# Floppies/Stiffies



## Rakuen Growlithe (May 1, 2010)

I just found out that a bunch of people still use floppies/stiffies (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8651750.stm). I've always called the 3.5 inch disks stiffies because it differentiates them from the 5 1/4 inch disks which are floppy. In any case does anyone still have or use these?

I have 3.5 and 5 1/4 inch disks lying around with some old DOS games and word files. I don't actually use them because my laptop only has CD/DVD and USB support but I still have a 386 in the cupboard which can run them.


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## TashkentFox (May 1, 2010)

This thread is disappointing.


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## Rakuen Growlithe (May 1, 2010)

Not enough sex jokes? 

Well first we had floppies, then we got stiffies, then CD's came with a hole (which I bet everyone fingered) and now all our PC's have viruses. Geeks are so sexually frustrated that it's coming out in their machines.

Now back on topic. Will anyone here be upset that they can't buy old disks?


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## CaptainCool (May 1, 2010)

floppies are awesome. its kinda sad though, most PCs dont come with a floppy drive anymore and the PC cases that you buy these days usually dont even have a slot one anymore =/
the driver for a keyboard i baught came on a floppy and my latin teacher made us copy our homeowrk to a floppy as well


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## Aden (May 1, 2010)

I have four floppy drives lying around in my room for some reason.


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## Tycho (May 1, 2010)

Oh, nostalgia.  Some of my favorite games as a kid installed from 5 1/4" disks.  Remembering to put the disks back in their paper sleeves, sticking them into the floppy drive and latching the gate shut, hearing the loud whirr whirr whirr of the drive motor and the "bleep bloop bleepity bloop bloop" of the PC speaker as I stared transfixed by a 14" CGA display and mashed the keys on the big bulky heavy old keyboard tirelessly... CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK, the keys were so loud when you pressed them.

What were we talking about? Ah yes, floppies.  I'm amazed they held on as long as they did.  Even an abortive last-gasp attempt by 3 1/2" floppy drive makers by boosting storage capacity to 2.88 MB could not prevent their demise.  Suppose it's just as well, floppies of any size were fragile troubleprone things.


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## Willow (May 1, 2010)

The last time I used a floppy was in 6th grade

I'm surprised that a lot of people still used them as well


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## AshleyAshes (May 1, 2010)

I've long abandoned it.  My PC had a dead floppy drive for... Years?  I don't even KNOW but once a then boyfriend wanted to pull his resume off the floppy and we found out it was dead.

I've since replaced my 3.5" floppy drive with a 3.5" USB and memory card reader which replaces it quite well:

http://www.onlineshop.com.sg/images/EGE00180.jpg

That's not the EXACT model but it's pretty darn close.  Obviously things like xD will never get in use, but I use a generic ATX case so it adds useful features to the front.


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## Oovie (May 1, 2010)

When I used XP, you couldn't install a RAID array without floppys giving the OS the drivers. Wasn't the same case with Windows 7, however I want to use a specific chipset on my motherboard specifically for RAIDs. The problem is, this isn't possible without a floppy disk, and newer motherboards I'm finding don't support a floppy input on them anymore! I'll have to buy a USB floppy drive if I ever want to do what I have lined up, I've already looked into using CD or flash-drive methods but they can't be configured for this specific task apparently.

True story probably though, that 99% of computer users don't need a floppy drive. Even the times I need it, is only to install drivers for very few hardware. Or you can be creative with them and do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4SCSGRVAQE


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## AshleyAshes (May 1, 2010)

Actually, the Windows XP installer won't recognise a USB floppy drive as a real floppy drive.  You NEED a real floppy drive on a floppy controller and it has to be drive letter A:

However you can just slip stream the drivers INTO your WinXP package, then reburn it to CDR and use that.  Then the drivers are already IN the disc.  No floppy necessary.


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## Oovie (May 1, 2010)

AshleyAshes said:


> Actually, the Windows XP installer won't recognise a USB floppy drive as a real floppy drive.  You NEED a real floppy drive on a floppy controller and it has to be drive letter A:
> 
> However you can just slip stream the drivers INTO your WinXP package, then reburn it to CDR and use that.  Then the drivers are already IN the disc.  No floppy necessary.


