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Those without 3.5" floppy drives -- how do you do it?

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Originally posted by: Electrode
Originally posted by: jaeger66
I've owned several mobos that can boot from USB.
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But would you flash your BIOS from it? 😉
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Nope, but just load the BIOS into a ramdrive once you boot. I'd do that regardless of boot medium. Anyway, I've been using Windows flash utilities for a while now without a hitch.
 
for some reason.... when i have a clean format on my comp my comp does not boot from cd... and i dont kno how to load the drivers so that my comp CAN boot up with a cd. so i am stuck with my floppy. and also my friends sometime need to print stuff or something. its just a handy piece of hardware to have. its only like $5.
 
Originally posted by: PHiuR
for some reason.... when i have a clean format on my comp my comp does not boot from cd... and i dont kno how to load the drivers so that my comp CAN boot up with a cd. so i am stuck with my floppy. and also my friends sometime need to print stuff or something. its just a handy piece of hardware to have. its only like $5.
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Try $20.
 
What do I have to put on a floppy? I haven't used a floppy in over a year, and I did not put one my new system 😀
 
holy crud, that's a lot of replies.

the reason i'm asking is because, last week i burnt my fdd and i ordered a new one, and to my dismay i believe the entire floppy connector is toast. i tried 3 different drives, 3 different cables, and the most i was able to do was read/write a few KB in winxp. none were bootable. i used it all the time too... oh well.
 
Originally posted by: idea
holy crud, that's a lot of replies.

the reason i'm asking is because, last week i burnt my fdd and i ordered a new one, and to my dismay i believe the entire floppy connector is toast. i tried 3 different drives, 3 different cables, and the most i was able to do was read/write a few KB in winxp. none were bootable. i used it all the time too... oh well.
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All that you mentioned in your first post can be done on a CD.
 
I haven't used one (at home) in quite some time.

BIOS updates are via CD normally. (or I can just grab a floppy from somewhere else)
 
my floppy is sitting on top of my desk, its there if i need/want it.
i just dont like having another cable running through my computer
and the 8RDA FDD controller couldnt be in a worse place on the board too.
 
Zip disk for me. I admit tho, there is a floppy mounted on the back of my case. I couldn't get XP to install w/o it. In retrospect, I think it was a bios setting but oh well.
 
Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
I love my floppy drive. It's the best for carrying small documents back and forth.

"drag and drop" file handling is far from being perfect with CD-RWs. It has a lot of compatibility and reliability issues.
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Very useful for a lab environment where you need to transfer traces and notepad files; it's much easier to just throw them on a floppy than it is to configure routing and cabling over to the corporate network to xfer the files over the network.
 
you can make your own bootable CD's

if i need to do a bios update, i grab a spare floopy drive and plug it up long enough to do it, then take it back out
 
Originally posted by: NeoPTLD
I love my floppy drive. It's the best for carrying small documents back and forth.

"drag and drop" file handling is far from being perfect with CD-RWs. It has a lot of compatibility and reliability issues.
Click to expand...

Not with Nero inCD, I have absolutely NO problem at all when I use InCD it rocks.
 
I paid the extra to get the floppy drive for my notebook but I find myself not really carrying it. I can just boot off of a cd.
 
Only one thing you still need floppies for:

3rd party drivers in NT4/W2k/XP.

Once those drivers can be loaded from CD, I'll be using ZIPS as my floppies from now on. For now, I just use www.nu2.nu to create any bootdisk i need on CD. But when I load w2k on my workstation, I have to have a floppy for my raid drive.
 
Originally posted by: calpha
Only one thing you still need floppies for:

3rd party drivers in NT4/W2k/XP.

Once those drivers can be loaded from CD, I'll be using ZIPS as my floppies from now on. For now, I just use www.nu2.nu to create any bootdisk i need on CD. But when I load w2k on my workstation, I have to have a floppy for my raid drive.
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There is a way to do that, make a bootable WinXP/2k CD and put the drivers you want on it. Then modify the txtsetup.sif file and burn. I'm not sure of the specifics of this procedure, ask in the appropriate forum or Google it.
 
Originally posted by: idea
How can you live without one? As far as my BIOS updates, win98 boot disk, memtest86, and other things.. I don't think I could remove mine.
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I don't do any of those things.
 
One of my rigs has a zip drive, no 3.5". Put everything I'd normally put on a floppy on the zip. No worries. But, I make good use out of the floppies in my other rigs.

All of the new Compaq Laptops I buy for our Sale's Reps no longer have built in Floppy's nor is one included as an accessory. They're a $47.00 to $89.00 add on depending on whether you buy off-brand or not. Against my recommendation, the director of marketing insisted that we didn't need to spend the money for "unecessary" accessories (floppy drives) on our first order of 20 laptops. 😀. I billed the Marketing department for the overnight deliveries of external floppy drives once the panicking Sale's Reps started calling in 😉
 
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