XP's USB support in the installer sucks. It will only work with the USB floppies on the HCL, and IIRC, thats 3 VID/PIDs. They were common when the instqaller was written, but now we have a lot more. It's dumb because, in my experience, most of the USB floppies use CBI transfers over USB, and the API is standard. So why not support the interface instead of specific drives? Vista is better about this though. One reason for the floppy sticking around so long is that is is dead simple to program for. If you look back at the x86 CPU, the first ones had a simple IO bus on them. This bus was ALWAYS available from the moment you powered the system on. Now, you have USB and PCI, but both need a lot of work to run. With USB, you need to have memory. The process for getting the memory up and running in a modern PCI is a bit complex though. First, the memory controller needs to be programed, then memory slots need to be checked for memory, the timings need to be determined (or read from some form of nonvolatile RAM) then the memory can be detected and tested quickly (this is not the count done later on the video display). PCI at least needs some configuration of the memory controller so the base address registers of all the bridges and devices can be given a memory mapped IO range. (This is where part of that 4 gig of RAM disappears to unless you have a 64 bit system, or PAE mode.) But the IO ports don't need memory, requests to them can be sent to devices immediately so a legacy floppy would always be available for things like disaster recovery in the event of the BIOS becoming corrupt. That is one of the big reasons for floppies sticking around for so long. They were somple, and th interface was reliable even if it was slow and the size ex termly limited. Serial ports are also rediculously useful for the same reasons. If you know the IO port a serial port will come up on, you can get it running with a minimum of effort.
I've got an LS120 "Floptical" drive in my primary box. I got it because at the time I still had a camera that wrote to floppies and so it seemed like a good idea. I do find it handy for moving small documents around once in a while, but anymore it's mostly just a waste of space. On the other hand, I have a card reader on my fan controller, so I don't have anything better to do with that 3.5" slot and so it stays.
wow! my friend doesn't even have a dvd drive yet! although he just got a 1TB HDD and a 8800GTX, he says he's going to install a FDD since he does have quite a lot of FDDs full of *cough* stuff
I was hoping we weren't talking about the drive. I actually have one so I can load all my old DOS games
Floppy, WHY? I cannot see why anyone would need a floppy, when a flash drive is soooo cheap, it would be like using VHS or music Tape still, with hard drives being so cheap externally too.
Nope, and haven't in years. A LONG time ago when I was messing with a bootable RAID array I needed one for five minutes or so, but never since - and that's all it was ever used for. The one useful floppy disc I still have around has a serial key written on the label for something completely unrelated. Heck, I rarely use optical drives anymore. I can probably get by with a single USB DVD drive for all of my systems. I rip everything to ISOs and stuff it on my NAS. Thanks to gigabit, it's generally faster than reading from the actual disc as the seek times are so much lower.
i've got one stuffed in a box somewhere, with my only floppy disk stuck inside it. i can't believe we still need these things for some stuff. there are still a lot of people at my school who use floppies regularly. it annoys the hell out of the IT guys, they've put up posters in all the labs telling people to start using USB keys.
I don't even have one in my computer from 1996... Mainly because the floppy drive is broken and I don't have any spare ones to fit the strange connector... but anyway.
eh, i use a floppy every once in a while, when working with the older computers. but i dont need them now, i havent needed to do any bios flashing yet *knocks on wood*
Nope, not in my main system and not in my RAID server. I dont boot off of the array, so I can install the drivers in windows.
I have a Floppy just for BIOS flashes. otherwise they are of no use (unless im moving some tiny .gz or .bz2 files)
Last time I used floppies was in PC-store when I had to use some floppy-based diagnostic tools for memories and HDDs. I guess it was through USB even back then. At home I haven't used floppies.. well plretty much ever.
I keep a drive in the house for RAID drivers. Not sure where it is, and don't have a clue if there are any disks anywhere either though.
