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Sony discontinues floppy discs in Japan
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The following comments relate to this news article:
article published on 25 April, 2010
Sony has announced this weekend that they will be discontinuing all sales of the 3.5-inch floppy disc in Japan starting in 2011, effectively killing off the three decade old disk type.
The company helped pioneer the disk in 1981, introducing the technology that year and then starting to sell the discs in 1983.
At its height in the year 2000, Sony shipped 47 million disks, but that ... [ read the full article ]
Please read the original article before posting your comments.
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Morreale
Senior Member
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25. April 2010 @ 23:55 |
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Quote:
However, that also begs the question, why were so many floppies shipped even in 2009 and who is still using them?
My thoughts exactly :S
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lmadope
Newbie
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26. April 2010 @ 00:35 |
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Originally posted by Morreale:
Quote:
However, that also begs the question, why were so many floppies shipped even in 2009 and who is still using them?
My thoughts exactly :S
well floppy's are still used to update or load bios anyone who builds or keeps their bios up to date uses them
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Senior Member
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26. April 2010 @ 02:21 |
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not mOriginally posted by lmadope:
Originally posted by Morreale:
Quote:
However, that also begs the question, why were so many floppies shipped even in 2009 and who is still using them?
My thoughts exactly :S
well floppy's are still used to update or load bios anyone who builds or keeps their bios up to date uses them
Not me I use my thumb drive it's much safer
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KSib
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26. April 2010 @ 02:37 |
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Same. Thumb drive here. Floppies have always been unreliable.
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EricCarr
Member
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26. April 2010 @ 06:13 |
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I stopped using them years ago. I cannot believe they are still used. I don't even have a PC with a floopy drive.
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Senior Member
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26. April 2010 @ 06:20 |
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i stopped using them years ago cause when I needed 1 for something there was no where to buy 1 from.who seriously wants something that can hold 1.44 MB when we have USB sticks half the size that can hold 128GB.
custom built gaming pc from early 2010,ps2 with 15 games all original,ps3 500gbs with 5 games all original,yamaha amp and 5.1channel surround sound speakers,46inch sony lcd smart tv.
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Paula_X
Suspended permanently
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26. April 2010 @ 07:00 |
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It's all a matter of IF you can access and mount a usb stick.. not all hardware will and if you are dealing with a corrupt bios theres often NO way to get into the routine except by an old and 100% supported method.
Way too much these days is designed to make things impossible for normal people to fix without masses of expensive and specific equipment..
Carry on down the gas guzzling more power.. more power computers you all seem to be addicted to.. I'm gong the other way getting more from less.. because this "new new more more waste waste" world will come to an end soon and there will be a need for people who know how to make things work without all the power you children waste to play games......
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Senior Member
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26. April 2010 @ 09:36 |
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Originally posted by Paula_X:
It's all a matter of IF you can access and mount a usb stick.. not all hardware will and if you are dealing with a corrupt bios theres often NO way to get into the routine except by an old and 100% supported method.
Way too much these days is designed to make things impossible for normal people to fix without masses of expensive and specific equipment..
Carry on down the gas guzzling more power.. more power computers you all seem to be addicted to.. I'm gong the other way getting more from less.. because this "new new more more waste waste" world will come to an end soon and there will be a need for people who know how to make things work without all the power you children waste to play games......
Ok have fun regressing dude we'll miss you in the future
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 26. April 2010 @ 09:37
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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26. April 2010 @ 10:11 |
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Originally posted by xyqo:
Originally posted by Paula_X:
It's all a matter of IF you can access and mount a usb stick.. not all hardware will and if you are dealing with a corrupt bios theres often NO way to get into the routine except by an old and 100% supported method.
Way too much these days is designed to make things impossible for normal people to fix without masses of expensive and specific equipment..
Carry on down the gas guzzling more power.. more power computers you all seem to be addicted to.. I'm gong the other way getting more from less.. because this "new new more more waste waste" world will come to an end soon and there will be a need for people who know how to make things work without all the power you children waste to play games......
Ok have fun regressing dude we'll miss you in the future
He's right not all mobos will boot from USB so you need a floppy drive around and a bootloader to boot the USB if possible.... ^^
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ddp
Moderator
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26. April 2010 @ 11:45 |
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zippy & paula are right about older motherboards won't boot from usb when bios is messed up. have fixed a few bioses by booting off a win98 bootdisk to correct the bios.
