The Mystery of the Mega-Selling Floppy Disk

osullish writes "People have been proclaiming the death of the floppy for years, yet millions are bought around the world. Who is buying them?"

Comments

Floppies

[Gizzmonic]

I know we buy them at my lab-they are necessary for controlling the software of our scintillation counter. That thing (no joke) is running DOS 2.0 under the hood! I'm sure there's lots of industrial equipment in small/noncompetitive markets that has never felt pressured to update. It's the same reason why we have so much $500,000 equipment running unbelievably crappy software.

Re:Floppies

[LWATCDR]

Actually there are some good reasons to use DOS for something like that.
Modern OSs are great and have all sorts of functionality that a lot of devices just don't need. They also have a lot of code and services which can cause you issues.
DOS is great for any device where you need a realtime single tasking OS.
You can do all you development on a PC and use PC debugging tools that you are used to using.
You see lots of CNC machines and such that use DOS for that reason.
Or look at it this way. Does the device you use work? Does it do what you need it to do?
If so then the software isn't crappy. Nothing sucks more than you replace a piece of software that works but isn't pretty with pretty bug ridden software.

Re:Floppies

[gnieboer]

...crappy software.

Would you really rather have that $500,000 piece of equipment running DOS 2.0 move to Windows Vista?

When was the last time your DOS 2.0 machine needed a security patch, or rebooted itself randomly, to for that matter did anything unexpected?
Simple... yes
Outdated... yes
Crappy... not so much.

Re:Floppies

[LWATCDR]

We are talking about software here not religion.

But there is FreeDOS which is probably what a good number of these DOS like embedded systems are running. Frankly that is why I didn't say MS-DOS. A lot of people use FreeDOS for this kind of work now. Some use DR-DOS and still others used MS-DOS. Frankly I would use FreeDOS myself unless there is some good reason not to but that is just me.
Please at this point you are just being silly. Linux is overkill for something like a CNC controller or radiation counter.
Plus for many of these applications it just will not work. Educate yourself just a little and you might actually stop wasting peoples time.
BTW if you need something that has a bit more capability than DOS does but still lighter than Linux there are options.
RTEMS will work for realtime systems but it is a lot more complex to set up than DOS but it runs on more CPUs and is general more flexible.
Another option is Contiki http://www.sics.se/contiki/about-contiki.html
But again the thing about DOS is simply so many people know everything there is to know about it. It is super well documented and the Development tools are everywhere and well known.
If you don't like DJCPP or the free Borland toolset you still have a ton of options left open including http://www.freepascal.org/
Linux is a great embedded tool when you need it. The thing is for a lot of tasks it is overkill and frankly just will not do the job as reliably and as cheaply as good old DOS will.
So go read up and and stop treating FOSS as a religion and start using it as a tool. And stop being a tool.

Re:I have a lot on 3.5"

[opus_magnum]

I'd convert them while hardware was still working if I were you.

Re:XP Users

[Lumpy]

Of 10,000,000 XP users less than 100 of them knows what slipstream is or has the skills to even do that. It will not happen, you can barely get a windows user to not click on every popup, you think you can get them to slipstream SP3 into their XP install Disc?

Re:Some hardware needs them

[JustNilt]

(Side note: This is why I read Slashdot. You have to wade through the muck but there're still nuggets of pure gold here and there.) Sorry ... on topic now:

1.It may not be using the standard floppy disk controler interface and may not be able to support that particular gizmo

Well, if you RTFL (I know, I know ....) then you'd have seen this:

The device connects to your existing power and data (ribbon) cables.

The soundless drive emulates your existing floppy drive to act as if the floppy drive was never removed. This drive will replace most any existing 720k/1.44MB capacity IBM format floppy drive or your money back. Do away with the painfully slow and obsolete floppy disks. Not only will this device work in PCs but, it will also work in machinery or devices that still use floppy drives. This device completely replaces the universal floppy drive of computerized system. If you are not certain this device will work in your equipment, then just ask! 1 Year Warranty. This device also emulates NON IBM type drives (TEAC, etc) and can also be setup as a DRIVE 0, DRIVE 1 configuration

Back to your points:

2.Are YOU going to be the one to tell the boss that the really really expensive piece of equipment has failed and that they cant get warranty service for it because of an unauthorized third party modification just so you dont need to keep floppy disks around?

I agree this is a good thing to consider. It may not always be a good idea even if it works. Definitely a YMMV solution.

3.What do you do about things that actually come on floppy disk (for example the manufacturer may ship new firmware on floppy that you insert and have the machine read). Yes you could reinstall the disk drive for those rare occasions (or find a way to make the floppytousb device work with a USB floppy so you can read the disk you need to) but that's a lot of work.

I wonder if one of the USB floppies would work. While it most likely wouldn't, I sort of like the Goldbergian aspect of running a floppy controller -> USB converter -> USB floppy drive emulator when needed. Hehe. In reality, I'd probably go with a floppy cable that supports 2 drives and run the floppy drive on one and the FloppytoUSB device on the other, just in case.

Nonetheless, this is quite an interesting device. I'll probably pick one up just to fiddle with. I'd love to have the option of USB sticks being available in such odd DOS environment for some clients.

Re:Some hardware needs them

[MBGMorden]

I also use floppies to hand-out resumes,

Wouldn't it be smarter to hand them out on CDs? They're just as cheap (and since you're not getting it back, single write isn't a probleM), and you're far more likely for the person you're handing it to to actually be able to read it.

I can honestly say that if you gave our HR Department a resume on floppy they'd have to scramble to find a machine that could read it. My guess is it's more likely your app/resume would simply not make it to the next round of consideration.