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The floppy disk just won’t die

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Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#21

Post by kitsunesoba »

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.

Similarly, hard drive seeking noise used to feel something like the heartbeat of the computer. When it went silent and all you heard was fans you knew something was up and a force reboot was likely in your near future.

I don't really miss it all that much though, mainly because HD noise could range anywhere from barely audible clicks and whirrs all the way up to an angry animal of some sort, with most drives leaning closer to the latter than the former. The cheap drives bundled in bargain basement sorts of machines were some of the worst.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#22

Post by toast0 »

charles_f wrote: post #7

> There are some other strange evolutionary dead ends we find ourselves tied to because everything has to bow to the gods of reliability in aviation Ironically floppies are utterly unreliable and will become corrupted if you look at them the wrong way. I understand that if you are after reliability you have incentives not to change, but it sounds weird to me that you wouldn't move away from that terrible format as so…

If you bought floppy drives at the tail end of their run and disks at the tail end of their run, then yes. Everything was engineered good enough to work a couple times and that was it, because files were too big and 1.44mb wasn't enough; 2.88 was Japan only; people were moving on to zip drives or ls-120 drives (which were also quite good at reading 1.44 media), cd-rs sometimes, and usb mass storage (with drives that are now comically small... I think my first was 16 MB)

If you had equipment from say 1990 and blank disks from then too and a reason to keep it running, it likely still is. Although floppy disk emulators are probably a reasonable retrofit in most applications.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#23

Post by squigg »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #20
squigg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens in the SCSI emulator market as well - there is a company massively marking up SCSI emulators and praying on naive musicians. Which is fair enough given they set them up before sending them out, but it still irks my sense of fairness

You're right, I remember now seeing exactly that when researching SCSI2SD options. But the markup was never 10x.

Fair point - not 10x, just normally about 2-3x!

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#24

Post by Gordonjcp »

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 shoot on DVCAM tape a bit, and I have to say there are few things as mechanically satisfying as putting one of the full-size DVCAM tapes into the camera and hoisting it onto your shoulder.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#25

Post by Gordonjcp »

charles_f wrote: post #7

> There are some other strange evolutionary dead ends we find ourselves tied to because everything has to bow to the gods of reliability in aviation Ironically floppies are utterly unreliable and will become corrupted if you look at them the wrong way. I understand that if you are after reliability you have incentives not to change, but it sounds weird to me that you wouldn't move away from that terrible format as so…

Can't say I've ever experienced that. I use some 3.5" floppies that are nearly 40 years old now for some kit, and they work just fine.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#26

Post by tablespoon »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I think of the situation with compact cassettes (audio) where you can get a refurbished deck from the 1990s for $300 or so on ebay that is better than any deck I ever owned. They are making new decks but since 2005 or so they all use the “tanashin mechanism” which is cheap and highly reliable (minimal moving parts!) but sounds awful. You can make the best recordings with Type 4 “metal” tapes but these have not been m…

> They are making new decks but since 2005 or so they all use the “tanashin mechanism” which is cheap and highly reliable (minimal moving parts!) but sounds awful.

IIRC, the last big customer for cassette tapes was prisoners in the prison system, so "new" tape players are universally garbage (because priority 1 is complying with prison regulations, priority 2 is being as cheap as possible, and priority 3 is having nice things in prison is a liability).

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#27

Post by Gordonjcp »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I think of the situation with compact cassettes (audio) where you can get a refurbished deck from the 1990s for $300 or so on ebay that is better than any deck I ever owned. They are making new decks but since 2005 or so they all use the “tanashin mechanism” which is cheap and highly reliable (minimal moving parts!) but sounds awful. You can make the best recordings with Type 4 “metal” tapes but these have not been m…

Sounds awful in what way? Mechanically? Presumably if it sounded bad reproducing tapes you'd just use better electronics?

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#28

Post by StapleHorse »

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 got you. https://youtu.be/EV41cwEzqO4?t=42 not my video though

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#29

Post by rr888 »

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.

Similarly its terrifying when you hear the drive clunking away on a bad disk when you know there will be an error before the screen shows it.

Re: The floppy disk just won’t die

#30

Post by freerk »

TonyTrapp wrote: post #11

> Following the rodeo incident, Necaise decided to finally upgrade, but not to an entirely new machine—just to a floppy-to-USB emulator. These devices cost around $275 each... That's odd. Gotek and similar emulators should be available for a tenth of that price. There are several variations though, so it smells to me like someone is reselling a Gotek "guaranteed to work" with a specific type of machine with a large m…

yep, sounds like getting something for 21$ on Aliexpress (https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832100710868.html) and selling it for >13x more.
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