Sic transit gloria floppi

Post #325,277 by rcareaga 4/26/10 9:24:55 PM Reply	Sic transit gloria floppi I still recall my first purchase of the revolutionary new 3.5" floppies in their rigid cases back in September 1984. Just $55 (plus California and local sales taxes, then probably around 7%) for ten 400KB disks! It's many years since I last coaxed data off one of these; far, far longer since I saved to one. Steve Jobs was much-derided when he left the floppy drive off the original iMac: who's laughing now? http://news.yahoo.co...0426/tc_zd/250362 cordially,
Post #325,282 by boxley 4/26/10 9:52:46 PM Reply	didnt have one on the NeXt either If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #325,285 by Another Scott 4/26/10 9:56:54 PM Reply	I remember when HP wanted $70 for a box of 10. (The fancy new 2 MB (1.44 MB formatted) floppies.) I also remember when MicroCenter (IIRC) had a sale of 100 3.5" floppies for $10 with a $10 rebate. Good times. ;-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #325,289 by Andrew Grygus 4/26/10 10:49:14 PM Reply	It wasn't the iMac Jobs was famous for . . . . . it was the NeXT - and the lack of a floppy was a major reason for its failure. His engineers begged him to allow a floppy, but he refused - until near the end he had the "Insanely Great" idea of putting in a floppy, but by then it was too late. The problem was: at the time a writable CD cost about $40. If a software vendor had a 3 byte bug fix to distribute, that was $40 for every user of the software (the Internet was not yet widely used). And $40 was a lot more money then than it is now. "Insanely Great" my ass!
Post #325,294 by rcareaga 4/26/10 11:49:08 PM Reply	I don't think the original NeXT had a CD-ROM It used a 256MB magneto-optical drive. The idea was that you could have your entire operating environment in a cartridge that would fit in a jacket pocket. Sit down to a NeXT Cube at a remote location, insert your M/O drive, and it would be as though you were back at your personal workstation. At one time (back when CD-ROMs were about five bucks apiece) I thought that Fujitsu's 650MB M/O disks (about the size of a Sony floppy, but twice as thick) were the bee's knees. I've still got about twenty of them in their original cellophane, and two external drives—SCSI, alas!—here at the Harrison Street Museum of Senescent Technology. cordially,
Post #325,309 by boxley 4/27/10 8:51:53 AM Reply	correct If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #325,321 by Andrew Grygus 4/27/10 11:04:46 AM Reply	I'm sure you're right . . . . . but the cost was still way to high for many uses.
Post #325,295 by pwhysall 4/27/10 2:04:00 AM Reply	Re: Sic transit gloria floppi I haven't used one for about five years, and I haven't had a home computer with a functioning floppy drive (I did have one in the PC I used as a Linux server, but it wasn't connected and was probably so full of dust that it would spell instant doom to any disc inserted) for longer than that. I don't recall how much they cost in the UK at first, because my computer at the time (a BBC Micro Model B) used 5.25" discs. However, I do recall that, in the early 90s, the Student Union shop at University held the price at £1 for a 1.44MB disk for years after the price collapsed; presumably preying on those students too desperate, stupid or hungover to realise that you could get a box of ten for three quid in town.
Post #325,330 by lincoln 4/27/10 2:52:11 PM Reply	Re: Sic transit gloria floppi I used one last year when I got hit with a virus. Found a solution on the Internet, downloaded the file to a PC, put it on a floppy, and booted the infected box from the floppy. Since I was unable to get into the BIOS menu when I powered up, I couldn't set the boot order to go to a USB first. "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow
Post #325,298 by static 4/27/10 2:32:27 AM Reply	And the world moves on... There is a significant problem in marrying computer technology with music technology: the latter is going to get left behind at some point. I play an elderly Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler at church. It's actually only 17 years old, but it is technically a computer designed for playing music so from that aspect ancient. It has a 68000 CPU, 8Mb of RAM (originally, it shipped with 2Mb!) and a HD 3.5" FDD. The SCSI-1 interface was a later add-on. But look at it as a musical instrument and it's got years of life in it, so long as the storage holds out. People continue to resurrect old ZIP drives, ancient SCSI drives (I have one myself) and CF-adapters are also still sought after. I know of people still use SyQuest drives! And floppies are still being used to interact with a PC... Earlier devices from Ensoniq used DD 3.5" diskettes and they are very rare. I had collected some sixty of them over the years prior to finally selling my EPS-16plus, and sold the diskettes with it. Now I have to stockpile HD diskettes? Wade. Q:Is it proper to eat cheeseburgers with your fingers? A:No, the fingers should be eaten separately.
