On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 07:13:07PM -0000, Anthony Anson wrote:
You've been misinformatted.
Floopies are still useful (IMO) as failsafe boot devices, running microLinuces (microLunacies?) and loading acquired old progs and data to newer machines.
I disagree, I just had to deal with a floppy disk this evening. The grinding noises from the disk... it sounded like there was a hamster grater in my computer, not what should be a bit of "high tech"! after about 10 goes we got the required data off (at a speed that probably seemed really fast in 1978) and managed to print it (which co-incidently took about 10 goes, read more below on this).
IME trying to boot off a floppy disk on a stubborn machine that won't boot via the "normal" methods (CD-Rom, Network, USB) usually results in me taking the hard-disk out and booting the machine from elsewhere as the floppy disk i'm trying to use will be corrupt, or the drive will be faulty, or the drive in the machine i'm making the boot disk in is faulty or the image of the boot disk you are trying to use is corrupt on the ftp site/cdrom/local mirror because nobody checked it worked before releasing the software (usually a wacky combination of all of the above). In which case I now don't bother with floppy disks at all, except as the real last resort (even after trying to input a linux kernel via a toggle switch on the front panel).
Pretty much every x86 machine I have *ever* used has been able to boot from CD-Rom, I use this feature and take it pretty much for granted. I find it a sign of how archaic the x86 PC can be that it still has floppy disk drives even now!
If I was king for a day I'd burn every floppy disk and floppy disk drive in the world (after taking off the important data first, obviously) as they are my most hated computer peripheral, closely followed in second place by printers (oh, so you can either not pick up *any* paper or 17 sheets at a time) and in third place is the motherboards in those cheap computers from places like PC World and Comet which only have 2 PCI slots (usually only 1 usable by the time you have stuck an ethernet card in the machine) and no AGP slot.
</rant> ;)
By now, I think you get the picture that I don't like floppy disks :)
Thanks Adam