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Ceshomru
Newbie
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26. April 2010 @ 12:44 |
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You guys are right, but the key word here is "old". I could dig out my 4 original Win2k floppies if I wanted, but why? Also, I dont see how knowing how to boot a system with a floppy is going to help us in an Armageddon type of situation, I would rather know how to fly a plane or refine gasoline or wire a solar panel, something like that.
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gnovak1
Member
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26. April 2010 @ 13:36 |
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What's a Floppy Disc?
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ddp
Moderator
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26. April 2010 @ 13:46 |
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the predecessor to the cd & dvd. can be 3.5", 5.25" or even 8" which i have a carton of & still sealed. capacity for the 5.25" was from 180kb to 1.2megs. 3.5" was from 720k to 2.88meg. the 8" is about 1meg.
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Senior Member
2 product reviews
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26. April 2010 @ 14:17 |
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Originally posted by ddp:
the predecessor to the cd & dvd. can be 3.5", 5.25" or even 8" which i have a carton of & still sealed. capacity for the 5.25" was from 180kb to 1.2megs. 3.5" was from 720k to 2.88meg. the 8" is about 1meg.
Does that include the paper floppies? I believe that's where they got the name "floppy" from.
Originally posted by xboxdvl2:
i stopped using them years ago cause when I needed 1 for something there was no where to buy 1 from.who seriously wants something that can hold 1.44 MB when we have USB sticks half the size that can hold 128GB.
With the exception of 5-10 year old motherboards needing a floppy for BIOS updates nothing needs a floppy anymore. As for flash drives Kingston has a 256GB flash drive, see here, out but it costs $843.67. Various companies offer 16GB ones for >$50, however.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 26. April 2010 @ 14:18
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AfterDawn Addict
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26. April 2010 @ 15:16 |
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Not only PC's use floppies - ask anyone with a computerized sewing machine.
There are lots around that cannot be converted to USB without major (expensive) surgery.
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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26. April 2010 @ 22:46 |
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A lot of older CNC shops still use floppies too...drilling holes hasn't changed much since the eighties...but the computers that control the hole drillers sure have...and some of those machines came with 5.25" or even 8" drives, only later converted to 3.5" drives.
Still, 47 million disks is rather amazing; just think, there is still enough floppy-based tech out there to use up all those disks and more.
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bomber991
Member
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27. April 2010 @ 00:01 |
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Originally posted by attar:
Not only PC's use floppies - ask anyone with a computerized sewing machine.
There are lots around that cannot be converted to USB without major (expensive) surgery.
Hah, at my college we used oscilloscopes for one of our lab. We needed to capture the image on the oscilloscope. It had a built in floppy drive, so that's what we used to capture the images. Everything was great till we tried to put the floppy into a computer. Why? The computers at the school didn't have a floppy drive.
I'm sure they sell new oscilloscopes with usb ports now though, but it's 2010 and we're still using ones with floppy drives.
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Member
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27. April 2010 @ 02:37 |
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I think you still have developing countries using them.
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AfterDawn Addict
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27. April 2010 @ 04:52 |
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Originally posted by TBandit:
I think you still have developing countries using them.
You mean countries like the USA, Japan, Germany, etc? Because most of the still-in-service equipment that needs floppies is still in these countries.
Developing nations don't bother much with floppies just because of the fact that they are still "developing", and they did not buy all this expensive equipment back when floppies were the standard. They may buy used equipment from other countries, but for the most part, it is newer stuff.
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redux79
Member
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27. April 2010 @ 09:46 |
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reminds me of the old apple 2e computer lab in school... great now I'm old..
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plazma247
Member
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28. April 2010 @ 04:49 |
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Ok lets clear it up.
1. Yes your right not all bios's support boot by USB for flashing, in which case i have to waste pennies and write a CDR or load the new bios to another hdd and load of that, so even without a floppy ive always been able to perform a flash.
2. most modern bios now have winflash tools and as i realised recently when i had a problem with a PC i could even flash from the CD without even booting an OS thanks to bios level support.
3. Old applications which use floppies can still be performed using USB floppy drives which are still avalible, im sure the few applications that still need floppy disk drives will be able to live off the stock of 3.5" drives that are still out in warehouses all over the place.
