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The End of the 3.5-inch Floppy Continues
JoshuaInNippon writes "In a brief press release buried within Sony Japan's website, the company announced that it would be ending sales of the classic 3.5-inch diskette in the country in March 2011. Sony introduced the size to the world in 1981, and it saw its heyday in the 1990s. Sony has been one of the last major manufacturers to continue shipments of the disk type it helped develop, but had ended most worldwide sales in March of this year. The company's production of the 3.5-inch floppy ceased in 2009. Sony noted demand, or lack thereof, as the reason. The company's withdrawal is one of the final acts in the slow death of the floppy era."
I needed the anouncement of the floppy disk demise as reminder that it is not already dead. Bought my last disk at least a decade ago....
How hard is it to actually operate an obsolete system with something vaguely like the original parts? It's in an awkward gap: too obsolete for modern mass-production to be willing to sell you, yet too complicated for you to DIY it. This makes for an odd gap of basically unmaintainable infrastructure. If you want to maintain infrastructure based on pen, paper, and the abacus, you're good. And if you want to stay on the current state-of-the-art for technology (or within a few years of it), you're also good.
But there's this weird gap in between. What if you want to play Nintendo games on a CRT fed by an RF adapter? Better either stock up on a bunch of legacy parts that were made before they stopped mass-producing them; or: find some way to ramp up your DIY tech to be able to produce that level of part; or: manage to implement something close enough in software so that your emulator is good enough.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Ever tried to get a driver for your HD controller into Windows during setup?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
that it doesn't take this long for all other non-solid-state storage to die.
The day when hardisk crashes and unreadable disks are things of the past is long over due.
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
I know how they feel. There's also a lack of demand for my 3.5 inch floppy...
It didn't help that with the growth of rich content, and growing sophistication (i.e. software bloat), that typical files sizes have reached or exceeded 1.44 MB. Figure Fry's today had a 32 GB thumb-drive on sale for $59.95. That's 22,756 "1.44 MB floppy disks", in a form factor that's less than 1/10th the size of the floppy. I recently found a cache of old disks, and I'm wondering what would be an environmentally friendly way to dispose of the little space wasters???
RIP FDD :(
Reasons I like floppies:
1. Give-away-able - if I want to give someone a file, I can hand them a floppy with it on. No, not every circumstance involves having Internet access and not every document should be sent across the tubes. Nor does everyone who I want to give something to necessarily have a computer on them for me to slot my USB key into.
2. Long-life - most of my floppies from the '80s and '90s are still readable. Can't say the same for hard drives, and certainly not so for CDs/DVDs a few years old. IME a floppy is much likely to be readable in any floppy drive than a CD/DVD in a random CD/DVD drive, too.
3. I just drag-drop; no fucking burning/converting/e-mailing/something else process!
3. Everything boots from them. USB booting seems to be hit and miss on many motherboards, and software to support USB booting is more scarce.
"The end of Floppy Disks" has occurred every year for the past decade or so.
Ends can have beginnings. At least, Winston Churchill thought so. http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24921.html
So presumably ends must be able to continue, or we'd never reach the actual end of the end.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes, it's extremely unreliable and prone to failure and data loss. Yes, the storage space is pathetic. Yes, many modern computers don't have a drive to use it. But there are still some cases where it can be better than the alternative: when you need to record something very fast, very cheap, and very small.
E.g.: college. Professors and instructors are still stuck in the 80s and demand students give a "physical" copy of their work, rather than accept it by e-mail or online CMS. The typical college student, naturally, would not bother recording the work on a physical medium until 2 minutes before class. CD recorders are just a tad slower than floppies, and besides, colleges don't like upgrading their computers that often, so even today many labs and libraries have computers with a floppy drive but not a CD burner. So floppy to the rescue.
And, of course, any sysadmin stuck with legacy hardware that can, in lieu of a hard drive with an OS, can only boot off a floppy.
Flash keys are far better for personal data storage of all but the largest data sizes, to both CDs and floppies, but unfortunately even the smallest data-size flash drives are too expensive to use as a discardable medium, akin to a CD or floppy. Still waiting until small-sized flash drives sell for less than $1 a piece, so we can record something on them and give away without consequence.
Because there are two or three manufacturers of 3.5" floppy disks - there aren't any more manufacturers entering the market, so it is a slow decline. You can still buy 3.25" disk drives as a option for a new PC (+$10) just in case.
It's strange to think that back in the 1990's, we used to think 1.44 Megabytes of storage was extremely generous. Just about every student would have at least one or two solid plastic disk boxes (ten disks each). The most exotic disks would be multi-colored
Now the disk themselves are being recycled into bags and other useful objects
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
The last time I used a floppy disk, it was to strip out the flexible platter inside to use as a UV filter for the solar eclipse
That was in 1999
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
This seems to be true with technology in general. Railway museums are a good example of this; the steam locomotives with their more-or-less blacksmith level technology have a better future as working exhibits than 1930s-era diesels. The restoration of the Flying Yankee streamliner required a great deal of effort to recreate the long-out-of-production injectors for its obsolete diesel engine.
