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The floppy disk just won’t die

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Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#151

Post by causi »

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.

Which is weird because the only microSD card I've ever had fail on me locked itself into write-protect mode, allowing me to get my data. I wonder why SSDs don't do the same.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#152

Post by causi »

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…

sending a file to someone 5 feet away is still a challenge.

Yeah, what the hell is with that? If I need to send files between phones I can use an app, but there's no telling when they'll stop developing it and it'll stop working. It's gotten to the point it's easer to copy a file onto my network drive and then recopy it to the destination device. When I'm away from home, though, I usually have to grab an actual USB cable.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#153

Post by causi »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #117
causi wrote: post #5

There is nothing in the modern hardware ecosystem quite as satisfying as the feeling and sound of a 3.5 inch floppy ka-chunking into a floppy drive. Sure, everything being silent magic these days is nice, but I never felt so in touch with a computer as I did as a child dragging files off a floppy drive and hearing the drive start to buzz and hum. It was like being able to touch the data itself.

I found the zip drive way more satisfying! Minidisc wasn’t bad either. CDs are the least satisfying though. Fiddly, easily scratched, long time to spin up, can get wedged into tray, laptop CD drives are flimsy too.

There's something that reminds one a little of a knight stabbing a dragon with a sword when you're forced to yell "When I say stop I mean STOP, you son of a bitch!" and ram an extended paperclip into the manual eject hole.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#154

Post by ElectricalUnion »

squigg wrote: post #14
johnwalkr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one music genre (vaporwave) that has a lot of new releases on tape, and often tapes are the only physical format released. Actually come of think of it, there's some releases on floppy disk as well!

If they are releasing on floppy, then the quality can't be up to much - that's going to be a pretty low bitrate MP3 to fit in that space!

opus can do good audio even before transparency bitrates (without both the very annoying mp3 metallic ringing or ogg muffled sound)

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#155

Post by ElectricalUnion »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #51
tialaramex wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using "better electronics" can't help you unless your idea of "better electronics" includes the actual tape mechanism being complained about. A few things are wrong with cheap mechanisms for playing cassette tapes e.g.: The tape speed should be precisely calibrated and, as much as possible, unvarying, instead it wobbles all over the place and is just roughly dialed in. On average the mech might say run 2% fast, but t…

So, "cheap and highly reliable" mechanically, but reliably not actually any good?

Reliable in the "it moves when you ask for movment" sense, but not reliable in the sense of "actually moves in a smooth, constant speed when asked for movment".

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#156

Post by jccalhoun »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #90
jccalhoun wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting the best quality out of VHS is a rabbit hole I went down last year. There are a couple movies that I have that weren't released in any format besides VHS and I spent quite a lot of time trying to get the best quality digital copy I could. There are a dozen or so (mostly s-vhs jvc) models that have circuitry to stabilize the images and they start at $300 on ebay.

You got me. What are the movies?

One was Norman's Awesome Experience (three people get sent back to Ancient Rome) and the other was a documentary Desmond Morris's The Human Animal which I eventually found a rip that claimed to be from DVD that was better than any that I managed (even though I haven't found the actual dvds for sale which makes me wonder if it was sourced from dvd)

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#157

Post by cesarb »

causi wrote: post #152
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…

sending a file to someone 5 feet away is still a challenge. Yeah, what the hell is with that? If I need to send files between phones I can use an app, but there's no telling when they'll stop developing it and it'll stop working. It's gotten to the point it's easer to copy a file onto my network drive and then recopy it to the destination device. When I'm away from home, though, I usually have to grab an actual USB c…

> > sending a file to someone 5 feet away is still a challenge.

> Yeah, what the hell is with that?

Back in the early 2000s, we had IrDA which could easily transfer files from one device to another through OBEX. Not much later, we had the same OBEX but now on top of Bluetooth. We still have Bluetooth; it should be easy to send files between phones (and even computers) through OBEX. Last time I tried, however, it was a pain, failing more than half of the time. I gave up, and now use syncthing for that.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#158

Post by theamk »

midoridensha wrote: post #118
theamk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ka-chunk was nice but was always immediate worry: "Will it read today? Or am I going to lose another file or two?" The things got so much better when our school's machines got HDDs.. There was a good chance that there would be an old version of file floating around, or in the worst case you could retry read a few more times and maybe you'll get lucky and copy it to HDD.

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.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#159

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

midoridensha wrote: post #120
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.88 ED disks were available in the US. They were obscenely expensive and few stores carried them.

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.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#160

Post by toast0 »

causi wrote: post #151
dusted wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is weird because the only microSD card I've ever had fail on me locked itself into write-protect mode, allowing me to get my data. I wonder why SSDs don't do the same.

They're supposed to, and I've heard anecdotes that they sometimes do, but it seems like many of the failures I've experienced were firmware failures (in some cases, upgrading firmware on remaining drives seemed to result in lower failure rates anyway). Firmware failures have no rules; spinner drives sometimes have them too, and they might disappear from the bus as well, although usually those will "just" disappear after a reboot, not in the middle of a request.
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