On Sun, Jan 15, 2006 at 08:54:03PM +0000, Adam Bower wrote:
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!
More and more new x86 machines are now coming without the dreaded floppy drive installed...and believe it or not when we sell those we do get a few complaints....it's very rare to see floppy drives on laptops as well (I don't mind them so much on PC's as it adds little to cost and nothing to the size...but it is a waste of valuable space/weight on a laptop)
I was going to say that at least part of the problems with floppies (tiny capacity aside) is that modern drives are media seem to be rubbish. I never remember this many problems with my first (floppy only) x68 or my Amiga or even the Opus Discovery 3 1/2 " on my Spectrum...but most of those drives cost £100 or more where as now they are £3-£5.
Now it seems as if there is roughly a 50% success rate when you pick up a random floppy. About the only time I use them now is for Ghost network boot disks to talk to our Ghostcast server...even with new out of the box disks I tend to get a few failures.
Also have you noticed that Windows still is pretty much incapable of doing much else when it is reading/writing to a floppy.