I may have to look into a USB floppy for flashing purposes; it's sometimes a big hassle to dig around looking for the floppy connector and/or a spare power connector.
Vista allows you to read drivers on CD's if I'm not mistaken, using only 1 drive (you can eject Widows CD, put your CD, copy the drivers with Windows setup, and put back Windows CD to continue setup.
I found a very, very old computer at my mom's school that had an 8" floppy drive. I think I've still got three or four disks that I "borrowed" from there, too. They were too awesome to throw away. But, no, I don't use floppy drives at all anymore. My Compaq (my first PC) didn't have one, and I didn't bother installing one in my next build.
I don't use floppy's for anything anymore. I use a thumb stick for bios and vga flashing. However, i was very angry when i had to install a driver a while ago into an old windows 98 machine. Couldn't get the driver to it any other way then a floppy (apart from wasting a cd-r). (USB mass storage on 98 requires a driver aswell) And the driver was for a NIC, so no internet.
Well... I've got a few old 3.5" floppy drives stuffed deep into the confines underneath my workbench along with one or two 5.25" drives as well as a very old external 8" drive which I actually leave out in the open (it's fun to have as a showcase of sorts. Come to think of it, I might actually be able to fit a nano-ITX board into it. Hmmm). Additionally I have a really big trash bag filled with floppy disks of various sizes and types, but I have not used any of them for years. Vista does not require drivers for my RAID to be loaded from floppies, so I consider them quite dead - if not buried. Maybe I should dig out the old disks and see if any of them are still readable. Could be fun seeing what's on them. I know I have an original copy of Windows 1.10 on 5.25" floppies somewhere.
I have one of those (but the coffee machine part never worked right - sparks everywhere when I tried to fill it with water ) (see below) ... and that's the only reason I bought it. (I hope to Never need it again) mod the faceplate over a slot load DVD That would be very cool indeed.
Yes it would, thanks. I will take some measurements and see about getting a nano-ITX board, though I might have to go for a pico-ITX variety. We'll see. But this is for sure something I will have to seriously consider. Also as I do have plans for a small media-box anyway, this would surely be the cool way to go about it. A pico-ITX board, maybe an SSD drive and a laptop-DVD slot-in drive using the 8" slot (which should be just wide enough) for feeding discs to it. Anybody know of any very small PSUs?
All my games run off floppy disks, such titles as Hexen, IndyCar Racing 2 and Quake Oh and I'm hoping that my voodoo2 will arrive soon But seriously I put new floppy disk drives in all new builds I do just in case
Personally ive not bothered in the last 3 machines ive built since I think 2001, just not found the need when I have bootable cd's which are soo much quicker to boot from compared to the floppy.
I've got a FDD in my Dell Server, as well as a Sony USB External FDD. I used them recently too, when i tried to update the bios on my motherboard, (which turned out to be the updated version anyway) Other than that, there unused and unloved Sam
floppy? well... i've abandoned that stuff long ago... then, some years ago sata came along, i bought a sata mainboard and hdd, popped the win xp into the drive, and shock... win xp installation claimed i dont have any hdd in my pc... oh well, i turned on my notebook, google'd a bit and found out that i would need to buy a floppy drive to be able to install the freaking drivers because windows xp isntaller is too stupid to accept drivers from a different source... thx to pata emulation of todays sata controllers (or, nlite'd drivers on xp cd, or alternatively vista) thats not really an issue anymore though. once i had discovered nlite i trashed the floppy a second time... i hope that thing from the past never ever again reapears...
Floppy drive, yeah I still use them from time to time, When installing for loading the RAID drivers, but some of the Oscilloscopes / Data Analyzers I use at work / Uni still come with a Floppy drive to save the readings / screen shots to and can be loaded onto a PC. (admittedly these are the older ones when the brand new ones, complete with dvd burners / USB card readers, are being used by other people)
I *have* to have a floppy in mine, as it's an all-in-one thingy doodar with card readers built in. I think I've used the floppy drive about once since I bought it. USB bios flash 4tw.
got one with the memory card reader built in but never use it, i just plug the my digi camera into the usb and transfer the files, not going to bother with a floppy drive in the next build
I actually still use floppies! I have and old ultra-portable toshiba portege laptop that will *only* boot off the HD or floppy drive, nothing else... Installing any OS is a huge procedure that involves a floppy drive OS with PCMCIA network drivers so i can start a win95 install from a mapped network drive, then copying a newer OS to the HD and running the OS setup from there... Yes, it's as incredibly awkward as it sounds and takes hours
