Say goodbye to the 3.5 inch floppy disk

[frogotronic]

I don't know anyone who uses floppies anymore. I do have 2 computers with floppy drives, however. They're both sitting on the floor in my basement unplugged and nobody has used them in a few years.

Floppies are useless when you can use online storage or a flash drive. Both of which has significantly more storage space. Probably the right decision by Sony.

I still use floppies. And if you ever have a serious malware infection you'll need a floppy drive. There are very useful. Very low level hardware - always will run off of a MOBO without drivers.

And yes, you CAN get serious & nasty malwares, firmware viruses, etc that can only be cleaned by using a boot capable floppy.

- CH

[Frogs Hair]

I still use an external floppy for Bios updates.

[P4man]

I still use an external floppy for Bios updates.

have you tried flashrom?
http://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom

Runs straight from the terminal, and is in the repo's. Havent tried it yet either, but it sure looks neat!

[Frogs Hair]

have you tried flashrom?
http://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom

Runs straight from the terminal, and is in the repo's. Havent tried it yet either, but it sure looks neat!

Thanks, but the Asus M4N78 PRO is not on the support list.

[immoweichert]

To quote a US company that sells floppy disks www.floppydisk.com/

Floppy disks continue to be an important method for storing and transferring data. Floppy disks are still used in many computers. Diskettes are often required for embroidery equipment, machine tools and other specialty machines.

... and further down on their web site :

8 inch disks available !!

I thought they'd gone out of fashion in the 1980s !

[cariboo]

what made me lol more that they sold 12 million floppies!
ROFL

They are probably sitting on a retailers shelf. I had a friend give me a couple of cases of new floppies a couple of months back, they are now sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

[The Real Dave]

Wow, 12 million in 2009. There must be someone stocking up

That said, I often use floppies on older systems, and for FreeNAS live boots

[swoll1980]

Speaking of old media, remember this? I can't believe we launched LP records out of the solar system. When some ET finds it in a million years or so, they are going to think we were all idiots. It's embarrassing I tell you.

Anyway, my basement is a museum of old media. Floppies, zip drives, punch cards and tape I've hung onto for nostalgic purposes, boxes of LPs, CDs I've long since ripped, audio cassettes, micro cassettes, 8-tracks, videotape (VHS and Beta!), Super 8 family movies I converted to VHS twenty years ago and then to digital... I guess I need to clean house.

LPs are making a comeback.

[gradinaruvasile]

Thanks, but the Asus M4N78 PRO is not on the support list.

Speaking of this... I recently put together for someone a M4N78 based system... I want to connect the floppy drive and i see that it doesnt have floppy controller at all... Maybe its old news, but it is the first mobo i see without a floppy controller.

BTW, all the newer ASUS mobos have support for BIOS flash from floppy/USB drive directly from the BIOS (,make sure the USB drive or floppy is formatted vfat). I flashed my M3N78-VM from the BIOS from a floppy drive.

[ibuclaw]

Thread renamed with OP's permission.

They are probably sitting on a retailers shelf. I had a friend give me a couple of cases of new floppies a couple of months back, they are now sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

Same, but in a nice dust-proof box/container.

Actually, I need to hook up a Floppy Drive to one of my systems pretty soon, there are some nostalgic data/games I have lying about all over the place that I would probably want to give rebirth to.