external disk of some kind, then you go quite a bit further towards making your data secure to someone who has stolen or confiscated your PC. A floppy is pretty good for this purpose for the following reasons:
It's fairly portable. You can reasonably carry a floppy disk in your wallet and pull it out when you need it without fear of destroying it.
It's small enough and durable enough to manipulate. You can hide a floppy in a safe deposit box or ship it overseas if need be.
Despite it's relative durability, it's also easily destroyed. CD's need to be dissolved in acid to be truly unrecoverable and Zip disks are relatively difficult to break into. Floppies, on the other hand, can be broken into and once you've eaten the plastic disk, you're data is forever encrypted.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
First, it's a great transfer mechanism for "small" files (e.g., most documents), because it IS so widely available. Most other media don't interchange well BECAUSE not everyone else has one. Not every machine has a working Internet connection - they don't have a connector, it's broken, you can't plug in right now, or they're forbidden (!). I often use 3.5" floppies to exchange files with a laptop... there are other ways, but this one's quick. And if someone says they'll email or post the file, I'm at their mercy... but if they hand me the data on a floppy, I now really have it. Many machines ONLY provide data on 3.5" floppies (e.g., some synthesizers and lab data recorders); if you want to get their data, you need a floppy.
Backup for critical files, esp. from laptops. If you're using a borrowed laptop, perhaps you don't care about anything except 1-3 documents - a floppy backs them up very nicely.
They're wonderful for keys (e.g., PGP keyrings). Yeah, smartcards could be nice, but not every machine has a smartcard connector or its software... but the 3.5" disk is ubiquitous.
Floppies are cheap, and one of the very few ubiquitous standard ways of exchanging data. They're quite cheap, too. It sounds like customers have already decided they don't want to give them up; why should manufacturers force them to?
It'd be easier if there were a nonproprietary standard alternative, but there really isn't one. Iomega isn't even compatible with itself, and it's quite proprietary. Physical media has some advantages over the internet as a media, and both will continue. Before scrapping the floppy, let's see a nonproprietary alternative!
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Jerry Pournelle always set that he never thought his data was safe until it was an 8 inch floppy.
BTW, you need to see an 8 incher to know why they were called floppy.
3.5" diskettes ARE NOT FLOPPY.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
BTW, you need to see an 8 incher to know why they were called floppy
too easy...
CD-RW won't replace the floppy until it is unecessary to use a 3rd party utility to write and delete from it.
Maybe it's changed in Windows XP or MacOS X. But for Windows 2000 and Redhat Linux 7.2 I have to install and run a separate program and laboriously pick out which files I want to burn and finally say "go".
I don't care if it's the OS writer's fault, the BIOS writer's fault, or whose fault it is. It's ludicrous that I can't simply type "copy foo.txt d:" the way I can type "copy foo.txt a:"! CD-RW drives have been out for years, get your shit together people.
I've been trying to convert my company over to strictly CD-RW since we've had several disastors where the only copy of important data was on a floppy. (I know, I know, but users are users.) It's been completely unsuccesful because the burning programs aren't integrated with the OS the way floppy drivers are. Don't get me started on the burning program's horrible interfaces if you have anything else you want to do today.
Until I can pop in my cd-rw, click-and-drag my files onto it, and pop it out to be used anywhere a cd can be -- without having to go through a 3rd program -- I and everyone else will still have a use for floppies.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
An actual situation. I needed a nic driver on a system. Without it, no net access. The only way to get the driver onto the box was via floppy. There are alternate methods, e.g. serial port, zip drive, etc., but nothing beats the ease and convenience of a floppy drive. I'd rather spend the $10 for a floppy drive than have to hassle with the other methods.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Heh. A friend of mine useta say: "I have a 5.25 floppy.. and a 12 inch hard drive!"
Although half the surprise of this comment came from his 'proudly' owning a Packard Bell...
I've got two big problems with floppies:
//c!) without a hitch. But 3.5" 1.44MB disks are notoriously error-prone. Why didn't anyone employ an error-correction protocol when writing to floppies? Maintain backwards compatibility by writing the EC data to the "extended" tracks outside the 80-track (do I have that right?) spec.
