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View Full Version : Floppy disk drives will soon be history


Lotto
02-06-2003, 08:17 PM
Dell is not installing floppy drives on new computers starting next month. Check it out here:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030206/ap_on_hi_te/dell_floppy_drives_3

I'm curious if any of the newer pda's come with software on 3 1/2" floppies.

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
02-07-2003, 12:16 AM
Doesn't surprise me, especially since you can boot off CDs nowadays. I've never seen or heard of any PPC software being delivered on a floppy... don't know of many that would fit.

Dave Beauvais
02-07-2003, 04:50 AM
This doesn't affect me much personally and hope many other manufacturers follow in their footsteps. Floppies are slow and unreliable, but mostly just too dang small for today's files. I'd say about 95% of the data files I work with each day would not fit on a single floppy. Honestly, the only thing I've personally used a floppy for in the last year has been to flash the BIOS of a couple systems. They could boot to CD, but I didn't have any CD-RWs laying around and felt it wasn't worth wasting even a cheap CD-R for a 512 KB BIOS image that's only going to be used once.

These days, with networks becoming more common in homes, I hope the days of the floppy-based "SneakerNet" are numbered.

Dave

taxus
02-07-2003, 05:03 AM
It's about time.

Yet I'm more interested in a gadget like the Sandisk Cruzer (same principle, but memory is a SD card) than in a fixed flash memory USB keychain drive. I'd rather bring that with me anywhere I go than my sync cable.

Problem is, I don't trust the Sandisk SD cards anymore.

Does anyone else make a similar device?

Dave Beauvais
02-07-2003, 05:49 AM
Problem is, I don't trust the Sandisk SD cards anymore. Does anyone else make a similar device?
Nor do I. The nice thing about the Cruzer is that it's really just an ordinary SD/MMC card reader; you can use any brand card in it. (Currently mine has a Lexar 64 MB card in it since the 256 MB SanDisk card that came with it died.)

Sorry for helping this thread even further off-topic. :-)

--Dave

dotcomguy
02-10-2003, 01:25 AM
It's about time.
That about sums it up. Floppies are not useful anymore. They're too small and sooner or later you get the dreadful "Read error" messages. Flash-based media and CD-RWs seem to be the way to go with portable storage nowadays. Those solutions are much more reliable and have much larger capacities.

vincentsiaw
02-10-2003, 05:27 AM
geez, even as a student i never use the floppy for the past 1,5 years now, the most i used is the zip disk, which bty, is getting obselete now, i think the cruzer is a good replacement for the floppy!

EvilOne
02-10-2003, 02:54 PM
Wow, I must say, it is about time that someone is finally stopping floppy drives from being attached to their boxes. I have not had a floppy drive connected to any of my computers for well over a year. CD/RW is my method of backup for what I need saved in case of a crash. Plus, everything else I need to install is on this CD/DVD or that CD/DVD. Way to go Dell.

Rirath
02-10-2003, 04:32 PM
Well, I for one will go against the flow and say it's a mistake. Floppies, no matter how old, are still useful. They're insanely cheap, small to carry, and until now universal between PCs. I still use floppies for stuff like backing up my MS Money file, bringing small reports to class, etc. There's no reason whatsoever to do away with the drive when they retail for $20 measly bucks. They can't be saving much of anything. Most people buying one of these PCs would have no idea how to install one.

I really don't understand the resentment against floppy.

Janak Parekh
02-10-2003, 04:52 PM
I really don't understand the resentment against floppy.
Perhaps it's because the quality of floppies and floppy drives has steadily declined over the years. I now expect failures, unlike the old days when I truly depended on them.

--janak

taxus
02-25-2003, 07:19 AM
As a computer tech support guy for 300+ users, I regularly see floppies fail. Of course, the ordinary users don't realize that floppies are far from being reliable, and often trust important files to those pieces of plastic crap. And of course, that floppy's the only place where they put that so important file. That's why I resent floppies.

Anyway, I finally found something akin to the Sandisk Cruzer: the ACOMdata mini-Flash! memory card reader/writer. It's available in 4 models: SD/MMC, CF, MS and SM.

The cost? Only $13.31 at eCost (http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?dpno=964296). (The picture is of the MS model, but eCost's title says it's the SD/MMC model.)

dotcomguy
03-09-2003, 05:04 AM
Well, I for one will go against the flow and say it's a mistake. Floppies, no matter how old, are still useful. They're insanely cheap, small to carry, and until now universal between PCs. I still use floppies for stuff like backing up my MS Money file, bringing small reports to class, etc. There's no reason whatsoever to do away with the drive when they retail for $20 measly bucks. They can't be saving much of anything. Most people buying one of these PCs would have no idea how to install one.