Ah, I wouldn't know, when I ran XP it was on a motherboard designed with a floppy on the board. Would only need the drive temporarily so used to just hook it up and hang it out of the case till I was done, never saw the need to go USB back then for such an uncommon use of mine.


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## Slyck (May 1, 2010)

I used to use 1.2meg biggies for a while.


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## Irreverent (May 1, 2010)

Floppy disk horror stories?  Where do I start?

I have 8" soft and even hard sectored floppy disks kicking around the basement somewhere.  They hold microcode and gen code and/or MOS's for the IBM 3274-series cluster controller (32 x  9.6baud coax ports...woo!).

Circa '86 I was doing a Novell 2.01a install and had to make backups of 30+ Novell disks before installing on a Compaq Deskpro III 386 with a single drive.  Backup A: A:  ....there may be other forms of hell, but I can't imagine one.  It was possible to mix up the disks and copy a blank over the master copy of what was then a $20k (for 256-nodes) OS.  Labeling was REAL important back then.  Dysan, Naushwa, 3M were the biggies of the day. 

Cracking open the box on a Sun Sparc micro later that week, I panicked....there was no disk drive, just a tray-less (which was pretty fucking advanced for its day...the thing looked like a Wii) cdr bay and Solaris 1.1 on cd rom.  Ive never really looked back.

I believe that NT 4.0 was the first OS to ship on CD only, (wfw 3.11a still came on 3.5") and that was the death knell of the floppy era.

Anyone remember the IOmega 10gb disk cartridges that were the same size as a US Robotics modem 9.6 modem?  Precursor to the 1 and 2 gb Zip and Jazz disks, those suckers were the coolest thing since sliced bread.  Ironically, my Casio dive watch now has as much storage, in the size of...well...a watch.


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## TIM-ber-wolf (May 1, 2010)

I stuck a floppy drive in my desktop three years ago, just for the heck of it. I probably use it three times a year, when one of those 3.5 bits of plastic fall out of my closet, or out of a drawer, or somewhere.


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## Melo (May 1, 2010)

Irreverent said:


> Floppy disk horror stories?  Where do I start?
> 
> I have 8" soft and even hard sectored floppy disks kicking around the basement somewhere.  They hold microcode and gen code and/or MOS's for the IBM 3274-series cluster controller (32 x  9.6baud coax ports...woo!).
> 
> ...



My nerd sense are tingling.


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## Aden (May 1, 2010)

Midnight Panics said:


> My *old* nerd sense are tingling.



fixt

\Oh man, I totally have a zip drive lying around here somewhere


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## CyberFoxx (May 1, 2010)

I got an old 5.25" full height drive that I tested a few months back. The 360KB discs that I used with it back in my 8088 still worked. Even went as far as to do a badblocks check, no errors. Gotta admit, that's pretty good for something that looks like it wasn't designed to last. (The discs that is, the damn drive could get hit with a nuke and still work.)


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## Irreverent (May 1, 2010)

Aden said:


> fixt




ffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuu <---- byte pattern on a defective zip platter. 



> \Oh man, I totally have a zip drive lying around here somewhere



I've got zip, jaz and traveler drives kicking around somewhere.


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## Bianca (May 1, 2010)

AshleyAshes said:


> Actually, the Windows XP installer won't recognise a USB floppy drive as a real floppy drive.  You NEED a real floppy drive on a floppy controller and it has to be drive letter A.


Actually many BIOS's support USB Floppy Emulation whereby a detected USB Floppy device will be mapped to the address of the internal FDD controller and will work for obsolete OS installers.

Slipstreaming, or better yet, moving to a non-obsolete OS make more sense tho


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## Lobar (May 1, 2010)

What to do with my old ROM cartridges, though?


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## Ames (May 1, 2010)

I've got a ~20 year old computer virus on a floppy.


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## AshleyAshes (May 2, 2010)

Bianca said:


> Actually many BIOS's support USB Floppy Emulation whereby a detected USB Floppy device will be mapped to the address of the internal FDD controller and will work for obsolete OS installers.
> 
> Slipstreaming, or better yet, moving to a non-obsolete OS make more sense tho


 
YOU told me USB wouldn't work.  You never mentioned emulation if the BIOS supports it.