4. Floppy recovery of a corrupt bios assumes the part of the bios which deals with posting to boot of supported media is also still in working, if not its not booting and wouldnt to any media. The real corrupt bios fix in the old days was the hot swap, booting off a clean bois, swapping it hot and flashing the bad bios. lol did that a few times in the 286 and 386 days.
Growing up with floppy disks i saw them die from the most obscure things and corrupt data, most memorable was a friend who did all of his school work over a number of days. He saved it to disk, walked to mine (10 mins) to print it out, only to find his polyester coat pocket (haha the fist incarnations of a shell suit i think (dont get me started there)) had caused sufficent static charge to unformat his disk for him. HAHA
That combined with the fact, its was very rare to get two drives which still had good head alignment. I used to pull my hair out trying to remember which drive i had was best for laying a master format to a disk, as if performed in other drives the head miss alignment would mean it couldnt read it back in other drives.
So i for one are glad to see this old horse of the data storage selection layed to bed, just wish we could drop all magnetic media totally and get rip of magnetic hdd as well.
Movement = Impending Faliure, although it maybe a long one it will die die die you you... errr magnatised SOBS!!
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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28. April 2010 @ 05:00 |
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Originally posted by plazma247:
Ok lets clear it up.
1. Yes your right not all bios's support boot by USB for flashing, in which case i have to waste pennies and write a CDR or load the new bios to another hdd and load of that, so even without a floppy ive always been able to perform a flash.
2. most modern bios now have winflash tools and as i realised recently when i had a problem with a PC i could even flash from the CD without even booting an OS thanks to bios level support.
3. Old applications which use floppies can still be performed using USB floppy drives which are still avalible, im sure the few applications that still need floppy disk drives will be able to live off the stock of 3.5" drives that are still out in warehouses all over the place.
4. Floppy recovery of a corrupt bios assumes the part of the bios which deals with posting to boot of supported media is also still in working, if not its not booting and wouldnt to any media. The real corrupt bios fix in the old days was the hot swap, booting off a clean bois, swapping it hot and flashing the bad bios. lol did that a few times in the 286 and 386 days.
Growing up with floppy disks i saw them die from the most obscure things and corrupt data, most memorable was a friend who did all of his school work over a number of days. He saved it to disk, walked to mine (10 mins) to print it out, only to find his polyester coat pocket (haha the fist incarnations of a shell suit i think (dont get me started there)) had caused sufficent static charge to unformat his disk for him. HAHA
That combined with the fact, its was very rare to get two drives which still had good head alignment. I used to pull my hair out trying to remember which drive i had was best for laying a master format to a disk, as if performed in other drives the head miss alignment would mean it couldnt read it back in other drives.
So i for one are glad to see this old horse of the data storage selection layed to bed, just wish we could drop all magnetic media totally and get rip of magnetic hdd as well.
Movement = Impending Faliure, although it maybe a long one it will die die die you you... errr magnatised SOBS!!
Not all floppy discs are old and not all readers are bad......just saying is all....
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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28. April 2010 @ 05:02 |
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Originally posted by Pop_Smith:
Originally posted by ddp:
the predecessor to the cd & dvd. can be 3.5", 5.25" or even 8" which i have a carton of & still sealed. capacity for the 5.25" was from 180kb to 1.2megs. 3.5" was from 720k to 2.88meg. the 8" is about 1meg.
Does that include the paper floppies? I believe that's where they got the name "floppy" from.
Originally posted by xboxdvl2:
i stopped using them years ago cause when I needed 1 for something there was no where to buy 1 from.who seriously wants something that can hold 1.44 MB when we have USB sticks half the size that can hold 128GB.
With the exception of 5-10 year old motherboards needing a floppy for BIOS updates nothing needs a floppy anymore. As for flash drives Kingston has a 256GB flash drive, see here, out but it costs $843.67. Various companies offer 16GB ones for >$50, however.
Not to mention 2,4 and 8GB models are mostly under 15$ as low as 6$ even.
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plazma247
Member
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28. April 2010 @ 05:04 |
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Originally posted by ZippyDSM:
Not all floppy discs are old and not all readers are bad......just saying is all....
Your right, But they are all frekkin EVIL you hear me, booo magnteic media.
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EricCarr
Member
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28. April 2010 @ 06:43 |
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I want to add one more thing to this thread. Almost all the 3.5 floppy disc I ever had became corrupted at one time or another.
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