I really don't understand the resentment against floppy.
Just the other day I was in the music lab in my college's fine arts center. Someone wanted to open a composition they were writing for a class in Finale. They had saved it on a floppy disk. When it wouldn't load he asked me for help. It would load to a certain point and then stop. We tried the usual scandisk, but in the end it was futile. The disk was no good because of a few bad sectors. This has happened to me many times, so I don't use floppy disks anymore. I absolutely love my Diskonkey. It's been very reliable. :D

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
03-09-2003, 02:05 PM
Funny, I was just at work the other day and my coworker pulled out a new floppy disk. I asked, "you still use that?" and he said b/c the client machines he works on are completely locked down in terms of USB connectivity, he has no other choice.

He proceeded to put the floppy into the desktop, copied a file, then inserted into his laptop... and BAM! Failed!

I think there's a lot of truth to the degrading quality of floppies nowadays.

Rirath
03-09-2003, 02:05 PM
Almost everything that's been said so far I can blame on user error. First off, backup backup backup. One copy is not enough. Second, I'm betting these disks were not taken care of properly. I've never once had a single floppy disk fail on me, honest. Third, a few bad experiences does not explain why an insanely cheap, nearly universal format is being left out.

Do you honestly think the people buying these computers have diskonkey?

shawnc
03-09-2003, 02:16 PM
First off, backup backup backup. One copy is not enough.


Any technology that requires this type of maintenance is not worth it (IMO). Who has the time to perform so many backups? I sure don't. May the floppy RIP. It's about time.

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
03-09-2003, 02:43 PM
First off, backup backup backup. One copy is not enough. Second, I'm betting these disks were not taken care of properly.
You're right Rirath, but ShawnC has a good point in that floppies require too much for too little. I can see where they would be the most convenient solution in a college setting, but in the working world, it becomes less and less practical.

I have a hot swappable floppy/DVD player on my laptop and in the past two years, I may have used the floppy once... maybe! ...and that's with me working all over the continental US as well as Japan, Thailand, UK and Germany.

Not all computers have diskonkey obviously, but nearly all systems I see now do have USB or a PC card slot or IR or a network connection.

I don't think that floppies should be completely banished, but I certainly see the justification for dropping support for them in new computers.

dotcomguy
03-09-2003, 03:00 PM
Almost everything that's been said so far I can blame on user error. First off, backup backup backup. One copy is not enough. Second, I'm betting these disks were not taken care of properly. I've never once had a single floppy disk fail on me, honest. Third, a few bad experiences does not explain why an insanely cheap, nearly universal format is being left out.
It's not user error. Let's say someone has sufficient backups but simply needs to have that file elsewhere. If the disk fails, they may still have the data somewhere, but they won't have it there when they need it at that time.

I didn't always keep my disks in a padded case. You shouldn't have to. I didn't throw them around and mistreat them however as you seem to imply.

You were lucky to never have one fail on you. (yet)
Do you honestly think the people buying these computers have diskonkey?
I never said that. I said that it was a much better alternative. And, arguably flash media is also insanely cheap given capacity and reliabilty when compared to a floppy disk.

Sven Johannsen
03-09-2003, 03:11 PM
Not sure where I stand on this, but I am one who regularly uses floppies. There are stil numerous pieces of equipment in the environment I work (military) that require them. Heck we got systems that run on DOS 6.2. Beyond that, for the office we had to run down to the Circuit City and pick up some network cards a week ago. All three identical boxes. One came with drivers on a CD, two came on floppies. Had I needed just one or two, and my luck was typical, I'd have had drivers on floppies. (Download them you say? It was the network card I needed the drivers for.)

I agree, most modern machines can boot and load from a CD. Haven't seen one that boots from a thumb drive yet, though I expect there are some. Not all the PCs out there are modern though, and many can't even update the Bios to support a bootable CD. If you buy a PC with no floppy, I can imagine it should be operable, mainatainable, reloadable, back-upable with no floppy. The fact that some of those exist is nice, but shouldn't be taken as an indication floppies are no longer needed or useful to anyone.

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
03-09-2003, 04:05 PM
Not sure where I stand on this, but I am one who regularly uses floppies. There are stil numerous pieces of equipment in the environment I work (military) that require them. Heck we got systems that run on DOS 6.2. Beyond that, for the office we had to run down to the Circuit City and pick up some network cards a week ago.
<...>
Not all the PCs out there are modern though, and many can't even update the Bios to support a bootable CD. If you buy a PC with no floppy, I can imagine it should be operable, mainatainable, reloadable, back-upable with no floppy. The fact that some of those exist is nice, but shouldn't be taken as an indication floppies are no longer needed or useful to anyone.
I think in environments where old legacy PCs exist and/or are abundant, floppy support is still critical and do justify their need.

