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Farewell To the Floppy Disk
s31523 writes "Those of us who have been in the IT arena for a while remember installing our favorite OS, network client, power application, etc. by feeding the computer what seemed an endless supply of 5.25" soft floppy disks. We rejoiced when the hard 3.5" floppies came out, cutting our install media by 1/3. We practically did backflips when the data CD-ROM arrived and we declared: we will never need any other disk than this! It is with sadness that I report the beginning of the end for the floppy: computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out."
I wonder if this means that MS will stop requiring floppies to install a 3rd party RAID controller during the installation.
(I bring this up because I had to install a floppy on a computer I was reinstalling XP on the other day so I could use the SATA drive! I kinda felt dirty after doing that!)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
> computer giant PC World has announced it will no longer carry the floppy disk once current supplies run out.
Since '95 the quality control on floppy disks has been so low that it hasn't been worth buying them anyway. At one time a SS/DD 5.25" could be used as a DS/DD reliably for five years or more without errors "just appearing". Maybe a patent ran out or QA began paying more attention to HD and CD manufacturing. Whatever it was, though, after '95 the floppy disks which I've bought have an average lifespan of about three months before random errors begin appearing on the media.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
In 1998 when Apple released the original bondi blue iMac without a floppy drive, the floppy disc was ALREADY so absurdly useless that no computer user needed them. So, I proffer that this story is late by about a decade.
Anyone else ever try to download big files from your school's higher speed Internet connection and then use WinZip or PKZIP to try and zip it up over 40 floppies, only to find when you got home, disk #40 had a bad sector in the readme.txt file and the entire archive was bad?
With as many Word documents I had to rescue for friends from those things with ScanDisk, and as many went bad after 6 months or less, I say good riddance to bad rubbish. Of course, the quality went to hell around the era of Windows 95. Before that, companies actually made good floppies that would last on the order of years.
Should we now have to replace the "Save" icons on all out apps?
Or shall we keep it around as a memorial (and to confuse the next generation)?
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
about
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
time.
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
Anybody
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
remem
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
ber the
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
128K
[INSERT DISK TO CONTINUE]
Mac?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
For those not familiar with the parent company of PC World, the former Dixons group, this is the third time that they've pulled this stunt. That is, with great ceremony, announcing that they are to stop selling a technology that is (supposedly) becoming long-in-the-tooth and obsolete, and getting lots of attention from the press, who use it as an excuse to describe the (supposed) passing of a particular technology:-
(1) Death of video recorder (i.e. VCR) in sight
(2) Dixons to end 35mm camera sales.
In the case of the VCR, their announcement was misleading at best, and more likely just a pack of lies. Dixons.co.uk (and the large-format Currys stores) *still* each sell a wide range of standalone VCRs, over 2 years later. (Visit dixons.co.uk and search for "video recorder").
IIRC the high-street Dixons stores (now called "Currys.Digital", ugh) still sold them long after the supposed phase-out date. I don't know about the 35mm cameras, but even if they were telling the truth in that case, it was a nice publicity stunt for them. Even more so for the floppy discs; you're stopping selling floppy discs and you felt the need to make a big announcement about it?!
Of course, the intention behind these announcements- besides the straight publicity- is to give the impression of Dixons and PC World as hi-tech, cutting-edge type places. When in fact they're mediocre at best; sometimes competitive, but just as often overpriced- particularly for more humble items such as USB and Ethernet cables, staffed by salespeople who like to pretend they know more than they do, flogging overpriced warranties and with a poor reputation. Online shopping is much cheaper, and with a better selection.
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When my father first started programming for IBM there was a tiny 'drum' memory that was temporary, a tiny amount of 'random access r/w memory,' a high speed card reader, and a high speed card punch. I think the whole CPU was vacuum tube at that time.
Writing and running a program consisted of:
1. Typing out your source code, one line of code per card.
2. Getting the 'compiler/assembler' program card deck out of storage.
3. Reading the 'compiler/assembler' deck into the computer and starting it running.
4. Loading your source code deck as data cards.
5. The compiler/assembler would churn away and then punch out your object card deck.
6. Move the object card deck from the card punch 'out' bin to the card reader 'in' bin.
7. Load your 'object' card deck into the computer and start it running.
For each pass, and each change to your program, the computer would have to punch out a new 'object' deck. There was no other intermediate storage available.
I'm pretty sure I am remembering this right. Dad was a programmer a long, long time ago, and I only know this process from him telling it to me.