On 5/22/2024 9:27 AM, Kyonshi wrote:
On 5/21/2024 2:30 PM, John Dulak wrote:
A blast from the past ;-)
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240510-floppy-disks-why-some-people-are-still-in-love-with-this-obsolete-computer-storage-technology
John
is any technology ever really obsolete?
(except the Zune. That one was obsolete the week before it came out)
Kyonshi:
FWIIW I still have floppy disks. Both 5-1/4 inch and 3-1/2 inch and the drives that can read them. I admit I rarely use them since USB "sticks" are easier and roomier.
When I worked at Extrel there was a roll out of a new software package and various people were asked to evaluate sections of the package. Since changes to one part often were reflected in another part of the program there was value in keeping only *one copy* of the update to the software so the programmers did not
get "lost in the woods" of many changes. The solution was to keep the software update on a single floppy disk known internally as "Sneaker Net".
We also had some old systems that used 8 inch floppies. When customers asked for
software changes they had to send Extrel one of their disks. People are NOT going to throw away a half million dollar machine just because they can't find a
floppy disk to enter instructions!!
On one of my gigs at Extrel after I retired one of the electronics engineers told me that one of his oscilloscopes had a "storage" function that allowed him to save a waveform to a floppy disk to archive performance. Since floppies were getting scarce he was thinking of a new oscilloscope. We were able to track down
a "Floppy to USB" converter that plugged into a floppy slot. The only down side was that the USB stick had to be partitioned and formatted to 1.44 MB. The files
could then be transfered to a desktop PC.
And so it goes...
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