This is slowly becoming more the exception though.

orangehat
03-09-2003, 05:20 PM
We still use them when users' hose up their systems so bad we can't boot from the harddrive. I could just remove the HD and put in another machine to save some of the data but booting from a Floppy is quicker. Yea, maybe I have some stupid computer users as friends but so does everybody else.

taxus
03-09-2003, 07:42 PM
Almost everything that's been said so far I can blame on user error. First off, backup backup backup.

Most of my users don't begin to know the first thing about computers, and they don't care anyway. They want it to work. They don't want to know anything else.

You can't blame the user. You have to blame the media: it should be reliable. How could they know they can't rely on a floppy, when they don't even know how it works, or don't know the difference between it and a CD?

We're talking about people who call CDs "cassettes", here. People who don't know which version of Office they're working on, or how to discover it. We're talking about people who don't even know what the File Explorer is for, people who, upon receiving files by email or on a floppy, have to open them in PowerPoint or Word or Excel in order to make their own copies, because they don't have a clue about how to work on a computer.

Last week, I once again had to tell one of my user that if she had an error opening a PowerPoint file, it's because she shouldn't have tried to open it from the floppy (there was no space left, hence the "disk space insufficient" error) just to make her own copy to put in her folder on the network. Once again, for the Xth time in 4 years, I had to tell her about the File Explorer. And I'll have to tell her again next month. And the next. And so on.

Don't forget that the weakest link is the user, and that the average user doesn't want to know anything beyond the strict minimum of what he/she needs to know to do the work. And that the average user can't be bothered with stuff like "backups".

I've been pestering my mother (who works at home) for the past 10 years about the need to backup. I did everything to help her. I gave her an Eazy Drive, then a CDRW drive. Yet she never did a backup, not even once. Why? Because she's lucky: she never lost files, and she can't be bothered with those unimportant technical details.

Second, I'm betting these disks were not taken care of properly.

Not in my experience. Just a month ago, my colleagues and I finished migrating the PCs from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. We used a bunch of floppies to boot Ghost clients. In the four weeks we took (we only worked during the evenings), we had at least half a dozen floppies fail out of 40. probably more around ten. All those floppies had been reformated on day one, and we take good care of our stuff.

Third, a few bad experiences does not explain why an insanely cheap, nearly universal format is being left out.

It's being left out because it's painfully slow, doesn't store much, and mostly, because it's unreliable. And because old, unreliable tech has someday to be replaced by a modern, reliable one.

Death to the floppy! Long lives flash drives! :D

Janak Parekh
03-09-2003, 07:44 PM
Most of my users don't begin to know the first thing about computers, and they don't care anyway. They want it to work. They don't want to know anything else.
Where do you draw the line, though? We don't let people drive cars without training and a license. Computers are inherently unreliable. The only way around is either to do backup, or to use thin clients and worry about backup on the server-side. That's the extent of your choices.

--janak

taxus
03-09-2003, 08:05 PM
I don't have any say in the matter. These people are forced to work on computers, and don't like it, so they don't want to know more than they need to. Once a manager said that if it was up to him, he'd prefer to go back to the paper, pencil and calculator than have to work with computers.

Ever since I began on this job (4 and a half years ago) I've been pushing for training the users because they're hopelessly clueless. But the management doesn't care. Mostly because our main use of computers is a client-server app, so the backup of critical data is taken care of by a tech department, and usually the people who prepare personalized content are the staff, and they're only 7% of the users.

But when the rest of them do need to type a letter in Word rather than use a prepared form, it's usually pretty ugly. :lol: Picture this: rather than type "enter" to end a line, many users type tabs until the text goes to the next line! (I've seen some Word documents which had hundreds of tabs in them.) Then picture the manager who has to format a prepared form using that cut-and-pasted text. Usually the manager knows little more than the employee about Word use.

Fortunately that doesn't happen often.

The worst people are in the 40-60 age range, those who didn't grow up with computers. I don't get many calls from younger people. I guess they won't need as many of us techies 15-20 years from now, when they retire out all the computer-challenged.

[edit: rearranged the paragraphs]

Vincent M Ferrari
03-09-2003, 08:52 PM
Perhaps it's because the quality of floppies and floppy drives has steadily declined over the years. I now expect failures, unlike the old days when I truly depended on them.

You and me both, my friend... I have yet to not be let down by a floppy drive in the last 2 years or so. I carry my cruzer at all times, almost, just to be safe.

Rirath
03-11-2003, 03:38 AM
You were lucky to never have one fail on you. (yet)

13 years and running. That's a heck of a lucky streak.