1. Speed. Why are these still SO SLOW?! Sony has put accelerated floppy drives in their Mavica cameras. Is such a drive available for the PC?
2. Reliability. Just yesterday I successfully transferred data from 18-year old 5.25" 140k disks (Apple
This page is full of anecdotes of stupid things people did with their floppy drives.
The only thing i have that i seen that would truly replace floppies are the 'memory cards' or flash-based USB Mass Storage devices, but there really needs to be a method to boot off these things.
Imagine, your next linux distro comes with a cute little 'tux' figure with a USB connector poking out his ass.
Plug this in to your machine, and reboot, the little LEDs in tux's eyes flash to indicate activity, and the installer runs (Tux has 8-256MB of flash on board, giving you all the modules to support your hardware, along with everything you need to rescue/recover/setup your new Linux box.
My 8MB USB key has saved me several times, since it allows me to transfer files from Windows to my Mac to my Linux boxes without the need for a network or any common hardware (except working USB) among them. The drivers are supported by the Linux kernel, WinME/2K/XP and OS X natively, so no drivers to load.
These things are still a little expensive (my 8MB cost me $NZ100 about a year ago), but i imagine these devices would be dirt-cheap in volume.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Oh blah blah blah... Everybody is mentioned how you can override this with a bunch of custom assembler code.
:)
To hell with that, I'll just stick a piece of tape on your floppy and write on it all I want! Used to do this all the time to those AOL floppies.
But yes, that tab is useful for preventing accidental writing.
Like most old-school geeks I saved considerable sums by turning my single-sided double-density 5 1/4" floppies into double-sided with the simple employment of a hole puncher.
:o)
Ahh.. those were the days...
I remember when the C1581 came out (that was the 3.5" floppy for the C64..) and one of my (not too bright) friends figured he could use the same trick..
It took me almost an hour to remove the 3.5" disk he had jammed upside down inside the mechanism... but the drive still worked afterwards
He was pretty shocked when I explained that the 3.5" disks were already double-sided (two r/w heads)
Remember slashdot when the iMac first came out? ...
:)
... What will people do without their floppy drive!
Better than you.
You misrepresent the issue. The problem was not the floppy, the problem was no removable writable media. The floppy was merely the most common and inexpensive of such media. If Apple had included a zip or a CD-RW as they do today there would not have been much controversy. The controversy was all about Apple's assertion that all you need is ethernet. Note that Apple eventually backed away from this rediculous assertion and provided removable media, CD-RW.
Apple floats cover stories to the faithful to gloss over shortcomings. The all you need is ethernet crud was cover for iMacs with CD-RW being too expensive at the time. All those dual CPUs a couple of years ago were cover for embarassing processor speeds. Etc...
Don't get me wrong. I like Apple products. I have owned my share of Macs and I will purchase more in the future. But I will believe little of the PR bull that comes out of Apple Computer Inc. and Steve Jobs.
I have not used a floppy disk in nearly 6 years -- I haven't had one in my computer since my 486 66 died. But on several occasions, I've wished I had one.
Most recently, I could have used one yesterday. I found myself on a state university campus with my mac laptop. The one wireless network doesn't allow open wireless, and don't "support" macintoshes so they wouldn't give me a wireless password. Their wired network is set to boot off a Novell network and won't give out ips unless the OS was downloaded from the server. Furthermore, the only mac they had was not networked.
The presentation I was about to give was stuck in that macintosh due to the archaic, bigotted network. I had to read from the opened laptop, with lights blaring down on the screen. I did not look poised and lost my place every time I scrolled.
What I wouldn't have given for a simple, archaic floppy drive...or even a slow, snail's pace serial card to null the file over to an nt box.
Floppies are good for one thing: last resort. They're airbags on the info highway.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Nah, it was too soon when Steve did it at NeXT with the NeXT cube.
As for misreprenting the issue. This is 1998 we're talking about. CD-R maybe, CD-RW? Not on many of the PCs I saw. Hell, even today, what % is CD-RW?
That said, Apple were late to the party shipping CDRW in a machine, something Steve said on stage. You can pull him on all sorts of bullshit, but that's not one of them.
