Do you think we will get back drive a: and b:

[Allen Drake]

Not quite, according to me. <g>

I use one every day at work and home. We all do and save our programs
to floppy after we program our Proto Trac that still comes with a two
floppy drives installed on the side of the machine. One has the OS
which it boots from and one is for storage. They are still cheaper
then any other medium and who wants to keep the programs on a flash
drive and have them everywhere? It's easier to keep a program on a
floppy with a label then to put one of a flash drive and keep one with
every print? Sure, some of the shops have the systems on a network but
many don't. Especially the smaller ones with old machinists that still
have their VCRs flashing 12:00. You would be surprised how many older
workers still resist computers and DVD players and don't even know how
to spell DVR.

 

[Rob]

Hi, Ken.

Yeah, floppy DRIVES are dead. But what about these hundreds of DISKETTES in my office? :>(

There are both 5.25" and 3.5"; some are single-sided and in some ancient format that nothing now will read. But there is a LOT of my history there, which is now "lost in space" because I did not transfer it all to newer media back when I easily could have.

I still have a combination floppy drive: it has two slots for inserting either size diskette, and it still worked when I removed it from my former computer. But my new mobo doesn't even have a floppy disk controller or an FDD connector.

My old Tandy 2000 HD computer is still in my closet. It was my first computer to run Windows (1.0, I think) after years of TRS-80 and TRSDOS. Cost me $2,385 in 1985 - with many updates and add-ons after that. It came with a humongous 20 MB HD and 2 floppy drives. I replaced at least one of those floppies with a SyQuest removable cartridge hard disk - and now those cartridges are unreadable, too.

All that is progress...I guess. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
[email protected]
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Ken Blake" wrote in message


See RC White's reply, but note that floppies aren't really dead. Most
(all?) brand-name computers these days come without floppy drives, but
if you build your own computer, or have one custom-built for you, you
*can* have a floppy drive if you want one.

I have a floppy drive on my custom-built computer, but to tell the
truth, I've never used it. This will almost certainly be the last
computer I'll have a floppy drive in.

One can have a lot of 'fun' trying to install Windows on a PC with
onboard RAID without at least a USB floppy. It is possible to do
it without one (slipstreaming drivers into a copy of the Windows install
CD, or using a specially formatted USB flash drive if the BIOS provides
the necessary support (not all do), hacking the OS to support RAID after
installation in IDE mode.)
So much easier with a floppy, but even then certain BIOSs can't be
configured properly to support a USB floppy in the way needed.
There is always a way around it, but sometimes it takes a few hours of
forum searching to get there, even if one does this stuff for a living.
I'm still glad to see the back of them though.

 

[Wolf K]

They are still cheaper

You haven't done the arithmetic. In case you forgot it's cost =
price/capacity.

then any other medium and who wants to keep the programs on a flash
drive and have them everywhere?

Huh?

Wolf K.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

You haven't done the arithmetic. In case you forgot it's cost =
price/capacity.

No, that's _your_ criterion. Someone who just wants cheap storage of a
meg or less will still find the floppy a viable option, even
economically.

Huh?

[]
What (I think) he's saying is that if you want individual, movable,
storage of a small amount of data (and 1440K is actually quite a lot, if
it doesn't contain any pictures), flash drives are not as cheap: not per
meg/gig, obviously, but per unit.

 

[Wolf K]

No, that's _your_ criterion. Someone who just wants cheap storage of a
meg or less will still find the floppy a viable option, even economically.

True, and that's why I still have a floppy drive and several dozen
floppies. But I'll never buy new ones again.

Huh?

[]
What (I think) he's saying is that if you want individual, movable,
storage of a small amount of data (and 1440K is actually quite a lot, if
it doesn't contain any pictures), flash drives are not as cheap: not per
meg/gig, obviously, but per unit.

Ok, I get it, sneaker-net. But CDs are cheaper than floppies. If you
can get floppies, that is.

1440K is OK if you use plain text, but I'm always amazed at how large
PDFs can be. Eg, a two-page (!) "Inspection report" I received recently
was scanned into a PDF and came to just over 1500KB. I volunteer on a
local board, and all docs are sent as PDFs, simply because that's the
only format guaranteed readable by everybody.

OTOH, a 126 page manual for some software came out 1436KB.

Have a good day,
Wolf K.

 

[Char Jackson]

No, that's _your_ criterion. Someone who just wants cheap storage of a
meg or less will still find the floppy a viable option, even
economically.

