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The Mystery of the Mega-Selling Floppy Disk

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-keep-mine-in-a-metal-toolbox dept.

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

3 of 558 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not so legacy hardware... by couchslug · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oddly, many machines that _should_ boot off CD when selected in BIOS don't want to cooperate with (properly burned at slowest speed/good media, yadda yadda) CD/DVD booting.

    I keep a Smart Boot Manager

    http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/about.html

    floppy for those, and they'll often boot from CD/DVD when selected in the Smart Boot Manager (which can also be loaded to hard disk) menu.

    Why? Beats the shit out of me, but it has worked on many machines over the years.

    --
    "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  2. Airplanes by michelcolman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Most airplanes (A320, 737,...) still use a floppy drive to update the Flight Management System database (waypoints, routes,...). These updates are done twice a month. The data fits on about ten floppies, I think, it's just text and numbers. Some newer types use CD-Rom drives, but technology moves slowly in the airline world. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if it costs lots of money for certification just because it happens to be for an airplane.

  3. Re:Some hardware needs them by batquux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What about something like this?
    http://www.memorysuppliers.com/smartdisk-flashpath-smartmedia.html?CAWELAID=327820619

    Stick a SD card into a floppy shaped device that your drive can read like it's a real floppy. The drive can still read floppies, and there's no evidence for the warranty people.