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The last person standing in the floppy disk business

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Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#31

Post by JKCalhoun »

> Duplicating disks in the 1980s and early 1990s was as good as printing money. It was unbelievably profitable.

I remember a little operation run out of Topeka, Kansas in the 80's called "Budget Bytes" that sold floppies with Macintosh shareware on them. I mean I could have downloaded some of the stuff over FTP from the university but you still needed a floppy to copy them on to.

So fun, poring over the news-print catalog of disks they had available, deciding which ones to order.

I assumed it was a Real Business™ at the time but in hindsight it was no doubt some entrepreneur copying floppies in his garage. I wish I had been as entrepreneurial at the time.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#32

Post by seanc »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #18

One advantage of floppy disks, is that you could safely take a random disk, reformat it and reuse it. Now, however, if you insert a random USB drive into your computer, you run a high risk that your computer will be pwned.

Not true! Floppies had viruses too. Even back in the 80's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_(computer_virus)

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#33

Post by dang »

Recent and related:

Japan declares war on floppy disks for government use - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32663995 - Aug 2022 (130 comments)

Less recent and related:

Ask HN: Why is there still a market for floppy disks? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31658880 - June 2022 (12 comments)

Tokyo says long goodbye to beloved floppy disks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29064316 - Nov 2021 (12 comments)

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#35

Post by JKCalhoun »

blamarvt wrote: post #10
causi wrote: post #5

Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.

And nothing makes your heart sink faster than the rhythmic sound of trying over and over to read the same bad disk.

Yeah, that, "Any second it will give up and shoot the disk back out" thought.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#36

Post by traceroute66 »

causi wrote: post #5

Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.

> Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible...

Ahem, cough, dial-up modem handshake.

That is all I have to say on the subject.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#37

Post by phoboslab »

causi wrote: post #5

Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.

True. I'd put it on the same level as connecting XLR cables. MiniDiscs (and to a lesser extent) UMDs were maybe the last examples of such satisfying mechanics.

We are moving towards a solid state future where no user interaction directly drives mechanics. Physical media has largely disappeared, few cars are sold with a manual transmission and everything is wireless.

Maybe folding phones will fill the gap. For now, at least my toaster remains!

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#38

Post by gattilorenz »

biggc wrote: post #3

> These are people who use floppy disks as a way to get information in and out of a machine. Imagine it’s 1990, and you’re building a big industrial machine of one kind or another. You design it to last 50 years and you’d want to use the best technology available. At the time this was a 3.5-inch floppy disk. This quote had me wondering if you could build a hardware emulator layer that would allow you to use a USB-dri…

The most common/cheap solution is the Gotek floppy drive, easily found on Aliexpress or eBay, and with the FlashFloppy firmware [1] for expanding the capabilities of the hardware.

Since I'm nitpicking, it's not an IDE interface, as there's no IDE floppy drives :)

[1] https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#40

Post by myth_drannon »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #31

> Duplicating disks in the 1980s and early 1990s was as good as printing money. It was unbelievably profitable. I remember a little operation run out of Topeka, Kansas in the 80's called "Budget Bytes" that sold floppies with Macintosh shareware on them. I mean I could have downloaded some of the stuff over FTP from the university but you still needed a floppy to copy them on to. So fun, poring over the news-print ca…

I'm actually reading a book about these shareware businesses. It was quite profitable selling them for 4$-7$ and they were popular. They would start as one person and occasionaly grow into huge operations involving hundreds of employees.
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