Don't ignore older media types - was WTF?! NO floppy in Lucid or in Meerkat!

[Liam Proven]

On 25 September 2010 09:53, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net> wrote:
> Slashdot has an item this morning that may be OT but of relevance here I
> think:-
> http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/10/09/24/2322232/CD-Sales-Continue-To-Plummet-Vinyl-Records-Soar
>
>
> BTW I too am disappointed by the subject of this thread. Floppies are not
> exactly stone age. Until a few years ago when hard drive capacities started
> to become huge and optical media commonplace, people were storing a lot of
> their data on them. Without OS support those files become inaccessible.
>
> They still have their place, I think, where a quick and easy backup of
> relatively small files is desired. I'm thinking of the kwallet file, gpg
> keys, stuff like that.
>
> BTW I still have a little stack of 5.25 inch floppies, a couple of nice TEAC
> drives that take them and a few of the edge connector type floppy drive
> cables but unfortunately BIOS support for these appears to have been dropped
> on this PC.

Yes, I had that problem with my last PC, an Athlon XP 3200+. I fitted
a 5¼" drive, after a big hunt to find an appropriate cable, only to
discover that the BIOS only supported a single floppy - and to me, 3½"
is more important.

My new PC (Athlon64 X2 4400+) *does* support dual floppies, but I have
yet to try it out. But I'll need to find a "legacy" OS to operate
them, it now emerges. I still have Win7 installed; I shall try it.
Also a now-inactive install of Windows 2000, and I was thinking of
giving PC-BSD a spin just for fun.

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884 • Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven • MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • ICQ: 73187508