Floppies and Maverick

[Ric Moore]

On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 12:16 -0800, MR ZenWiz wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 4:33 AM, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net> wrote:
> >
> > For anybody who needs to retrieve files from 3.5 inch floppies, I would
> > suggest they try installing an LS-120 (otherwise known as superdisk)
> > drive. They connect into an IDE interface, of which the new motherboard
> > still has just one. The BIOS on this Asus board still knows about LS-120
> > drives.
> >
> Seems like a fair amount of trouble when there are USB floppy drives
> available.  I'd be surprised if there weren't a USB superdrive, too.
> 
> > There's a couple of drives listed on ebay right now. I wouldn't bother
> > with the disks though - I never found them to be very reliable.
> >
> I have some pretty ancient floppy disks that have endured quite well
> over the years in terms of storage and retrieval of archival
> information.
> 
> OTOH, I also took my 200+ mini-floppy collection and transferred all
> the contents to an archive on my hard disk years ago and haven't ever
> looked back. I'm not even sure my built-in floppy drive works any more
> - that's how much I need/use it.

You gotta admit it's crazy to burn a CD to transfer a couple of small
files to another machine. We keep assuming that everyone in the world
has surplus gigabytes of storage, networking and Internet access. The
poor person using older hardware in a 3rd world country is being done a
terrible disservice. Ric


-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256