floppies

[shankle]

Went up on the Dell and HP sites and I was unable to find a puter that advertised a floppy drive.
To me there is a need for very large storage and rather small storage. I use floppies for very
small storage. So now, (if I am correct) I will have to use a 6G stick to move a file of 10k.

If I try to take the floppy out of an old machine and put it in a new puter. There is the driver
problem. Planned obsolescence or otherwise known as cram it down your throat.
Progress........

[Bill Cravener]

Floppie drive, whats that ??

Why not use a rewritable CD-RW? Goodness, you can purchase a 3-pack for as little as $3.99 at Staples, Kmart or Walmart. Unless your machine is really ancient most all pc's these days can at the least burn a CD.

Progress is a bitch when you get old. :bg

[shankle]

I do use rw cds. They are a pain and not as fast as a floppy.

[dedndave]

not to mention, i have about 2,000 floppies with stuff on em - lol
this machine does not have a floppy drive
in fact, they didn't even populate the connector where one might plug into the m/b
that probably means the BIOS doesn't support them
but - i plan on getting a USB floppy drive to solve the issue - not sure if i will be able to boot from it

[clive]

i plan on getting a USB floppy drive to solve the issue - not sure if i will be able to boot from it

Most BIOS will boot from USB attached floppy, zip, LS-120 or CD/DVD drives.

USB floppy drives are pretty cheap ($20 incl S/H), go for the 2X models, like this TEAC FD-05PUW.
http://www.teac.co.jp/dspd/product/magnetic/fd-05puw.html

If there is a floppy connector on the motherboard, the BIOS should support at least one drive, including old 5.25" 360K or 1.2MB drives.

-Clive

[Gunner]

Heh,  just got a new cell phone and I can use it as a "mass storage device" by connecting to my computer with a usb cable.

[dedndave]

thanks Clive
there is a location on the m/b for a socket, but the socket has not been populated
this leads me to believe the bios wouldn't support it
it is an intel 915 m/b
in the old days, i could have written a dos device driver to handle it
32-bit windows drivers are a little over my head, just yet   :P

[Bill Cravener]

not to mention, i have about 2,000 floppies with stuff on em - lol

Dave,

My word, are you serious? About five years back I took two weekends to copy near two hundred flops I had gathered over the years that had stuff I wanted to hold on to and burned them all with room to spare onto a DVD. I then made a backup of that DVD. Now I can easily stick it in my drive and do a simple search for what I wish to find. If you are at all like me many of my flops were poorly marked as to what was on each one (some of them were no longer readable) and it was a devil to find anything I was looking for.

Come guys this is the 21st century, you really need to get with it. :bg

[jj2007]

Heh,  just got a new cell phone and I can use it as a "mass storage device" by connecting to my computer with a usb cable.

So can you talk with Mother Board? What does she say?

[hutch--]

Jack,

If you just want to move data around or store it like you did on the old floppies, use a memory stick, they are faster, cheaper and heaps more reliable. Biggest problem is they are so small you risk losing them.  :P I added a couple more recently that I bought from the post office for $12 AU each. I am awash with portable storage to the extent that I rarely ever have to turn on a backup box any longer unless I want to back up a partition or something of similar size.

[dedndave]

i am not saying i want to keep everything on floppies - lol
i just have a lot of stuff on that media
i don't feel like spending what little time i have left in this world sorting files   :bg
every now and then, i want something from one - and i go get it
a file becomes obsolete when that particular floppy is no longer readable - lol

[Farabi]

Floppy is slow, it only read 1 sector per second.

[BogdanOntanu]

Floppy is slow, it only read 1 sector per second.

Floppies usually read at a rate of approx. 30Kilobytes per second (lowest) upto 200Kilobytes per second (fastest).

This means about 60 to 400 sectors per second

[hutch--]

Dave,

Count how many floppies you would fit on a 4 gig memory stick/pendrive, the number is impressive.

[anunitu]

I seldom use floppys anymore, mostly because I am not sure if you can even buy them anymore. What I do use is InCd from nero, it allows you to use a CD rewrite as an extra drive, you can copy/paste to the CD, and delete a file on the fly. The cd acts like a large floppy in a way. You do need to install an Incd reader on your other system(the drivers). Works good for me in moving files to the second system. There is a USB transfer cable I am thinking of getting, good for networking the two systems in a fairly simple manner.