I see this from a few perspectives. One is the 1337 poweruser, who these days almost shames the floppy by default. It's not something to ever admit to using, and must be cursed rapidly before and after if ever spoken. Another group is the total newbie often spoken of who hates computers, and thus floppies with it. They backup once, if that, and toss it any old place. No big surprise sooner or later it will fail. Think they're going to treat cd-rw or dvd-rw any better? Fat chance.

You can buy a floppy drive retail for under $20. Dealers get them for next to nothing... it can't be costing Dell much to put these into computers. What do you think these newbies are going to do when they no longer have a floppy drive? Do you think they're going to magically learn to correctly burn cd-rw discs that can be read from any computer? Do you think they're going to run out and buy DiskOnKey? They don't even know what USB is, heck, they don't even know the three letters "U. - S. - B.". Floppies they understand. You put it in, you hit copy/paste, you're done.

Many many schools, colleges, businesses, etc use floppies. Lets say I brought this new Dell, and it was my only computer. Now how the heck am I suppose to turn in my programming assignment files to my various professors without floppies? Email it to them? Ha... yeah, that's sure to go over smooth.

You guys speak of dealing with newbies and various other non techie users daily, hundreds etc etc. So... what do you expect these folks to do if floppy is phased out? What about schools and locations where the media must be cheap enough to be lent out, to multiple sources, but cd-r and cd-rw isn't an option? What, exactly, do you propose?

As a student, I need floppies. If you think I'm going overboard, I dare you to challenge someone in the sewing industry or other heavy floppy using trades. Believe me, you'll get an ear full.

dotcomguy
03-11-2003, 04:50 AM
You were lucky to never have one fail on you. (yet)

13 years and running. That's a heck of a lucky streak.
Like I said, you are lucky, albeit very lucky.
I see this from a few perspectives. One is the 1337 poweruser, who these days almost shames the floppy by default. It's not something to ever admit to using, and must be cursed rapidly before and after if ever spoken. Another group is the total newbie often spoken of who hates computers, and thus floppies with it. They backup once, if that, and toss it any old place. No big surprise sooner or later it will fail. Think they're going to treat cd-rw or dvd-rw any better? Fat chance.

You can buy a floppy drive retail for under $20. Dealers get them for next to nothing... it can't be costing Dell much to put these into computers. What do you think these newbies are going to do when they no longer have a floppy drive? Do you think they're going to magically learn to correctly burn cd-rw discs that can be read from any computer? Do you think they're going to run out and buy DiskOnKey? They don't even know what USB is, heck, they don't even know the three letters "U. - S. - B.". Floppies they understand. You put it in, you hit copy/paste, you're done.
You're argument about non tech-savvy users is not a bad argument. However, I argue that it is not only "l33t" power users that don't use floppies. I don't use floppies because I think they are "evil." I don't use tme simply because I know better through many bad experiences with them. And, through time I was fortunate enough to find better solutions. It's definitely a transition, and such a transition will obviously be difficult for some users who have been used to using floppies for years. However, I believe it is a necessary step.
Many many schools, colleges, businesses, etc use floppies. Lets say I brought this new Dell, and it was my only computer. Now how the heck am I suppose to turn in my programming assignment files to my various professors without floppies? Email it to them? Ha... yeah, that's sure to go over smooth.
Many, possibly most, schools, colleges, and businesse have disk space allotted on their networks for students and employees to save documents. This can be used instead of floppies to save data and access it from any location on the network. I am a college student and I use that student space exclusively. Since I am also a commuter student, it is necessary for me to access that data off-campus. Conveniently for me, it is accessible via FTP. Now, I understand this is not the case everywhere, I'm just pointing out that newer, better solutions are arising and becoming used more.

One of my classes, Music Theory, requires the submission of both paper and electronic copies of music compositions. The professor has given us the option of either submitting a floppy disk containing the composition, however he has stated that it is preferred that we e-mail him the file. This hasn't been a problem at all.
You guys speak of dealing with newbies and various other non techie users daily, hundreds etc etc. So... what do you expect these folks to do if floppy is phased out? What about schools and locations where the media must be cheap enough to be lent out, to multiple sources, but cd-r and cd-rw isn't an option? What, exactly, do you propose?

As a student, I need floppies. If you think I'm going overboard, I dare you to challenge someone in the sewing industry or other heavy floppy using trades. Believe me, you'll get an ear full.
I'm not arguing that there are still environments where floppies are used a lot. There are many many environments still using old technology. Leaving floppies behind isn't the easiest transition for everyone, but it is a necessary one, and one that is happening as alternate portable storage methods become more and more popular over time.

It's not a quick transition, but it is indeed happening. And, it's a good thing.

Janak Parekh
03-11-2003, 05:34 AM
13 years and running. That's a heck of a lucky streak.
That's exactly right -- one darned lucky streak. I've been using floppies since almost the 8" days, and I can tell you with authority that (a) they tend to go bad over time; and (b) they're much more failure-prone today.

