Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Super TWiT on April 26, 2010, 09:22:30 PM
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Sony announced that they are going to cease the sale of floppies in japan by march of 2011. PC World stopped ordering them in 2007. Is this a sign for the rest of us that its time to stock pile these babies? However, it sounds as if sony may continue to sell floppies in the U.S. along with imation, maxell, verbatim, and staples. Here's a link (http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/194959/sony_to_end_floppy_disk_production.html) to the PC World Article.
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Are floppies still being manufactured? One would think the market for these would be almost non-existant today.
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well it's still possible to find NOS 5.25 today, so I wouldn't worry about 3.5 stuff for a long time ...
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Stockpiling floppies is probably a bad idea. They have a limited life anyway. I think if you are using a classic machine it's time to look into how else you might transfer files.
One of the most useful things I've ever plugged into my A1200 was a network card. Faster than floppy and far more flexible too.
I think the main reason to have a few floppies are for emergency boot disks.
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Though as countzero says, there is probably plenty of NOS too.
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Waste of good plastic, virtually no space, you'd need 4 to 6 of them for a single photo or song. I've got a pocketful of flash drives, what do I need these things for?
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I can't think of the last PC I built with a floppy drive. Maybe...eight? years ago?
All my boot disks now are CDs or USB drives.
And yet, still, I have stacks of the fucking things lying around here! :P
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Waste of good plastic, virtually no space, you'd need 4 to 6 of them for a single photo or song. I've got a pocketful of flash drives, what do I need these things for?
If you don't have any classic systems, none whatsoever. If you actually do own some original amiga machines still, then they do have their occasional use, especially if your HD goes west.
That said, the last time I had a HD boot issue like that, I put the offending HD into a PC, fired up winuae and corrected it from there. Not a floppy in sight.
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Waste of good plastic, virtually no space, you'd need 4 to 6 of them for a single photo or song. I've got a pocketful of flash drives, what do I need these things for?
Hate to say it, I've got 5.25 floppies dating to the eighties round here and they still read, the 128meg flash I bought two years ago doesn't....says a lot really. And heres the irony, that they are looking back to paper to provide long life storage of Data as punch cards and paper tape are still readable electronically 40 years after they were created.
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Buy 1 packet and re-use them a lot.
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If you don't have any classic systems, none whatsoever. If you actually do own some original amiga machines still, then they do have their occasional use, especially if your HD goes west.
That said, the last time I had a HD boot issue like that, I put the offending HD into a PC, fired up winuae and corrected it from there. Not a floppy in sight.
Most classic systems now have some sort of solid state storage kludged to 'em, though.
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Most classic systems now have some sort of solid state storage kludged to 'em, though.
Where do you get this kind of rubbish....
I have enough floppies to last till the day I die. Why on earth would you want to muck a classic machine by infecting it with such modern junk. Honestly. The Amiga was never designed this way, and the floppy works just fine. Those that kludge as you call it, what ever that means, just degrade the true Amiga experience. Dunno why you just don`t get an emulator and be done with it.
And what do mass storage devices have to do with it.. We were talking about the threat to the Amiga from not having removable storage media in the form of floppies. So yes go stock up on your floppies and keep your current floppies safe. All my originals still work so really I don`t see the problem.
AUI decrunching to DF0: All done... Classic.
scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
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I want to point out that maxell, imation, verbatim, and staples still make floppies (in america atleast) (haven't announced that they are going to quit) and that possibly sony of america may continue. Many news sites say that this is the death of the floppy, but the more I think about it, the less it seems like a big deal. Some people say that because sony did this others will follow soon, however many companies have pulled out of the floppy business, and not everyone followed suite.
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A lot of the older people aren't quick to upgrade so there are instructors at the university level who still have their old computers.
However, they are probably just using them for word processing so there is no need to upgrade your computer every three years. As long as it works, some find no need to waste money.
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A lot of the older people aren't quick to upgrade
Us Older people are just doing fine thank u with plenty SOA kit knocking about;) I will remember your kind words when I take delivery of my next toy.
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Where do you get this kind of rubbish....
I have enough floppies to last till the day I die. Why on earth would you want to muck a classic machine by infecting it with such modern junk. Honestly. The Amiga was never designed this way, and the floppy works just fine. Those that kludge as you call it, what ever that means, just degrade the true Amiga experience. Dunno why you just don`t get an emulator and be done with it.
And what do mass storage devices have to do with it.. We were talking about the threat to the Amiga from not having removable storage media in the form of floppies. So yes go stock up on your floppies and keep your current floppies safe. All my originals still work so really I don`t see the problem.
AUI decrunching to DF0: All done... Classic.
scuzz
http://www.commodore-amiga-retro.com
Do you have some kind of brain injury or is my sarcasm detector on the blink?
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Where do you get this kind of rubbish....
....Those that kludge as you call it, what ever that means, just degrade the true Amiga experience. Dunno why you just don`t get an emulator and be done with it....
You have pretty limited point of view if your "Amiga experience" assasment deny use of modern mass storage, particulary if poster was referring to internal mounted CF or flashdrives. I'd like to hear a definition of a person throwing away an option to use some kind of solid state storage back in 1990 with modern era set aside. Please be aware most people on this forum don't use emulator if their Amiga HW is fully functional and yes, I still use floppies in my non-expanded A500.
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What we need is an effective FDD-Drive-SD based, that could read disk images.
I have one SD Drive Nuxx for my Atari XE, and believe me it works great. I've purchased
one 1541 ultimate for my C64 either, they're expensive yeah but worthy.
