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The floppy disk just won’t die

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Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#171

Post by midoridensha »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #159
midoridensha wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.88 was pushed by IBM with their PS/2 line that tried to push the clones out of the market and take over with their own, very expensive, and completely proprietary PC computers. They came with 2.88MB drives, but no one else adopted them, or most other technologies included in the PS/2 line. So the disks stayed expensive and uncommon, and went nowhere.

There were 2.88 drives in non-PS/2 machines. They were just incredibly rare.

Yes, that's correct. Like some other things in PS/2 machines (such as the MCA bus), they weren't entirely closed to other vendors, and IBM was trying to push the 2.88s as the new floppy standard, but they never caught on like the other standards IBM pushed before then when IBM had more clout.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#172

Post by midoridensha »

theamk wrote: post #158
midoridensha wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of crappy floppies were you using? In my experience, floppy disks were astoundingly reliable as long as they were handled correctly (and even when not), up until the late-90s when they became vestigial and manufacturing quality dropped. Back in the 8-bit micro days, they worked extremely well.

What kind of super floppy were you using? I remember my Z80 with TR-DOS and 5.25" floppy controller. We all dreaded that "Disk Error. Abort,Retry,Ignore?" message. That meant time to copy floppy again, and with just 48KB of RAM, there was a lot of floppy swaps to do this.

I literally never saw problems with floppies with the Apple ][ or other micros of the time, or even with MS-DOS, up until the 1.44 became king and then people started moving to CD-Rs and other things. At that point, the drives became cheap junk (there were large, noticeable differences in the internals between a late-90s floppy drive and an early-90s one: much bigger and nicer motors for instance) and the media was terrible.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#173

Post by kencausey »

dusted wrote: post #108
toast0 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with lots of (enterprisy) hard drives and SSDs. The hard drive failure rate was easily 10x the rate of the SSDs, but the SSDs basically never gave symptoms of impending doom. They just disappeared from the data channel. We did have one group of drives that gave symptoms... 50% of the batch dropped dead within 2 weeks of entering service, a good number failed over the time it took to get the rest of them r…

This, SSD failure modes are scary! Even enterprise SSDs will just go from "all ok" to "no device connected" at any random time. So far, most of the HDDs I've seen fail, gave _some_ indication prior to it, via smart or "strange" behaviour.

Anecdata is interesting. Here's mine, I've recently had a spate of a few Dell system 3-5 years old getting progressively more sluggish. Quick tests don't turn up issues. When I'm given the time required I use the hard drive manufacturer's testing utility and do thorough testing at which point damaged sectors start to turn up, not too many but enough to cause seek issues or something. I use chkdsk to attempt to recover data and mark the problematic sectors and at least for a while the system are a bit better. Of course, as soon as possible replacements are needed.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#174

Post by HelixEndeavor »

lol to the guy accusing floppy disks of being "plastic waste." As if SSDs encased in 90% hollow plastic/metal, or USB drives encased in varying amounts of unnecessary plastic are somehow less "wasteful" than floppy disks were.

On a more serious note, wouldn't most of these machines be well served by floppy disk emulators? Or is the barrier to entry there the modicum of technical know-how needed to interface with those properly.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#175

Post by hakfoo »

eternityforest wrote: post #82
wrycoder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I liked the old floppies. They were great for backing up personal data. They were easy to write on and store in special trays. I still haven’t discovered a convenient way to handle flash drives. They are to small to write on, and so I have a pile of them tossed in a box, and I have to search through them to find the right one. Anyone have a good way?

I'm surprised they don't make NFC Floppies that look exactly like a real floppy, but store a few MB you access with NFC. Since everything is mobile first it would be a really nice way to hand someone a PDF, although credit card size is more practical. It's fast enough for a megabyte or two, and sending a file to someone 5 feet away is still a challenge. I have not found any good way to keep track of flash either, asi…

I miss old-school IM platforms. I could just see a family member online and say "Here's (link), do we want to go to this activity on the weekend", or "Here's the photo of the cat you wanted."

I suppose I could host a local IRC server on a RasPi or something, but that's way more convoluted.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#176

Post by Hackbraten »

HelixEndeavor wrote: post #174

lol to the guy accusing floppy disks of being "plastic waste." As if SSDs encased in 90% hollow plastic/metal, or USB drives encased in varying amounts of unnecessary plastic are somehow less "wasteful" than floppy disks were. On a more serious note, wouldn't most of these machines be well served by floppy disk emulators? Or is the barrier to entry there the modicum of technical know-how needed to interface with thos…

> As if SSDs encased in 90% hollow plastic/metal, or USB drives encased in varying amounts of unnecessary plastic are somehow less "wasteful" than floppy disks were.

For floppy-sized pieces of data, a typical SSD will afford you literally several billions of write cycles [0] until the media fails.

In comparison, a floppy disk manufactured in the 00s is going to fail after five write cycles. I can see how one would call that plastic waste.

[0]: assuming SSD write lifetimes in the ballpark of single-digits PBW (petabytes written), which is a realistic value in 2023.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#177

Post by ibcj »

jamiek88 wrote: post #109
ibcj wrote: post #99

I still have a sheet of the write-protect tabs for 5.25" floppies that I, for some unknown reason, refuse to throw away. I have one flash drive that I stuck a tab on ages ago for giggles (I didn't want to lose the contents until I got it replicated), and it still makes me smile. I'll occasionally show the sheet to groups of engineers and ask them if they know what it is. Only the dinosaurs ever get it.

Fond memories of the ‘true’ floppy 5.25” what an upgrade that was from cassette tape for me!

PRESS PLAY ON TAPE.

I also think I still have a 5.25" notcher that I couldn't bring myself to let go of.

I promise I don't have THAT MUCH shit sitting around...

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#178

Post by FredPret »

wkjagt wrote: post #167
FredPret wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a working 486? If I had one, I'd spin up Civ1 just for old times!

Yeah! A DX2 66Mhz, with a real mechanical hard drive, in a real beige case with a turbo button :D Some modern "amenities" I have are the gotek, and a CF Card to IDE adapter, so I can more easily copy files to it. I use it mostly for Borland C++, but also Solitaire in Windows 3.1. I also have an 8088, a 286 and a 386...

That’s awesome. Is it a vintage drive as well? I wonder about the failure points - CMOS battery meltdown, moving parts. If you can eliminate these, you can probably run that 486 for life.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#179

Post by eternityforest »

hakfoo wrote: post #175
eternityforest wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they don't make NFC Floppies that look exactly like a real floppy, but store a few MB you access with NFC. Since everything is mobile first it would be a really nice way to hand someone a PDF, although credit card size is more practical. It's fast enough for a megabyte or two, and sending a file to someone 5 feet away is still a challenge. I have not found any good way to keep track of flash either, asi…

I miss old-school IM platforms. I could just see a family member online and say "Here's (link), do we want to go to this activity on the weekend", or "Here's the photo of the cat you wanted." I suppose I could host a local IRC server on a RasPi or something, but that's way more convoluted.

Current IM platforms work just as well for that, aside from the fact people are starting to not like Facebook and half your friends might not have it. The main problem is if you don't have cell service and need to transfer a file, or if the file is on a machine without IM set up for some reason or another.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#180

Post by jamiek88 »

ibcj wrote: post #177
jamiek88 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fond memories of the ‘true’ floppy 5.25” what an upgrade that was from cassette tape for me!

PRESS PLAY ON TAPE. I also think I still have a 5.25" notcher that I couldn't bring myself to let go of. I promise I don't have THAT MUCH shit sitting around...

ah the notcher!!
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