As another example, the Seattle Museum of Communications has several working telephone switches representing a variety of different switching technologies. The most recent of these is a Western Electric #3 ESS, a small computer-controlled analog switch that was built in small quantities and was obsolescent when it rolled off the production line. It has a variety of proprietary chips that will never be made again, and spare parts are extremely scarce since most of the #3s built were scrapped. Contrast that with the 1920s-era panel switch, a Rube Goldberg contraption for which parts could be fabricated by any competent machine shop.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Figure Fry's today had a 32 GB thumb-drive on sale for $59.95.
True, a USB flash drive is good for carrying your own files around. But floppies, CD-R, and DVD-R have the advantage of being so cheap they're disposable, which lets you give a copy of a file to someone else.
How hard is it to actually operate an obsolete system with something vaguely like the original parts?
A bit like maintaining a classic car, I suppose: a combination of using old replacement part stocks, and (occasionaly) newly fabricated parts where it doesn't hurt the overall look & feel. Or hurts the owner's taste...
If you're careful with your classic [whatever] and don't use it everyday, such old stocks can go a long way. And there's always the option to take 3 halfway broken ones, and make 2 working ones out of those.
Sony can't fit a decent rootkit on a floppy...
Sony: Oh yes we can... oh wait. No we can't. That is right. So rootkits on our floppies at all. No sirree. Wouldn't fit see. Yeah.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Although the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts $1.00 in 1988 at $1.87 today, the real rate of inflation is much higher. From a popular perception standpoint, Wal-Mart's low prices are masking the double-digit inflation in healthcare, education, and housing (prices are still historically high relative to wages). From a BLS calculation standpoint, BLS pulls dirty tricks like considering only rents instead of home purchase price, considering that houses in West Virginia are equivalent to houses in Arlington, Virginia because they're in the same Census Metropolitan Statistical Area, and considering that an actual DVD player price should be adjusted down 50% because it's technologically superior to a VCR.
Shadowstats.com, which uses pre-Clinton formulas to compute CPI, now has a free calculator. Without a subscription, it requires Photoshop to measure the bar heights, but I've measured that $1.00 in 1988 is over $5.00 today.
512MB USB thumb drives can be had for $3.99.
And that's compared to a 3.5" floppy disk. To try to add some fairness, I avoided a comparison with 5.25" floppies in 1982, which were $1.50 then.
When new formats are introduced, there is a discontinuity in prices. It makes for a sawtooth graph. You're cherry-picking the edge of the sawtooth and whining about it.
and these days we are becoming more and more dependent on large corporate production facilities that end up becoming "to large to fail".
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
i wonder if there should be some kind of public domain requirement for obsoleting stuff like that. Basically, when production is shut down, all specs and production processes are handed over to some archive in human readable form.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Yes, but the beginning of the end, the beginning of the end of the end, the beginning of the end of the end of the end, etc. form a converging series. The point of convergence is the ultimate end point, where all ends ultimately end.
More interesting are intervals like the beginning of the end of the beginning, or the end of the end of the beginning of the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end. Their extremal points (i.e. the set of limits of those series) form a Cantor set in time, unless you have a case where the end of each beginning is already the beginning of the end. In that case the limits are dense in time, i.e. during the whole interval between ultimate beginning and ultimate end you are continuously experiencing both beginnings and ends.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Bought? Were you working in the purchasing department of AOL?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yeah, but beware of the myth of the 'parts car'. The same components tend to wear out on all examples of a series. My neighbour bought two 'classic' cars - one supposedly the 'runner', and the other as a reserve of spare parts.
Since he was not really good at car repairs, I was round his place every weekend, (he WAS good at sharing his stock of excellent wine...)
Guess what - whenever something broke on the 'good' car, the equivalent on the 'parts' car was just as busted...
I still remember as a 15 year old *ahem* downloading from alternate sources a copy of windows 95, then copying it to 25+ floppies and installing it. Painstaking, brutal fear of some error. It worked though.. Then when I buy a computer in 2003, and of course have no floppy drive in it (Configured on purpose that way) imagine my suprise when the only way to reinstall XP onto my sata drive is via FUCKING FLOPPY.
I can't work out if you're being sarcastic or not.
DAT dropped right off the radar, superceded by MiniDisc in the pro market. Betacam was the standard in professional video for years, and has evolved into HDCAM and continues to go on. If you watched TV in the late 80s, the 90s and all of the 2000's then you have definitely watched a *lot* of VT coming of a Betacam deck. HDV has firmly established itself in the consumer market, and you pretty much get s/pdif for free on all audio gear these days.
Hi8 had a brief time in the spotlight, but was always destined to fail since S-VHS tapes had the physical compatibility bonus going for them, where Hi8 was stuck as an incompatible tape size.
But what will end first; The 3.5" floppy or the "the end of floppy disks is nigh" stories?
Even if you can read it, you cannot rebuild it so easily.
:).
There are so many dependencies and inter-dependencies.