When a single digital photo or a single mp3 is several megabytes or
more, what can you store on a floppy that you can't store just as
easily on a thumb drive? AFAICT and IMHO, floppies are completely
obsolete and have been obsolete for well over a decade.

 

[Paul]

1440K is OK if you use plain text, but I'm always amazed at how large
PDFs can be. Eg, a two-page (!) "Inspection report" I received recently
was scanned into a PDF and came to just over 1500KB.

There are ways to fix that, depending on the situation.

Acrobat Distiller, has compression options, which require intelligent adjustment.
The default is seldom what you want. For example, the tech writers who prepare
manuals for home routers, use lossy compression for pictures of the dialog
boxes, which make the boxes totally unreadable (they leave re-sampling enabled
and use things like JPEG compression). A quick check on what the prefs are set to,
can fix that.

With regard to scanned docs, you can scan into Photoshop, and use the
"threshold" function, to remove scanner noise, and change the color space
to monochrome or grayscale. Then (eventually) prepare the PDF from that.
You can make much smaller docs that way.

Another Photoshop trick, for any kind of still image, is to take
two pictures, one after another. The CCD or CMOS sensor, adds "dark noise"
to the scan or photo. If you use an averaging function in Photoshop,
effectively (A+B)/2, you can remove most of that noise. In my experiments
here, averaging additional photos doesn't help that much. But averaging
two photos, can improve image quality a bit. This only applies to still images
that will look exactly the same (no "pictures from a windy day" need apply).
The camera would need a tripod or other means, to keep it absolutely
still. The scanner is pretty good, at keeping the image the same
from scan to scan. That won't necessarily make any difference to
the document size, but can make a cheap webcam photo look... less cheap.

Paul

 

[Wolf K]

There are ways to fix that, depending on the situation.

[...]

I know, but the originators of the documents don't know, or if they
know, they don't care. Why spend 5-15 minutes massaging a scan --> PDF
to minimise file size when you can scan and send in one minute or less?

Wolf K.

 

[choro]

There are ways to fix that, depending on the situation.

[...]

I know, but the originators of the documents don't know, or if they
know, they don't care. Why spend 5-15 minutes massaging a scan --> PDF
to minimise file size when you can scan and send in one minute or less?

It's just a hangover from times past!
-- choro

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <vdf%[email protected]>, Wolf K

Ok, I get it, sneaker-net. But CDs are cheaper than floppies. If
you can get floppies, that is.

Quite apart from the fact that our originating machine hasn't got a
burner anyway, how do you make that out? I use the floppy more than once
(-:!

1440K is OK if you use plain text, but I'm always amazed at how large
PDFs can be. Eg, a two-page (!) "Inspection report" I received recently
was scanned into a PDF and came to just over 1500KB. I volunteer on a
local board, and all docs are sent as PDFs, simply because that's the
only format guaranteed readable by everybody.

OTOH, a 126 page manual for some software came out 1436KB.

[]
The difference between a scanned image and a proper .pdf.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

When a single digital photo or a single mp3 is several megabytes or
more, what can you store on a floppy that you can't store just as
easily on a thumb drive? AFAICT and IMHO, floppies are completely
obsolete and have been obsolete for well over a decade.

No doubt. But you haven't read this thread very carefully: 1. the log
files I'm transferring are 3 x 40K (that's K); 2. the originating
machine has no USB; 3. anyone else in a similar situation (needing to
store or move, individually, lots of small files) would find a box of
floppies cheaper than the same _number_ of thumb drives.

I'd question "easily": I'd say there's little difference in the use,
except that I know that when the light on the drive goes out it's safe
to eject, whereas that's not necessarily true for a pen drive (even
assuming it has a light on it, which some don't).

There's no doubt floppies are obsolete, but that doesn't mean they don't
still have their uses, especially if one end of the channel involves
older equipment. (FWIW, though our main network uses XP, with 7 coming
soon I gather, my department has several test/maintenance systems that
run DOS most of the time with the occasional foray into Windows 3.x, and
if you walk further down the lab towards the VC10 end you'll find
something with a BBC Master built into it that's in more or less daily
use [not that we exchange discs with that AFAIK] ...)

 

[Wolf K]

No doubt. But you haven't read this thread very carefully: 1. the log
files I'm transferring are 3 x 40K (that's K); 2. the originating
machine has no USB; 3. anyone else in a similar situation (needing to
store or move, individually, lots of small files) would find a box of
floppies cheaper than the same _number_ of thumb drives.