And I'm not taking the l33t or the newbie position; this is the position of a consultant who works with and repairs computers for a living.

--janak

ux4484
03-11-2003, 05:56 AM
heh.....you really get a feeling for floppy failures when you have a room full of (non-networked) racked computers, and you try to do a quick via-floppy update and 1/3 to 1/2 of the drives don't work (or damage your floppy) even after you clean each drive before starting. At home I've never had a floppy failure as I keep mine clean, at work........it an entirely different world. One location has over 3000 workstations, and not a can of air or a cleaner disk in the place.


oh.....Dell claims it's cost for distribution, labor and material to install a floppy drive in each PC is $10.

taxus
03-11-2003, 06:22 AM
You guys speak of dealing with newbies and various other non techie users daily, hundreds etc etc. So... what do you expect these folks to do if floppy is phased out? What about schools and locations where the media must be cheap enough to be lent out, to multiple sources, but cd-r and cd-rw isn't an option? What, exactly, do you propose?

Well I grant you that I work in a different environment: a local government Ministry (nope, no relation to my username :D, as it's latin!). Internally most exchanges of documents is done by email or on the network.

From what we techies were told by the people who negociate contracts, our current provider, Dell, has offered us to replace the floppy drives by 8MB flash memory keychains; one keychain will be provided for each new computer.

Obviously when we do receive them (which won't be for a while since we replaced our entire computer park only last year) I don't intend to provide all users with the flash memory. Only those who will need it, which should be 10% or less, i.e. the budget/planning/training staff.

If they can't make it work on their home computers for whatever reason, then they'll just have to use email (in case of non confidential information), or borrow one of the laptops we keep for people need to do work at home. They shouldn't work on their home computers anyway.

Leaving floppies behind isn't the easiest transition for everyone, but it is a necessary one, and one that is happening as alternate portable storage methods become more and more popular over time.

Exactly. Technology evolves, and so should habits. We're not still using DOS after all, right?

Rirath
03-11-2003, 06:42 AM
Leaving floppies behind isn't the easiest transition for everyone, but it is a necessary one, and one that is happening as alternate portable storage methods become more and more popular over time.

Exactly. Technology evolves, and so should habits. We're not still using DOS after all, right?

Some of us (me) still use the command line, and our serial ports, and parallel ports... etc etc. :| Windows is not a complete replacement for DOS, USB is not a complete replacement for all other ports, CD-RW & etc is not a complete replacement for floppies. (SD is not a complete replacement for CF, MS Word is not a complete replacement for MS Notepad, etc, etc.) It's not a matter of moving on, it's a matter of choice and options. Does backwards compatibility mean nothing these days? If it's more than X years old, dump it?

Well, I hope they keep making the PC for folks like me who actually want and use all the options available to them.

Janak Parekh
03-11-2003, 06:45 AM
Some of us (me) still use the command line, and our serial ports, and parallel ports... etc etc. :| Windows is not a complete replacement for DOS
In WinNT/2k/XP, yes, Windows is a complete replacement. "cmd" is not DOS.

USB is not a complete replacement for all other ports
... but it's getting darned close. And thank goodness, if you've had to deal with IRQ conflicts.

Does backwards compatibility mean nothing these days? If it's more than X years old, dump it?
Where do you draw the line? I mean, my copy of MS Flight Simulator 1.0 is probably not going to work. Neither will my AST SixPakPlus ISA card. I'm pretty glad neither will. :)

Or a better example: do you have an 8" floppy drive? Or a 5.25" floppy drive? Not in any modern machine. And that's also a good thing.

--janak

P.S. A cookie for you if you remember what ISA card I'm referring to. ;)

Rirath
03-11-2003, 07:00 AM
Some of us (me) still use the command line, and our serial ports, and parallel ports... etc etc. :| Windows is not a complete replacement for DOS
In WinNT/2k/XP, yes, Windows is a complete replacement. "cmd" is not DOS.

I know this, obviously, and now you're getting picky. Wouldn't be hard to have it as a boot option if a user so wanted. Notice though that XP still works just fine with many dos/command line apps. Just a matter of configuring it properly. They didn't just say to heck with it and switch off the ability.

USB is not a complete replacement for all other ports
... but it's getting darned close. And thank goodness, if you've had to deal with IRQ conflicts.

It's ridiculous when you have to keep a 5 yr old PC around just to use older equipment which still does the job better than anything on the market today or coming.

