Floppy Disks And Ejecting USB Drives

Wow.This is so a harch blog. I take it you don’t like floppy drives so much do you? I have a stack of at least 30-50 disks that contain different programs/games. I also keep a Windows 98 system with a OPL3 (Sound Blaster AWE64) card in it for playing around with AdLib tracker. I have a ton of applications and games that will not work in DosBox, VMWare, Virtual PC, Virtual Box, Etc. There are just some things that you can’t just throw to the curb. I for one will always keep an older PC around (Windows98/DOS) for older games/software that I like to use from time to time. The OS doesn’t support USB drives the same as it does floppy drives so of course I’ll be keeping floppy disks around.

@Michael: I have some 5 1/4s around with old text games. That has nothing whatever to do with the question of whether a college course should be teaching *anything* that is only available and only runs by floppy. Consider your own statement – you have these things because you can’t run them on newer pcs, emulators, or VMs, not because they represent the state of the art. This guy is being required to run software on a modern PC that only exists on a floppy. That’s the crux of the story, and man – is it pathetic. Tells you a lot about the state of education today. I hear from newbie web developers all the time that they’re taught things in class that weren’t state of the art in 1999 and aren’t even remotely applicable today.

Floppy disks and drives are not dead yet. Instead of pulling a part an old PC to extract a floppy drive using an external floppy drive is a whole lot easier. They’re not expensive. I always have my external Imation USB floppy drive handy. It still gets plenty of use and always comes along in my toolbag. I even bought a pack of floopy disks from Radio Shack.

hey- at least floppy disks are still used for something:

http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-12/popscicom-5-minute-project-video-floppy-disk-pen-holder-0

I thought that since I probably get dead stock of floppy’s at say 1,000,000,000 for 100,000 dollars or less just to take the stock off the sellers hands that I would build a house out of them.

Having seen some friends go thru “job rehab”. I would be worried about the value of his schooling more than getting him a floppy drive. Many friends have been taking classes on software so old that no company I know of would be interested or capable of using them as their skills would be outdated and useless.
We hire kids while in college going towards computer degree’s. Not one of them is being taught proper programmer skills or low level programming languages such as C+. No wonder all the work is going offshore.

I think the family friend should look to another school. True, floppy is not totally dead, but new computers don’t come with them usually and most businesses have moved forward. If the school is still using floppy drives, what does that say about the education in general? USB has been out for quite a while now. So has CD/DVD. I just would be suspect of the school that is still using outdated tech.

Just my 2 cents

Scott

Regarding the school’s quality – it’s an L&I thing, so he has no say in “where”. ;)

But yes, I think it is INSANE, too.

Microsoft still required them to install special drivers when installing Server 2003. I think they finally stopped using them with Server 2008, but I am not sure since I don’t have it installed. Servers haven’t had floppy drives on them for several years, so I keep a USB floppy drive on hand. My biggest problem is finding discs that will still work.

I work for a bus company and a lot of our buses have Destos (electronic destination signs) that use an old 128kb smart card to transfer data. We have to use an Olympus SmartCard adapter that runs in a floppy drive. I’ve tried a USB smartcard adapter but it doesn’t read it. And it won’t work on a USB floppy either!

I still have a couple of computers here as well that still have the floppy drives in them. And one usb floppy drive just in case of such an emergenct for laptops or what ever I need when needed to use a floppy like using the old Fdisk from floppy to do a fdisk /mbr to restore the master boot record under dos. WHich is still good to do when the hard drive goes belly up of course. But I still keep a couple of floppy drives around for such purposes. You can still pick them up for about 5-10 dollars canadian.

Karl