News The floppy that wouldn't die

[AnitaPeterson]

https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2022-10-20/a-1990s-relic-floppy-disks-get-second-life-at-california-warehouse#

Amazing to think that the floppy is still in use after so many years in service!

 

[tcsenter]

Sheesh those folks haven't heard about Floppy Emulator drives. Transfer those floppy images to flash memory card or USB drive!

 

[Steltek]

Sheesh those folks haven't heard about Floppy Emulator drives. Transfer those floppy images to flash memory card or USB drive!

Most of them are being used by companies on older aircraft or old but incredibly expensive to replace long term industrial machinery installations. In most cases, it isn't possible due to DRM/encryption issues (or in the case of aircraft avionics, even remotely legal to do so) to start hacking in to them to enable them to use any other form of storage medium.

Eventually, though, they will finally vanish. The floppy armageddon is upon us!

EDIT:
Huh, I wonder what they pay to buy their used floppy disks. Now that I think about it, I probably have a box with a stack of 50-100 used 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppies at the back of the top shelf of my closet. God only knows what is on them (probably pirated games, software development tools, and CAD software from the late 80's/early 90's among other garbage....).

 

[VirtualLarry]

I still have a 100-pack of brand-new blank IBM pre-formatted 3.5" floppies.

 

[WilliamM2]

I have done business with him many times. He's had the market cornered on new 720kb disks for twenty years. We have machines at work that ONLY read those, and won't work with emulators.

In the beggining we got 500 packs for about $60, now he wants $80 for a 50 pack! Like I said, he has the market cornered.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Wow... and then there's this:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-wednesday-edition-1.4742296/bringing-back-the-floppy-disk-ontario-record-label-promotes-vaporwave-music-1.4742298

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I wish the LS-120 and LS-240 (Superdisk) drives had come out a few years earlier - I remember putting one of those on a system, and thinking it was wonderful that it was supported on the BIOS of my motherboard, and that I could fit about 80x what would fit on a floppy on there....

 

[tcsenter]

Most of them are being used by companies on older aircraft or old but incredibly expensive to replace long term industrial machinery installations. In most cases, it isn't possible due to DRM/encryption issues (or in the case of aircraft avionics, even remotely legal to do so) to start hacking in to them to enable them to use any other form of storage medium

There is one seller of floppy drive emulators that has been doing it for a long time now, has solutions for different specialty systems, non-standardized or proprietary formatting, etc. They're like $400 or $500 bucks though. Can't think of the company name. Edit:

The company (or it's website) is HxC2001. Has successfully produced emulators for industrial controls, music equipment, CNC and woodworking machines, scientific instruments, among others.

 

[tcsenter]

All stocked up for Floppalooza 2028:



Have more stuff packed away in boxes; 25 pack floppies, way too many FDD cables, several older motherboards with onboard FDD port, two USB FDDs.

 

[tcsenter]

Several years ago, my cardiologist (who knows I work on computers and used to work in medical field) asked me to look at a few pieces of equipment that didn't work. The main piece was an old HP PageWriter ECG/EKG mobile cart from 1992! Battery (lead acid) was dead, replaced that with new cells (off-the-shelf cells in common form factor). It powered on but halted, display showed no ROM error, prompted for the system disk (FDD) to load the ROM. Looked every where for that disk but couldn't find it. So I searched the interwebs, found a bunch of people searching for it, too (from everywhere around the world).

Finally found one webpage where someone uploaded an image of a floppy they had. It worked! Unfortunately, after all that work, the charging circuit for the battery is non-op so the battery won't charge. I wasn't going to try repairing the charging circuit integrated into the main system board, that is a little beyond my abilities. But as long as they only operate it on AC not the battery, the charge in the new battery should keep the ROM preserved while not in use.