Post #325,299 by pwhysall 4/27/10 6:06:06 AM Reply	Completely OT... ...but how I despise the word "diskette". Have done ever since I first read it on my very first box of floppy discs (they were Verbatim DataLife double-density, double-sided 360K discs, fact fans).
Post #325,480 by Ashton 4/30/10 2:47:43 PM Reply	Indeed, Its cutesiness is at Beastware baby-babble level.
Post #325,479 by Ashton 4/30/10 2:43:16 PM Reply	That was a bargain! Four hundred K!! (My first install of a 3.5 drive: I put it in upside-down == matched the lights config of other drive. Disk wouldn't go in properly. WTF? Took several minutes to grok to fullness.) Don't tell anyone. Osborne1 #0189 IIRC: Box of MMM Single-sided @ 80 Kbytes: $50+ {$igh} -- but Miraculous compared to the cassette recorders for Timex and other toy-but-real 'computers'. WordStar, complete: 58Kbyes. (Has Word(y) reached 10 GB yet?) Anyone want a Timex/Sinclair 1000? Dropped off by someone who couldn't bring self to toss it in the blue bin.. Some sort of SinclairÂ backpack plug-in, presumably extra memory; allegedly working. Shipping is on the House. ~ '84ish, Lee Felsenstein (!) called to order some TweekÂ -- a 'contact enhancer' great for intermittent keyboards, other connections.. He designed the Osborne(s). Sent him some, wouldn't take his money. One rarely gets to thank an Originator. re Tweek: I had handed a sample to Jerry Pournelle ~ '84, seen wandering the aisles at a computer convention in SF; not 'Wescon' == general electronics, but ____? He tried it on a kb and pronounced it worthy of inclusion on a Products of the Year column. (A physicist cohort who imported mondo-fancy phono cartridges, designed tone-arms, etc. had found the stuff. So, after this free Ad I handled the fallout.) PS - had the satisfaction (satisfiction?) of telling an IBM caller that handling a P.O. wasn't a a part of my ad hoc operation; he'd need to send A CHECK. Flabbergasted was he. Chortling was I. The check arrived and 10 teensy bottles /syringes of Tweek duly dispatched. Hee.. hee ... I see ... I See a sequel: Sorry Mr. Gates, no reflection on your creditworthiness ... but I'll need a postal money order to sell you my CP/M-to-8088 beginner OS, so your little venture can get started.. (Oh, I presume you'll give us some credit when you release something, yesss?) Oh, and: we can elaborate on a little idea for an ASCII-Registry, if you promise not to use any binaries in it: that will be an additional $666.00. In advance. Fade-to-blackheartedness . . .
Post #325,487 by altmann 4/30/10 6:02:14 PM Reply	Putting things inside of other things I got my mom an iPhone for Xmas two years ago (before I purchased my own). Thinking the plastic thing in the SIM slot was just a packing insert, I proceeded to confidently insert the SIM card from her old phone directly into the slot. I spent the next shameful half hour assembling an extraction toolset from plastic toothpicks, scotch tape, and high-magnification reading glasses. On the subject of 3.5" floppies: I remember performing surgery on a number of them while working in the college computer lab. I'd transplant the actually floppy part from a case with a damaged metal door or melted from being left in a hot car into a new case so distraught students could (hopefully) recover their files.

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