View Full Version : No more floppy drives?
madfish
03-02-2002, 9:37 PM
I just read this (http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2851671,00.html) over at zdnet. I would miss my Fdd. I use them alot.
Madfish
Pshawn5
03-02-2002, 9:47 PM
well my floppy drive doesnt work right now... sooo...
Well, in a way, floppy disks are nice to use for giving small files to people. Sure there are many removable solutions such as Zip Disks, Super Disks, ORB disks which cost much less in terms of "per meg". However, floppies are cheaper when you look at them individually. I would hate to give someone a small file on a zip 100 disk which costs over $10 per disk. Of course you can e-mail files that are 1.38MB and under, but there are times when just giving it to them on a floppy disk is more convenient in my case... An alternative would be CDR medias which are dirt cheap nowadays. Only problem with that is the fact that not all people have CD burners and CDR medias are not re-writable... I think floppies will be around for a while longer...
If anything, I think IOMEGA ZIP drives will be the most suitable candidate for being a industrial standard to replace 3.5" floppy disk drives because of its performance and popularity among removable drives... LS-120 drives would've been more popular because it supports Super Disks and standard 3.5" floppy disks, but the slow read-write performance tends to steer people away from them...
surrealchereal
03-05-2002, 8:48 AM
Actually, when the Iomega started appearing in computers in the store.. I thought that was exactly what was happening. Till the stock dropped and the bottom fell out, and they quit showing up..
Yeah, I also noticed that at one point where some PC cases came out of the factory with dedicated ZIP Internal drive slots. Other than the USB and parallel port interface Zip Drives, I think they're great. They're pretty speedy for removable drives. Only other removeable drive I've seen faster in its class are Iomega Jazz and Castlewood ORB drives. However, the downside to Jazz drives are the price for medias which sell close to $100. And the downside to ORB is the sturdiness of the media... I've dropped those things a few times and it pretty much ruins the data on them or cause bad sectors...
I think that we might see the Floppy disappear in response to the smart media external readers we have out there.....
Smart media is getting cheaper and more widely used in so many devices......
It's got no moving parts, so it could potentially last a lot longer than a floppy.... now if only it was housed in a slightly stiffer case of some sort.
Whatever AOL ships on to the average house-hold in 8 months is likely to become the new standard - hehehehe..... I still have so many of those white diskettes laying around.....
wizofid
03-06-2002, 8:25 AM
I'll keep them - and the old 5 somethings- old tech but it used to get us out of the pucker brush whenall else failed - kinda makes you a tech wizard when you pull out your trusty rescue disk and perform drive surgery before the unbelievers eyes.
wiz
surrealchereal
03-06-2002, 1:40 PM
I still have so many of those white diskettes laying around.....
hmm roofing material? :D
the 3.5 disks come apart quite well to make mini cutting boards for a wine & cheese party - then you can use the metal surface guard to part the cheese on the floppy housing..... just watch out for the springs - you could chip a tooth if you don't dispose of them properly when taking the floppy apart....
otherwise - shingles, ..... hm - you've got the two holes already to drive the nails through, or staples..... take about 185 to cover a "square" of roof - a Square is a square yard - you figure, after overlap you have a 2 inch section of coverage, by 3.5 inches wide - that works out to 7 square inches....
so for the "average" 2100 square foot house, assuming no complicated roof lines or anything, taking into account a rough 3 to 1 pitch, would take some 48,200 floppy disks to replace the roof......
You'd have to make sure the structure could take the load because instead of some 30 nails per square, you have some 370 nails per square.... that's an 1233% increase in the number of fasteners used..... staples are cheaper......
The work load is a LOT bigger than if you were using composite shingles - a job that might take a crew 2 days would probably take some 10 or 12 days to complete...... perhaps more......
WOW - can you say "tangent" - I knew you could.....
no, I prefer the cheese cutter idea.....
jadison
03-06-2002, 5:05 PM
You're too funny, Axel :p
I think Axel has lost it. :D
wizofid
03-07-2002, 8:08 AM
LOL - i'll stick with chees cutter - and 5.25's for cake - wiz
SalaTar
03-09-2002, 7:10 PM
1.44 floppys are still a viable thing ...dont expect them to go away.
LOST IT!!?! LOST IT!!! -
ah -
lost what?
to assume I ever had it might be a stretch to some......
maybe I just have too much time on my hands........
perhaps I don't have enough to do - but I doubt that based on my e-mails and the mountains of documents which even now threaten to cascade on top of me extinguishing my life at the keyboard.......
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