Arguably they were busy being early(ish) to the party with DVD as standard. Choice would have been nice though...
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
... a universally accepted, cross-platform, dirt-cheap, pocket-sized, rewritable storage medium? Beats me.
1. It makes you look so knowledgeable to end-lusers when you miraculously get their system to boot by ejecting the non-system boot floppy that was left in their drive.
2. When you want to boot a mini-Linux kernel on your Windoze system to see what a real operating systems can do
3. How in the world would I restore my multiple zip disk backup that I did in the 80's when it was all the rage?
4. When you want to upgrade your systems BIOS and it requires a Floppy to do it.
5. What in the world would I do with the +1200 AOL floppy disks that I have collected?
6. Making duplicate boot floppy for my dufus co-worker who, if I gave him my original, I would never see it again?
7. Microsoft's certificate authority which tells you to use a Floppy disk to store the key on? (now that is just whack!)
8. You take away the ability to recover your forgotten admin password easily!
9. When you want to send a pron image to your buddy and don't want that snoopy sysadmin telling the boss.
10. When you HDD goes kablouie you can still recover with a boot floppy and FDISK
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
What they don't know is that the floopy disk is stored in my safety deposit box at the bank, and the actual private key is on multiple encrypted loopback devices. Oops. I shouldn't have said that. Now I have to bury the disk behind the barn. I shouldn't have said that either.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
Punch-cards. Lots of punch-cards.
Michael Loves Me!
This is an effort to make CD's usable as an 'optical floppy'. You need new drives to write them, but only new drivers to read them. Here's just one FAQ that fell out of Google.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I keep my gpg private key on a floppy. My ~/.gnupg/secring.gpg file is a symlink to /mnt/floppy/secring.gpg. When I need to sign or decrypt something I push the floppy in, mount it, use the key, unmount, and eject.
My box has been hacked a few times, but I like knowing for certain that the key wasn't taken.
No, Apple did not "back down" from this issue. Even today you can get a low-end Mac (eMac) without a floppy and without a CD-RW.
Like it or not, Ethernet IS "good enough" for sharing files. Barring incompetant wiring, it's faster and more reliable.
If you absolutely need a floppy, external USB floppies are cheap and plentiful. And I say this as someone who bought one three years ago and has used it twice - both times for writing a set of DOS 6.22 floppies (disk images are fun). Bootable CDs are not difficult to make (on the Mac you would have to be brain-dead not to be able to make one) and are simple to maintain.
On the PC side the only thing I do with floppies is to make network boot disks. That's it. Once the system is on the network I can perform a variety of tasks, from prepping for OS installs, HD imaging, driver updates - plenty of annoying required PC maintenance.
Frankly at this point I'm getting ready to start making network boot CDs instead - every system I work with can boot off CD, and floppies develop bad sectors when I look at them funny (necessitating a reformatting & recreating the floppy). Though I have noticed plenty of floppy imaging software will happily ignore the bad sectors (as in fail to write but not modify the structure to avoid that sector), providing me with a disk of dubious usefulness.
This isn't to say that I don't know people who don't use floppy for file storage and transfers. They knock on my door every week or two, bearing a floppy that has developed bad sectors, all confused as to where their file has gone. I sigh heavily, take the floppy, explain how floppies are not reliable for storage, then try my damndest to recover the data. (almost always in succeeding recovering some to all of it)
Moof!
You sir, are the proud parent of either:
;-)
A. A future engineer
B. A future pr0n star
In either case, congratulations.
-MB-
No, the proper word for that is flaccid. ;)
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Like it or not, Ethernet IS "good enough" for sharing files. Barring incompetant wiring, it's faster and more reliable.
Unless, for a great variety of possible reasons, the source machine and the destination machine are not both connected to an ethernet network. Sheesh. That would include everyone I know personally -- none of whom have, like me, a home LAN -- and, for that matter, my not-entirely-supported-by-Linux laptop and its entirely-unsupported-by-Linux PCMCIA Ethernet card, as well as standalone machines in schools and small businesses.
Snob.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Isn't it much more significant that the spindel is only visible on one side of the disk, with the opposite side being solid plastic?