Does backwards compatibility mean nothing these days? If it's more than X years old, dump it?
Where do you draw the line? I mean, my copy of MS Flight Simulator 1.0 is probably not going to work. Neither will my AST SixPakPlus ISA card. I'm pretty glad neither will. :)

I love moving forward, usb is brilliant, I've got tons of usb ports. 2.0? Even better, I've got em (and use them with 2.0 devices) as well. Firewire? That too. KT333 with DDR 2700 ram, even though I won't see a speed increase over 2100, just because. (was new at the time) But where I draw the line, and I know this isn't the line you was referring to, is a PC that will make my perfectly good tools and gadgets like gamepad adapters worthless. And all just because a company wants to save a few bucks.

It's really ashame in this forum of powerusers and self proclaimed W?BCIC kings people seem so willing to not only accept this, but cheer it. (btw, I hate the W?BCIC mentality and/or reasoning... but that's another rant. :))

dotcomguy
03-11-2003, 07:13 AM
Does backwards compatibility mean nothing these days? If it's more than X years old, dump it?
Sure. I mean, DVD players can read old Cd's. ;)
I love moving forward, usb is brilliant, I've got tons of usb ports. 2.0? Even better, I've got em (and use them with 2.0 devices) as well. Firewire? That too. KT333 with DDR 2700 ram, even though I won't see a speed increase over 2100, just because. (was new at the time) But where I draw the line, and I know this isn't the line you was referring to, is a PC that will make my perfectly good tools and gadgets like gamepad adapters worthless. And all just because a company wants to save a few bucks.
They're not making it worthless, nor do I think the motivation is to save money. They are just demonstrating that it is not a necessary component for the average new computer user. It's a forward step. I think it's important to note that by not including floppy drives in new computers does not nullify the usefulness of floppies. It shows that the next genertaion of computer users will not use floppies like previous computer users did. The average person that goes to buy a new computer today will not get the same advantage of a floppy drive as opposed to someone who has been using computers for years. They will move on to newer storage methods that fit their needs better.

Janak Parekh
03-11-2003, 04:55 PM
I know this, obviously, and now you're getting picky. Wouldn't be hard to have it as a boot option if a user so wanted. Notice though that XP still works just fine with many dos/command line apps. Just a matter of configuring it properly. They didn't just say to heck with it and switch off the ability.
No, I'm not getting picky at all. At the low-level, WinNT/2k/XP implement a DOS "emulator"/virtual machine (as you notice when you run COMMAND.COM). It's nothing like booting into DOS, where DOS runs as the OS kernel. And there are a lot of old games and applications that won't run in this emulation environment. MS tried hard to make the majority work, but try, say, Sidekick 1.0. It won't.

It's ridiculous when you have to keep a 5 yr old PC around just to use older equipment which still does the job better than anything on the market today or coming.
That's a sad report on the state of modern game controllers, not for our need to keep game ports. Game ports are a horrible backwater analog technology, and as such game controllers on game ports require calibration, etc. USB is infinitely superior.

But where I draw the line, and I know this isn't the line you was referring to, is a PC that will make my perfectly good tools and gadgets like gamepad adapters worthless. And all just because a company wants to save a few bucks.
But again, this line is arbitrary. There are people who love their original IBM XT and AT keyboards - the super-clicky units. You can't use them with newer computers, period. Now, you might not have one, but would you say that manufacturers should include the old 5-pin connectors to keep backwards compatibility for something someone considers a "useful gadget"?

Or how about ISA slots? Putting such 8-bit slots on a 32-bit or 64-bit bus causes infinitely huge engineering challenges -- mainboard line lengths are already stretched to their limits given fast buses and processors. There are design constraints, much more than cost, which are an incentive to get rid of legacy technology.

It's really ashame in this forum of powerusers and self proclaimed W?BCIC kings people seem so willing to not only accept this, but cheer it.
This has nothing to do with W?BIC. It's the reason you upgrade and you use modern Pocket PCs as opposed to Palms. You want the new features and are willing to sacrifice backward compatibility for that. Infinite backward compatibility is a design nightmare for the hardware and software developer. Witness the horrible instruction set mess that the x86 processors are today -- just to keep backwards-compatibility with the 8086. Intel is trying to finally end the x86 line too.

--janak

taxus
03-12-2003, 01:02 AM
"cmd" is not DOS.
I know this, obviously, and now you're getting picky.

Well, I was not speaking of the command line, but of DOS the OS. Surely you're not using DOS to access this forum. :P

I still use the command line a lot, but from within a graphical OS which superceded DOS, that was my point.

Does backwards compatibility mean nothing these days? If it's more than X years old, dump it?
Well for my part, it's more like "if it's unreliable and there are a lot of better techs arounds, by all means let's dump it!"

We're at a point when non USB-enabled PCs are slowly phased out. (I don't count PCs running Win95 as "USB-enabled"; we still had some a little more than a year ago.) Now we can think of phasing out the floppies in favor of USB solutions.

I'd rather have the drive bay saved up for a 6-in-1 flash card reader, or something else useful.

