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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

#341

Post by mbreese »

smoldesu wrote: post #305
mbreese wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Airpods do not have better duplex audio on MacOS. The problem is that AAC cannot support high-quality recording and playback at 330kbps, so it has to degrade the quality of the recording stream to fit within the Bluetooth bandwidth. MacOS might default to using your laptop's microphone, but that's something you can also set up on Windows. Hell, it should be the default on Windows as long as you have AAC support insta…

I actually normally use my headphones through my phone, but I doubt ios is doing anything differently compared to macos.

The point isn't that there's only so much bandwidth for mic + headphones, the point is that the bluetooth stack on Windows just doesn't work. I tried connecting multiple bluetooth headphones (Airpods, Beats, Sony) to a new Windows 11 computer (Microsoft Surface). I only got one set paired and it defaulted to the headset profile immediately. It was horrible. The others never connected or the connection was unreliable.

The process was so bad, my son recently bought a set of wired headphones just to avoid the entire issue.

If you've never been in the Apple garden and used headphones + device, it's a night and day difference in experience.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#342

Post by roelschroeven »

seanc wrote: post #66
roelschroeven wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michelangelo and similar viruses only activate when you boot from the disk it's on. Insert a disk with Michelangelo in a running system, then format the disk (make sure you overwrite the boot sector), all OK. The operating systems of the time didn't have any autoplay functionality that could be exploited by viruses. I guess in theory viruses could have exploited things like buffer overflows in the OS code that reads…

Back in the 80's few machines had hard drives, and often only one floppy. So if you put your disk in the drive and fired up the machine then bang, you were infected. Also, lots of machines with hard drives were configured to boot from floppy by default. Few floppies had working boot sectors, so most people never noticed. Until they put an infected disk into A:, turned on the computer and saw chaos ensue.

Yes, that's right, that's why I said to insert it in a running system.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#344

Post by NotYourLawyer »

romwell wrote: post #312
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s about 1/30 as common according to google. And hilariously, this very article is the second hit on google for the phrase. Yeah, language changes. Organically. Not because of silly, clunky usage like this.

And who is the arbiter of language that decides which usage is silly and clunky ? Usage is usage. What is clunky and silly is complaining against language that is perfectly clear and understandable, whatever words it uses.

I guess the people who prefer the original by a factor of 30-1 are the arbiters.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#345

Post by 83457 »

grogenaut wrote: post #128
83457 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom has many boxes from her long career programming for mainframes. She uses them for todo lists... for herself now, not a computer.

Bar I worked at in the late 90s did all their checks and orders on these. Guy who worked there par tike worked dismantling mainframes and had tons of them. Cheaper than any other paper they could find.

Nice. Not the cheapest if bought from IBM is my understanding.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#346

Post by wizardfeet »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #310
myth_drannon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareware Heroes https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61272567-shareware-heroe...

Oh yeah, Richard Moss. Nice guy.

That's me. Hi John! Lovely to run into you here. You still at Apple?

I'd be happy to email you a PDF copy of the new book if you're interested.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#347

Post by fourjawchuck »

Animats wrote: post #315
fourjawchuck wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The machine shop I work at still runs machines that use 5 hole paper tape. In fact there is a fixture in the shop we just finished on one of those machines that is for an aerospace customer of ours. It’s very interesting to me and something I hadn’t seen before working at this shop. It’s amazing what is still out there running.

> The machine shop I work at still runs machines that use 5 hole paper tape. Where do you get blank tape? I know Teletype collectors who need a supplier. I've never seen 5-hole tape CNC gear. Most is 8-hole.

I’m actually not sure where they source it from but my guess would be they just have an abundant stock of it given the abundance of everything else in the shop.

It’s black wax 5 hole paper tape and the controllers the use it are Allen Bradley, manufactured in early 80s I believe but I’d have to check dates.

We also have a few machines that read from magnetic tape so lots of old almost historical computer equipment, but still being used amazingly and making money.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#348

Post by noneeeed »

blantonl wrote: post #63

You haven't lived until you installed an operating system from 38 floppy disks. Slackware and OS/2 for example My lord those were fun days. Especially fun when you got to OS/2 Disk 21 and it died, or Slackware Xwindows Floppy 4 and you started hearing that disk drive kurchunking and you just knew you were dead in the water.

I remember helping out at school to install Lotus Smartsuite on a room full of PCs from floppies. The box was about 2 foot long. We had to relay them from one PC to the next so we could install them all roughly at the same time.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#349

Post by dusted »

asciimov wrote: post #30

I miss the physicality of floppy disks. Picking up a caddy of disks, thumbing through reading the labels, sliding them into the drive and hearing the motor whirr. Nowadays, my caddy has been replaced with a small plastic bag full of chips and thumbdrives. Even though my small bag can easily hold millions of times more data, the little chips aren't a joy to use. None of them have labels telling their contents. All of…

I do too :) I have game soundtracks in .midi format on floppies. I play them on my regular hifi amplifier using a Roland SB-55 + SC-88. It's fun to pop in a floppy and listen to music that way.. But it's double density floppies and they are indeed getting annoying to get my hands on.. and also to write to, but I keep a dedicated machine around for that.

Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business

#350

Post by awiesenhofer »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #182
asciimov wrote: post #30

I miss the physicality of floppy disks. Picking up a caddy of disks, thumbing through reading the labels, sliding them into the drive and hearing the motor whirr. Nowadays, my caddy has been replaced with a small plastic bag full of chips and thumbdrives. Even though my small bag can easily hold millions of times more data, the little chips aren't a joy to use. None of them have labels telling their contents. All of…

Couldn't we make a floppy disk sized and shaped thing, which can store much data than the usual floppy disk? Then one would have the same feel.

I like that idea. While everyone here seems to comment and mention old competing formats, I imagine a new floppy disc-like device with an SSD inside, kinda like an HDD cartridge. Area-wise a 3,5" could easily house TBs worth of storage, and the "metal clip" of the floppy could house some kind of m2 interface when opened...
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