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## Bianca (May 2, 2010)

AshleyAshes said:


> YOU told me USB wouldn't work.  You never mentioned emulation if the BIOS supports it.


Nono, I meant using a USB stick won't work - and it won't. *BUT* a usb-floppy drive (ie, an external floppy drive that connects via USB) _will_ work if the BIOS supports USB Floppy emulation.


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## Stargazer Bleu (May 2, 2010)

I have a old pc that has both drives. 
All i remember of it is its like a 60 Mhz pentium.
Did usb even exisit then?


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## Rakuen Growlithe (May 2, 2010)

> I have a old pc that has both drives.
> All i remember of it is its like a 60 Mhz pentium.
> Did usb even exisit then?



I doubt it.

I never had any of those zip drives or 2.88 meg disks. I remember a friend talking about getting one of them but I never actually saw one and I guess they just died out before getting any sort of hold. 

Now looking at flash drives those old disks look so pathetic. Even my first flash looks pathetic, it's only 256 megs. I can't think of anything to do with it.


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## Irreverent (May 2, 2010)

Rakuen Growlithe said:


> Even my first flash looks pathetic, it's only 256 megs. I can't think of anything to do with it.



Throw a copy of puppy linux on it and be amazed that a full linux distro, including open office, browser and gui fits in about 32mb.


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## jmac32here (May 2, 2010)

Actually, I would be upset.

They are still commonly and heavily used in embroidery machines.  Since a friend of mine own 3 of said machines and her own embroidery shop, I would be pissed if I couldn't buy her more disks.


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## Tycho (May 2, 2010)

jmac32here said:


> Actually, I would be upset.
> 
> They are still commonly and heavily used in embroidery machines.  Since a friend of mine own 3 of said machines and her own embroidery shop, I would be pissed if I couldn't buy her more disks.



Embroidery machines? Huh?


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## Stargazer Bleu (May 3, 2010)

Rakuen Growlithe said:


> I doubt it.
> 
> I never had any of those zip drives or 2.88 meg disks. I remember a friend talking about getting one of them but I never actually saw one and I guess they just died out before getting any sort of hold.
> 
> Now looking at flash drives those old disks look so pathetic. Even my first flash looks pathetic, it's only 256 megs. I can't think of anything to do with it.


 
My Hdd on that old pc was like 250mb i think. That was a extra charge for a HDD that big back then too. 50mb memory too i think i had in it at the end.
My flash stick is more powerfull than that pc


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## Irreverent (May 3, 2010)

Tycho said:


> Embroidery machines? Huh?



And stage/theatrical lighting controllers too.  There's quite a bit of non-PC type equipment that uses the 3.5" 1.44mb format disk to hold data or scripts or patterns or...whatever.  And with a lifespan of 10-30 years in industrial settings, alot of that stuff never got upgraded to newer formats.


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## Rakuen Growlithe (May 3, 2010)

> My Hdd on that old pc was like 250mb i think. That was a extra charge  for a HDD that big back then too. 50mb memory too i think i had in it at  the end.
> My flash stick is more powerfull than that pc



I've got an old HDD that's only 20mb. I'm not planning on plugging it into anything though. The 386 I mentioned earlier has two hard drives (from other old pcs that broke) and each is 800mb. That's not very much but I still bet it's the only 386 with over a gig of storage. ^^


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## Tycho (May 3, 2010)

Irreverent said:


> And stage/theatrical lighting controllers too.  There's quite a bit of non-PC type equipment that uses the 3.5" 1.44mb format disk to hold data or scripts or patterns or...whatever.  And with a lifespan of 10-30 years in industrial settings, alot of that stuff never got upgraded to newer formats.



Wow.  Crazy.


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## Taren Fox (May 3, 2010)

I love stiffies. :3


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## TashkentFox (May 3, 2010)

Taren Fox said:


> I love stiffies. :3



You would :V.


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## Taren Fox (May 3, 2010)

TashkentFox said:


> You would :V.


;3 You would know.


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## Riley (May 3, 2010)

I kind of miss the days when the storage mediums were big enough you wouldn't be able to lose them if you looked away for a second.  I mean, I like my 16 gig microSD card for my phone and all, but if I ever dropped the thing...

And let's not forget about corrupting all the data by playing with the metal tab and scratching/tearing the film in the floppy disk.


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