It's really ashame in this forum of powerusers and self proclaimed W?BCIC kings people seem so willing to not only accept this, but cheer it.
Not being of anglo-saxon culture, I'm afraid I don't know that expression. (Anglo-saxon obsession with abbreviations is another thing that baffles me, and no, it's not just an IRC thing. :) )

Janak Parekh
03-12-2003, 01:44 AM
Not being of anglo-saxon culture, I'm afraid I don't know that expression. (Anglo-saxon obsession with abbreviations is another thing that baffles me, and no, it's not just an IRC thing. :) )
It's not a English slang acronym. It's a Pocket PC Thoughts-ism. See this (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7144).

--janak

Jason Dunn
03-12-2003, 05:34 PM
About a year ago I was begging OEMs to include a CompactFlash slot. I think it would be the ultimate replacement for a floppy drive. Think about it:

Small, but not SD-card small
Very tough & durable
Can be made very cheaply (if machines started shipping with CF slots, I think we'd see memory manufacturers release three packs of 4/8/16 MB cards for ultra cheap ($10 or so)

CompactFlash has massive industry traction, and even with some newer cameras switching to SD cards, it will be a very long time before CF cards fade away - especially as they continue to surge in capacity.

Die floppy die!

And for those who still use them, it's not like anyone is going to come and remove the floppy drives from your machines, or stop selling them off the shelf.

The biggest problem with floppy drives is that they were created in an era when people had lowered expectations for computers. Because of that they kept multiple copies, backed up their floppies, etc. Now, I have friends who are relatively new to computers carrying an unprotected floppy in their pocket and wondering why it doesn't work. Or classmates of my wife's using the same disc for two years and wondering why it doesn't work.

We need a new storage medium that can live up to the abuse the modern-day, wishful-thinking consumer can dish out, and that's a solid-state medium like CompactFlash.

Janak Parekh
03-12-2003, 05:37 PM
About a year ago I was begging OEMs to include a CompactFlash slot. I think it would be the ultimate replacement for a floppy drive.
Unfortunately, about the only company that's actively, aggressively doing this is Sony - with Memory Sticks. :cry:

--janak

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
03-12-2003, 05:44 PM
About a year ago I was begging OEMs to include a CompactFlash slot. I think it would be the ultimate replacement for a floppy drive.
Unfortunately, about the only company that's actively, aggressively doing this is Sony - with Memory Sticks. :cry:
Many of the desktop systems sold in Japan also come standard with CF slots. Unfortunately, I never see outside of Japan.

Phunkphantom
03-13-2003, 02:16 PM
This is my ideal replacement for the floppy! (From our most popular people at the moment!)

I cant find confirmation that it is 3.5" but it sure looks like it to me!
What does everyone else think?

http://us.shuttle.com/specs_access.asp?pro_id=166

Matt

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
03-13-2003, 03:44 PM
This is my ideal replacement for the floppy! (From our most popular people at the moment!)

I cant find confirmation that it is 3.5" but it sure looks like it to me!
What does everyone else think?

http://us.shuttle.com/specs_access.asp?pro_id=166

Matt
Certainly looks like it. The image on the product box seems to show it located under your typical 5.25" slot. I've seen products like this online before.

I haven't bought it yet b/c I don't use my desktop nearly as often as my laptop and PPC, but the next time I decide to build myself a new system, I'll probably include something like this.

mscdex
03-13-2003, 04:15 PM
I definitely think that we should keep floppies until manufacturers come up with some emergency boot method, but until then in case something horribly goes wrong with your system, you'll always need a boot disk.

dotcomguy
03-13-2003, 04:18 PM
I definitely think that we should keep floppies until manufacturers come up with some emergency boot method, but until then in case something horribly goes wrong with your system, you'll always need a boot disk.
On most systems you can boot from a CD. You can install your OS on a formatted drive without ever putting a floppy in.

mscdex
03-13-2003, 04:29 PM
About a year ago I was begging OEMs to include a CompactFlash slot. I think it would be the ultimate replacement for a floppy drive.
Unfortunately, about the only company that's actively, aggressively doing this is Sony - with Memory Sticks. :cry:
Many of the desktop systems sold in Japan also come standard with CF slots. Unfortunately, I never see outside of Japan.

Well, you can get pcmcia slots that fit in a 3.5" space in your case. I got a couple of these drives with controller cards for free. But I suppose you could get them easily for very cheap. I would have one of them in my computer, but I do not have enough IDE "ports". My Primary master, slave, Secondary master, and slave are both taken up by hard drives and cdrw and dvd-rom. Oh well, it'd be nice to have too, seeing how I use pcmcia memory cards (Sandisk) with my iPaq's PCMCIA sleeve.