Use e-mail to send the log (or other) files to the target computer. My
wife and I do this alla da time.

HTH
Wolf K.

 

[John Williamson]

Use e-mail to send the log (or other) files to the target computer. My
wife and I do this alla da time.

That's fine if both ends of the chain are networked. As I read it, the
files being transferred are generated by a standalone piece of equipment
which for a number of reasons can't be attached to a network, and has
the floppy drive as the only way of transferring files in and out.
Legacy equipment that can't be changed is common in certain industries
such as aviation where plant life is measured in decades rather than years.

 

[Ken1943]

I used mine much more recently than that, but I can't remember exactly
when or for what.

Until I retired, I needed one floppy. To bring home and modify voice
files for an OS2 voice mail system. Saved my ass more than once.

Until I found an OS2 program to clone hard drives. That customer was
really happy I cloned the drive a week before the drive crashed !!


KenW

 

[Char Jackson]

No doubt. But you haven't read this thread very carefully:

True! (Or should I say guilty? ) I've only skimmed it because it's
been about people trying to justify the continued usage of floppy
disks, for cryin' out loud! ;-)

 

[Wolf K]

That's fine if both ends of the chain are networked. As I read it, the
files being transferred are generated by a standalone piece of equipment
which for a number of reasons can't be attached to a network, and has
the floppy drive as the only way of transferring files in and out.
Legacy equipment that can't be changed is common in certain industries
such as aviation where plant life is measured in decades rather than years.

IOW, you're stuck with what you've got. That's life, I guess. ;-)

BTW, neither of my usual sources of office supplies stock floppies
anymore. You can occasionally find some at value Village, though.

Have a good day,
Wolf K.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

IOW, you're stuck with what you've got. That's life, I guess. ;-)

BTW, neither of my usual sources of office supplies stock floppies anymore.
You can occasionally find some at value Village, though.

Have a good day,
Wolf K.

Heck, I still write notes to myself on 3x5 cards with a ball pen.

That's 75x125 mm if you're into metric.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Ha!
Correct.

This is aviation. What is tested on the equipment is actually quite
modern technology; however, the test rack itself is Windows 95 based: it
does the job more than adequately, so no need to change it.
(Transferring the log files is only a small part of the full test
procedure.)

IOW, you're stuck with what you've got. That's life, I guess. ;-)

BTW, neither of my usual sources of office supplies stock floppies
anymore. You can occasionally find some at value Village, though.

I just tried the first office supplies company that came to mind, and
they have them:
http://www.staples.co.uk/3-5-floppy-disks-1-44mb-10-pack?r=se
(Not cheap, though!). [Not that that's a problem for us - we've been
using the same ones for ages.]

Have a good day,
Wolf K.

You too!

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Char Jackson

True! (Or should I say guilty? ) I've only skimmed it because it's
been about people trying to justify the continued usage of floppy
disks, for cryin' out loud! ;-)

Since you've clearly decided to close your mind on the subject, you
might as well stop reading the thread. [Maybe someone'll start to wonder
why they should continue using Char Jackson ... (-:]

To put it simply: we have equipment that we occasionally need to extract
a small file from. The equipment has a floppy drive. Networking the
equipment isn't on the cards (let us say for security reasons - that's
certainly been mentioned as one of the reasons). We have a USB floppy
drive on our network machine. The equipment is designed for the specific
task it does (support the testing and trouble-shooting of a particular
product).

Sure, we could upgrade the equipment to an operating system that could
support USB, including rewriting at least some of the specially-written
software. But how would this benefit us? (To do so - and get the
upgraded hardware and software, and the procedures for using it that
would have to be rewritten, all approved, quite possibly by the customer
as well as our own people - would cost a significant amount. In fact
it's that which would dominate the cost, rather than that of just the
equipment.) I should say that the supported product, though quite modern
technology, is no longer in manufacture, but we have a contract to
support (and to some extent upgrade) it.

If/when a major upgrade to the product is designed, new support test
equipment will be designed, which will be XP- or later-based.

 

[Char Jackson]

Use e-mail to send the log (or other) files to the target computer. My
wife and I do this alla da time.

My wife and I shared an office for a couple of years and the way it
was set up had us sitting back to back, facing away from each other.
It was too much trouble to turn around, so we would simply IM each
other, and by extension, we'd use IM if we needed to send something to
one another, like pictures, web links, etc.

These days we have separate offices, but we still use IM to stay in
touch. Email is too slow in this age of instant gratification.