[xubuntu-users] Am I the only one who still uses floppies?

[David Walland]

I don't use floppies much but have an external 3.5 inch drive for
emergencies (mainly on the unspeakable W-word, of which I have a number of
ancient bits of software that still work).  I must try them on a virtual
machine on Xubuntu - might amuse me for a while...

Regards

David Walland

On 28 July 2015 at 11:07, Rob Ward <rl.ward at bigpond.com> wrote:

>  They were desperate times my friend!!! :-)
>
> *Rob Ward*
>
>  On 28/07/15 19:35, JMZ wrote:
>
>
>
> On 07/28/2015 12:37 AM, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2015, JMZ wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Silly question: am I the only one who still uses floppies (ie. 1.44 MB HD
> 3.5"/90mm)?
>
> I use them to temporarily store shell scripts.  Since scripts are usually
> only a few kilobytes long (if that), floppies are great for storing works
> in
> progress.  After a week or two I make ongoing archive tarball CD backups.
> The scripts don't stay on very fragile media like a floppy for a long
> time.
>
> You'll be surprised that floppies are still available.  Here in the
> northeast USA unopened boxes of floppies can be gotten at thrift shops,
> junk
> stores, dollar stores etc.  Heck, I even found two unopened boxes of
> "Macintosh formatted" floppies.  I don't remember Mac formatted floppies
> even "in the day".  Weird!
>
> Jordan
>
> I'm getting back into retro computing now --
>
> So am I.  I bought a very good condition C64 C from a fellow ham.  I
> dumpster dived a perfect CRT TV (yeah, it's easy to use a LCD TV, but it's
> not "authentic").  A 1541 drive/clone would be great, but 5.25" isn't
> realistic today.
>
>   my drug of choice being my
> Commodore 128 with a 1581 3.5" drive.
>
> <snip>
>
> I'll go off the xubuntu list and see if there's a way I can get a good
> 1581 or homebrew a solution.   I'm sure someone has used an internal PC HD
> 3.5" drive.
>
> Strange, years ago a few of my ham friends used to swear that "notching"
> 3.5" SD 720K discs would "convert" them to HD.  I would warn them of bad
> sectors, but cheap is as cheap does I suppose.
>
> <snip>
>
> Jordan
>
>
>
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