Janak Parekh
03-13-2003, 04:45 PM
Well, you can get pcmcia slots that fit in a 3.5" space in your case.
The problem with this is that it's not ubiquitous. I'd love to see a CF slot in every new PC shipped. That could spell the end of older storage media like floppy or Zip disks.

--janak

Jason Dunn
03-14-2003, 09:12 PM
I definitely think that we should keep floppies until manufacturers come up with some emergency boot method, but until then in case something horribly goes wrong with your system, you'll always need a boot disk.
On most systems you can boot from a CD. You can install your OS on a formatted drive without ever putting a floppy in.

True. But what about BIOS updates? That's about the only thing I use a floppy drive for any more, and you saw how well THAT went for me. :roll: :lol:

Janak Parekh
03-14-2003, 09:14 PM
True. But what about BIOS updates? That's about the only thing I use a floppy drive for any more, and you saw how well THAT went for me. :roll: :lol:
Actually, it's pretty easy to make bootable CDs. The only problem is you might need a floppy drive on the machine with which you make bootable CDs.

--janak

mscdex
03-15-2003, 12:30 AM
True. But what about BIOS updates? That's about the only thing I use a floppy drive for any more, and you saw how well THAT went for me. :roll: :lol:
Actually, it's pretty easy to make bootable CDs. The only problem is you might need a floppy drive on the machine with which you make bootable CDs.

--janak

Ok, but it's definitely more cost-effective to use a floppy disk that is rewritable (blank CD-RW's are more expensive than CD-R's), and floppies are much easier to write to and faster in some cases. Also, rewriting on a floppy over a period of time will not affect it's performance as much as rewriting on a CD-RW over a long period of time. One more thing is that a lot of motherboard manufacturers, etc., have programs you download that create the special FLOPPY boot disks for BIOS updating or otherwise.

dotcomguy
03-15-2003, 01:16 AM
Also, rewriting on a floppy over a period of time will not affect it's performance as much as rewriting on a CD-RW over a long period of time.
Since when do you have to use a floppy for it to degrade over time?



The BIOS update argument is a valid one, but let me add this. A BIOS update is something that is rarely done, and something the average home user never does. Note, that these PC's are being sold to the average PC user who will buy a new PC before updating their BIOS. Even if you are a power user who wants to update your BIOS, you would only have to have a floppy installed for that rare instance when you do perform a BIOS update.

Janak Parekh
03-15-2003, 02:56 AM
Ok, but it's definitely more cost-effective to use a floppy disk that is rewritable (blank CD-RW's are more expensive than CD-R's), and floppies are much easier to write to and faster in some cases.
For the moment, I agree. However, if floppy drives get deprecated, you'll see many solutions out there to rapidly and easily create bootable CDs for the BIOS updates. Either that, or in-Windows updates (which can be accomplished using a special device driver).

Also, rewriting on a floppy over a period of time will not affect it's performance as much as rewriting on a CD-RW over a long period of time.
Perhaps, but the cost of CD-Rs is so cheap that it's just simpler to burn it once on a CD-R and then throw it away.

--janak

mscdex
03-15-2003, 04:17 AM
Perhaps, but the cost of CD-Rs is so cheap that it's just simpler to burn it once on a CD-R and then throw it away.

--janak

Perhaps, but isn't that a waste of a 650-700MB cd? Making a bootable cd with only 1.44MB worth of data on it or less and then throwing it away? I dunno, maybe it's just me, but that seems like a waste of a cd/money?

Janak Parekh
03-15-2003, 07:53 PM
Perhaps, but isn't that a waste of a 650-700MB cd? Making a bootable cd with only 1.44MB worth of data on it or less and then throwing it away? I dunno, maybe it's just me, but that seems like a waste of a cd/money?
Yes, it is a waste, ecologically speaking, but not really cost-speaking.

--janak

Ekkie Tepsupornchai
03-15-2003, 08:24 PM
Perhaps, but isn't that a waste of a 650-700MB cd? Making a bootable cd with only 1.44MB worth of data on it or less and then throwing it away? I dunno, maybe it's just me, but that seems like a waste of a cd/money?
Yes, it is a waste, ecologically speaking, but not really cost-speaking.

--janak

Well isn't it possible to burn 1.44MB worth and still leave the CD for additional burning if you want? You don't have to "close" the CD when creating a bootable one and just burn a couple megs worth, do you?

Janak Parekh
03-15-2003, 08:27 PM
Well isn't it possible to burn 1.44MB worth and still leave the CD for additional burning if you want? You don't have to "close" the CD when creating a bootable one and just burn a couple megs worth, do you?
True. In fact, you can wipe the TOC, so you can use it as a (640-1.4)MB CD. I do use most of my CDs as multisession setups, actually.

Still, CD-Rs as a bootable solution are one-shots.

--janak