You can VIRTUALLY have EVERYTHING in a single SD... Plus you can have AN EXTRA SD
AS BACKUP, just in case the main one gets ruined or lost. ;)
I've seen one of these projects that could be used on a different range of machines,
from Speccies to Miggies.
My problem with this device is the fact i don't know if it can be handled without screen,
SDNuxx and 1541Ultimate, display a boot-up menu to choose the desire images to use.
That's the way forward, we can use .adf's from our workbench, we can read'em
we can copy'em and use them virtually, but we can't boot from them.
One of these SD-Floppy drives would allow us to have all the bootable adf's stored
on a fistful of SD's, boot from them if we want, or manage them from Workbench.
So i don't feel in any way sad or threatened if 3,5 inch floppies vanish from earth.
In fact i only have around 40 floppies to work with them. I have all my stuff on
virtual adf's.
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Exactly adfs are so much better than floppies and it's not hard to read them on an Amiga or a UAE machine.
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That news doesnt matter much unless you got an Amiga with HD-floppy like A4000 anyway. I dont think anybody still makes new DD-disks today and taping up a HD to fool the drive has never produced reliable results.
As many have said CompactFlash or something similar is more convenient for anything other than games.
I got feed up with floppies in the late 90s when quality dropped so 1 of 3 was faulty out of the box. Today its all usbsticks, sd and cf cards. DVD/CD-burner is only used for testing out new linuxversions.
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Well this is for the HD 1.44 media, and you can still buy DSDD 720k disks from other manufacturers so I would not worry about it.
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What I do is to image the original floppies to adf and store/burn them on a CDRW, so whenever I need to reinstall either on a real or emulated machine, It can always read from CD to virtual or a real DD back. It helps me pass the time to make a hot coco while writing back to Floppies. :drink:
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Well this is for the HD 1.44 media, and you can still buy DSDD 720k disks from other manufacturers so I would not worry about it.
where's a good place to get these?
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Just saw this on /. in an article about floppies...
http://www.floppytousb.com/
Wonder if it would work with an Amiga?
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According to the BBC coverage of this, another company sells millions of floppies every month in Europe. Even if the profit is low per disk, I doubt they will quit just because floppies are not trendy anymore.
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Hi,
Actually I hate floppies, they aren't so floppy when they are bouncing off my head when my wife gets mad at me, and if your laughing I hope one day your mate will bounce a floppy off your head. (The 3.5 inch really hurt, but my wife can throw the 5 1/4 faster. The CD aren't to effective they are round, you have to throw them like a frizbee and since no corners they don't hurt to bad)
smerf
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Floppy's ?
:hammer:
http://www.torlus.com/floppy/
(http://www.torlus.com/floppy/images/Working_MCUStandAlone_HxCFloppyEmulator2b.jpg)
And:
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html
(http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/pictures/HxCFloppyEmulator_SDcardhomebrew_1.jpg)
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Well, I've been stockpiling floppies (3.5" and 51/4") for a while now... I've found it difficult to find them in my little town of only 604,000 .....
Maybe many classic computers can use CF/SD adapters, etc. but I for one, don't want to take apart my fragile Amiga's to install one, nor do I want to spend the money.
Beyond computers, per se, there are many areas where floppies are all but vital, and can't just be replaced with a solid state device. I used to be scan co-ordinator at a large independant supermarket. Even in 2006, I still had to update the registers, make backups of config. files, etc. using floppy disks. There was no other option, beyond scrapping all cash registers, 2 master registers / PC's, and all the support equipment. Obviously, that isn't a viable option for many companies. I really hope that they keep making floppies.... Man, cassettes, open reel tapes, now floppies, what's left?
I agree that even if floppy production ceased completely tommorow, you could still find 'em popping up in strange places. A couple of years ago, I was in Milwaukee's biggest hardware store, National Hardware, looking through thier 'bargain bins', and they had 3 sealed boxes of Maxell 5 1/4" disks, for the huge sum of $1.00 each. Of course, I bought 'em :afro:
.........
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzfUZorBayw
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/SDCard_HxC_Floppy_Emulator_User_Manual.pdf
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180479359777&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT
;)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzfUZorBayw
http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/SDCard_HxC_Floppy_Emulator_User_Manual.pdf
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180479359777&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT
;)
Yes, but...
•Write support not available on Amiga computers !)
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Sorry but I'm tending to agree with scuzzb494 here.
There is nothing like the sound of that floppy drive clunk as a 3 &1/2" floppy is inserted and the subsequent tracking sound that follows.
Like a kettle pouring into a cuppa on a freezing cold day. Or the Click/Fizz of a screw top beer cap on a scorcher. Sounds that touch the heart.
Floppies are classic.
BTW: Correctly stored floppies have lasted for 25 years so far. I know, I have them. So who's to say they wouldn't last another 25 years. Answer: no one or god knows.
BTBTW: Vinyl LP records are making a bit of a retro comeback. It's not for the sound quality surely.
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Time to start stockpiling?
I did that YEARS ago:when the stores started dumping 5.25 inch ones.Bought about 20 boxes.And have several big boxes of 3.5 inchFunny thing is I see a box now and again in the thrift store and have picked up a few.Just be sure to store in dry place; a damp basement or garage or outbuilding is no good for keeping anything but root vegetables.
Wry admission: very seldom use any floppy.These days its CD/DVD/downloads and usb drives.When I finally get real classic Commodre and Amigas set back up (instead of AF) then floppies will get used again.Probably need to archive my floppy-based program collection;and scan the manuals,too.