Say, we get nuked to stone age, even if you knew how to build everything, to rebuild something like an Intel chip fab would be extremely difficult. If the pure silicon crystals have been destroyed, you will need to grow from the small seed crystal to big wafer size. That takes time. Next who can supply you the pure water, the filters, the other consumables?
Just rebuilding the Apollo "rocket to the moon" stuff would not be easy. Lots of the _unwritten_ knowledge has been lost - not everything is written down or can be. I won't be surprised if the records of what have been lost have been lost too
"Rebooting" a high tech civilisation will take many years.
We also have a very fragile civilization. With all the "Just-in-time" operations you can be ruined by one uncooperative volcano in Iceland. Just "interrupt the blood flow" for a while, and everything goes poof. Hopefully the leaders of the various nations know that so they don't get any stupid ideas and send us to stone age.
Thankfully most of the motherboards I've purchased in the past few years allow me to load BIOS updates from USB storage. I think that was one of the last major uses for a floppy.
But shocklingly, I've purchased a couple motherboards in the past 6 months that still require a floppy. I was like WTF and had to dig around in a box for a floppy drive. Who the hell still requires a floppy in this day and age? I don't recall what manufacturer it was but I can tell you I'll not be buying another motherboard that requires a floppy to update the BIOS. Thankfully I had a spare box of HD floppies in my drawer, but come on... really? 2010, brand new MB and I had to find a floppy?
The "various nations" that would "have stupid ideas" and decide to "[nuke us] into the stone age" just so happen to already live in a weird spot where they're in the stone age but they have AK-47s.
updating the bios of your motherboard from a floppy is still one of the more fool proof methods of doing it. it's so easy for other programs to fsck up flashing the bios in windows, i have had to fix allot of computers after that. linux also is not a supported os on such motherboards so your stuck with what ever bios the motherboard(including laptops) ship with. you can't even make a cd to flash the bios with one of those winflash programs in such circumstances.
To create large numbers of those bullets requires a factory or two, a fair bit of infrastructure - and the gunpowder and metal become consumables.
;). They're also using bow and arrows in some of their wars too (judging from some recent pics).
In contrast, the humble machete was involved in killing millions in Africa. Reloading is pretty simple with the machete
Don't get me wrong, a gun would still be useful to have, but better be pretty selective on your targets.
The data is considered too sensitive for the network so everybody has a file folder with a hardcopy of the report and a floppy in a envelope inside made up for them.
A rare example where disgruntled employees don't bring guns to announce they quit. They bring magnets.
Have you thought about this? Every program out there uses floppy image as the "save" button, but most of the teenagers right now never saw a real floppy disk. We need to replace it with something.
If you require the use of 25 year old tech for business purposes, then you are definetly not staying innovative and most likely will find it hard to compete in the market from companies that invest in new technology and innovation.
Says who? The reason 25 year old systems stay in place is because they work, a lot of work has been done with them. What is the point of switching to Microsoft's latest version of Sharepoint if your purpose built business software (which you counted as a capitalizable cost) does everything you need it to? If it is easy to expand? If you use it to innovate? IBM makes a lot of money catering to these sorts of shops. IBM IS this sort of shop.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Some of many more reasons:
1. There's a large industrial and scientific base using floppies because they rely on non-upgradeable DOS, Win 3.x, Win9x and WinXP proprietary/custom software and custom hardware combination. Many of them still use ISA bus motherboards and this is why there is a thriving market for ISA bus equipped so-called "industrial" motherboards.
2. USB sticks are so small they are easily lost, misplaced and mixed up with your colleagues'/coworkers' identical ones.
3. USB sticks are so small that one cannot adequately label them. Therefore it's hard to base a comprehensive versioning, roll-back or complete backup strategy (e.g. rotating grandfather-father-son strategies) on USB sticks.
4. Most current USB sticks don't have a write-protect switch and thus are an easy target for viruses, trojans and rootkits when inserted in a random PC. Many of my colleagues' and students' sticks get infected when they go to service bureaus or their friends to print decent color copies of their work. In turn these sticks infect their own desktops, laptops, even their colleagues' PCs, in case these are inadequately protected.
5. As a previous commenter said, USB sticks are not give-away friendly. Last January I searched the whole local market for 32/64/128 MB and cheap (under say 2-3 euros) USB sticks in order to provide my 16 students (which still didn't have email accounts) some Excel templates and teaching notes. In addition, the students would use the same stick during the semester to collect the experimental data from their labwork. The cheapest stick I could find was 7 euros, requiring a total budget of 112, which I can't afford. Giving away CDs (700 MB) for 1 MB of data for me is a perversion and an overkill, and since the lab PCs are not equipped with CD-R drives I cannot reuse them for multisession writing either.
I could go on and on an on. Just think: Have you ever seen any new desktop motherboard, from any manufacturer, not featuring a floppy connector? What does this fact tell you?
I concur to the already mentioned opinion that the Floppy-to-USB converter market will soon thrive.
The disk material is (relative to a hard disk platter) still soft and pliable. Putting a floppy disk inside a rigid enclosure doesn't mean the disk itself isn't floppy anymore.