Time for the Floppy to Die

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tim
  • Start date Start date
T

Tim

Hi all,

Just a little stirring here. Don't you think it is time the floppy was
allowed to die completely?

The thing I would like to see is an El Torito like standard for floppy
emulation on USB devices (RAM sticks whatever you want to call them) or any
(meaning all) of the smart media devices.

At the same time, they should adjust the geometry of the actual floppy a
little beyond 1.44MB. I think the FS is FAT8, so there are probably lots of
limits in there (max disc size, max # files, etc). but they should push the
size of the emulated floppy out as far as possible EG 16MB would be nice. A
minimum of 2.88MB which is already supported should be strived for.

- Tim
 
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Tim wrote:
| Hi all,
|
| Just a little stirring here. Don't you think it is time the floppy was
| allowed to die completely?
|

Hear Hear!

| The thing I would like to see is an El Torito like standard for floppy
| emulation on USB devices (RAM sticks whatever you want to call them)
or any
| (meaning all) of the smart media devices.

Hmm... I thought there was a standard for USB flash devices, being that
numerous different computer makers offer booting from USB, to me that
implies that there is a single standard that flash memory must adhere
to, and provided the proper files are there with indicators, its bootable.


| At the same time, they should adjust the geometry of the actual floppy a
| little beyond 1.44MB. I think the FS is FAT8, so there are probably
lots of
| limits in there (max disc size, max # files, etc). but they should
push the
| size of the emulated floppy out as far as possible EG 16MB would be
nice. A
| minimum of 2.88MB which is already supported should be strived for.

There are numberous replacements for 3.5" diskettes, most notably, the
Zip Drives, the LS120 (which is far better, but has not been fully
adopted), the 'Clik' devices, IBM Microdrives etc etc...



And now, with most (if not all) computers being able to boot from Flash
Drives, USB devices (3.5/zip/etc), and almost any computer made in the
last 10 years or so supports booting from a CD.

It is simple to get a CD to imitate a floppy drive, of whatever size you
wish, Nero has tools built into its applications for this exact purpose.

The LS120 had great potential, 120M on a 3.5" sized diskette, backwards
compatibility with 3.5" 1.44M AND 2.88M, but due to OEM reluctance to
switch over a $1 part (in bulk) for say a $8 part (in bulk) screwed the
drive over in the end.

But given that ASUS used the 3com on the P4C800 to save something like
$3 a board by not using the Intel Gigabit.....

Unfortunately, 3.5" is going to take some time to die off, luckily
Apple/Macintosh's descision to put SuperDrive/CDRW into their iMac lines
and higher has assisted in this, as one platform is now essentially 3.5
free (95% of the Mac users I know purchased a USB Zip drive, rather than
a floppy)

Some things can be re-worked to provide better implementation and
backwards compatibility, sometimes its better to just abandon something.

Philip
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Iomega's 100MB Zip drive killed the LS120. The latter was just too slow in
comparison especially when the disk started filling up. I used both at one
time about 7 years ago.
 
DaveW said:
USB 2.0 has replaced the floppy on modern machines.
Click to expand...

Not until one can purchase a USB memory stick or card reader without having
to ask "Can I boot from this".

I've got a number of USB memory devices that I'd love to boot from (even
natively supported by Mac and XP), but cannot be configured to allow booting
from.
 
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Derek Hawkins wrote:
| Iomega's 100MB Zip drive killed the LS120. The latter was just too slow in
| comparison especially when the disk started filling up. I used both at one
| time about 7 years ago.
|

Yeah, but ZIP drives suffer from click of death (early models) and it
doesnt stop the fact that ZIP drives CANNOT read any standard 3.5" disk,
only the ZIP style disks, no backwards compatibility (and CD-R killed
Zip, so in the end, who wins?)
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so in the end, who wins

Those who chose wisely. The LS120 was never a wise choice IMO even though I
did buy one (went back in the box about 6 years ago). FDD plus Zip was the
order of the day until, as you pointed out, CD-R came up to speed. Still
have three machines with internal Zip drives. The oldest is a 7 year old
blue bezel SCSI drive that works fine to this day. It's in a machine that
dual boots NT and Solaris. Just reached over and gave it a pat on the
bezel...LOL!
 
Your getting my point.

The scenarios that need to be covered include:

F6 drivers installs.
Occasions when an application insists there is a Floppy. EG Emergency Repair
discs and the like.

The bios should be able to be configured to allow emulation of a Floppy on a
set device somehow, or to automatically detect a device that has been
formatted to the agreed standard and have it appear as A: while running, or
accessible as A: when booting.

- Tim
 
Which is precisely what my P4C800-E Dlx's BIOS does. It tricks the OS into
believing that my USB Flash devices are large floppy drives.
 
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DanO wrote:

| Which is precisely what my P4C800-E Dlx's BIOS does. It tricks the OS
into
| believing that my USB Flash devices are large floppy drives.

This may be a feature of the i875P chipset, I was suprised when I found
it in my manual too, other chipsets dont always do this.

Philip
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Tim said:
Just a little stirring here. Don't you think it is time the floppy was
allowed to die completely?
Click to expand...

Seems like I read somewhere a short time back that a Win2K install required
a floppy.
 
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Andrew wrote:

| On Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:17:04 GMT, "mrdancer" <[email protected]>
| wrote:
|
|
|>Seems like I read somewhere a short time back that a Win2K install
required
|>a floppy.
|
|
| Only if you need to load some drivers.

And for the record, you can slipstream almost anything onto your
Win2K/XP CD's

This includes drivers. IF you download the latest Intel INF installer or
whatever, when you open it, the box that normally shows a EULA shows
instructions on how to install them (and then graciously tells you how
to slipstream them with windows CD's)
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