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The last person standing in the floppy disk business

eyeondesign.aiga.org

331–340 of 363 posts

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#332

What was also funny was "floppy grammar" (at least in my time and locale) Whenever you gave someone x amount of floppies to copy something for you (prob a game)... the usual grammar/conversation was "you can just copy over it " yet no such thing exists, you can't in 999/1000 cases "copy-over something" you first have to delete/format it then copy. Always thought it was 'funny/weird' :)

That's just legacy of audiocassettes and VHS tapes, and later on, magnetic tape data storage used for popular home microcomputers. With those, you literally "copied over". With floppies, you actually could do that as well, if you were copying floppies verbatim with e.g. DISKCOPY.

[deleted]

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#333

I get nothing but a little eye in the center of the screen, blinking. It is cute but does not contain the promised information. Reloading with the adblockers off gets the story. I hate this world.

I have adblocking on all the time and it looks fine to me.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to enter pairing mode if the device remembers previous pairings, which is not that strange.

Work phone, personal phone, work laptop, personal laptop, tablet, desktop. Good luck pressing that button five dozen times to take the call on your work phone after using them with your desktop, only to find out that your glorious BT device only has 4 memory slots like a videogame from 1991, and unlinked your work phone when you used them with your tablet.

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Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#335
post #220
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that just Apple devices or can you connect to non Apple products with AirPods as well?

Linux, windows, Mac all work. The mic works too (on windows at least), so they make a good backup if you don’t have a headset for a teams/etc call.

They work basically just as normal Bluetooth headphones on non-Apple gear. Really no benefit when it comes to switching devices when using it.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#336
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.

Abort, Retry, Fail?

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or apple could kindly add decent support for it.

It's not an Apple issue. Works perfectly when you use a Mac + AirPods. The issue is when you try to use Windows. All bluetooth headphones I've tried (with microphones) sound horrible with Windows, if they work at all. The walled garden has a few advantages...

Walled garden? Ha!

All bluetooth devices do this on all platforms when you use both sound + microphone. It has to split the available bandwidth between the two.

My Sony headphones will go into "headset mode" on Windows and Mac and sounds horrible in both, just have to make sure no programs are trying to use the headphones' microphone and then you get full bandwidth for audio.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Abort, Retry, Fail?

With CP/M if you left the door open all your work was lost like tears in the rain.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#339
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

burning dvd/cds was fun. Figuring out how to burn a dvd that could run on a dvd player was fun. Now it's all just done via chromecast. Convenient and less wasteful, I have to admit.

And the Germans had fun naming their software "Nero Burning ROM."

Nero was dope, then it started being bundled with CD and DVD drives and it became a monstrosity of useless features.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#340

What was also funny was "floppy grammar" (at least in my time and locale) Whenever you gave someone x amount of floppies to copy something for you (prob a game)... the usual grammar/conversation was "you can just copy over it " yet no such thing exists, you can't in 999/1000 cases "copy-over something" you first have to delete/format it then copy. Always thought it was 'funny/weird' :)

That's just legacy of audiocassettes and VHS tapes, and later on, magnetic tape data storage used for popular home microcomputers. With those, you literally "copied over". With floppies, you actually could do that as well, if you were copying floppies verbatim with e.g. DISKCOPY.

Yes, in the good ol' times I would have used a nifty little DOS program called Venus, that would simply copy the "whole disk" (a lot like dd but with a semi-graphical interface).

Of course the "real thing" was the Deluxe Option Board (some details about it and a bunch of the common copying utilities of the time here):

http://retro.icequake.net/dob/

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