Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft Software => Topic started by: WaWAR_FA on 23 September 2003, 23:12
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so i go to circuit city to buy some floppies to make a XP bootdisk incase anything really fucks up.
i get the disks home and open the box.
great formatted for mac..
no wonder they were so cheap.
so i go to the site and get the images and put my floppy in.
or try to.
hum, no floppy drive on the side.
not on the other side either...
not of the front...
not on the back.....
ah shit........
WHY THE HELL DO YOU MAKE A COMPUTER WITH NO FLOPPY DRIVE!!!!!!
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because every OS out there now boots off the CD, and that was the last big argument against dropping floppies
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I haven't used a floppy for a long time, mostly because I only used them to transfer files and now I have a LAN. Today files are just getting too big. The last Mac to use floppes, I think, was the G3 All-in-One in 1998. You can always buy a USB floppy drive though.
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Even though I have a floppy drive in all of my comps I never use the damn things. Floppies suck ass. They are slow, they only hold 1.44MB of data(really about 1.39MB) and they are so un-reliable. I remember trying to flash a BIOS to an old motherboard I had via a floppy. The ROM file happened to be on a corrupted sector of the disk and it fucked the whole flash up. Thankfully the board was able to come on if there was an ISA video card present in the system. It would come on and boot from a floppy(no BIOS post screen), so I used another floppy and booted to DOS from it and flashed the BIOS from the new floppy. Anyways, I was able to recover from the bad flash. If something like that happened to alot of people they wouldn't know how to recover it. Luckily new flash utilities verify the integrity of the entire BIOS file before they flash nowadays. The mother fucking disk that caused me the hassle was good the last time I used it. For some mysterious reason it got bad sectors all the sudden though.
I've lost important documents due to a good floppy gone bad. Honestly, I'm glad to see the floppy drive go. I'd rather boot from a CD anyday(they are so much faster and more reliable). If I want to flash a BIOS I just add the ROM and the flash utility to the bootable CD(it is easy to make a DOS bootable CD).
CD's hold up to 700MB of data, they don't get bad sectors, they don't fuck up(unless you physically damage them), they are cheaper than floppies(you pay about 15 cents a CD), they are portable like a floppy and most people with a computer have a CD drive. CD media is alot more logical to use than a floppy.
I also like little USB memory sticks. They are small, they hold a hell of alot more data than 1.44MB(the smallest one you can get is 50MB and they go past 250MB), they are compatible of any computer with a USB port(regardless of wether it is PC, Mac, etc and regardless of the OS) because they require no drivers to use. When you plug one in it functions as a hard drive. Of course, they don't get bad sectors either. They are pricey compared to CD media but they are really small and they can be trendy(you can attach them to a keychain, a necklace, your shoestring, etc.).
Killing off the floppy just makes one less legacy thing new PC's have to support. Jobs was smart and killed the junk things off a long time ago.
[ September 23, 2003: Message edited by: Viper ]
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Why don't you burn a backup?
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quote:
Originally posted by Viper:
I remember trying to flash a BIOS to an old motherboard I had via a floppy. The ROM file happened to be on a corrupted sector of the disk and it fucked the whole flash up.
I always test the floppy disk before I put a BIOS flash file on it.
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so i am going to take 700mb cd just to burn a fuckin bios update ? how fucking interesting , i love my floppy because i could tranfer my source code, small pic files fast and easy without the hassle burning 700mb cd..
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CD-RW anyone?
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quote:
Originally posted by mc0282:
so i am going to take 700mb cd just to burn a fuckin bios update ? how fucking interesting , i love my floppy because i could tranfer my source code, small pic files fast and easy without the hassle burning 700mb cd..
Sure, why not? It isn't like you have to close the CD. You can leave it open and always add more to the compilation later with Nero Burning Rom, the built in Windows XP CD-Burning, Alcohol 120%, etc. It takes a little under a minute to copy 1.40MB worht of data to a 1.44MB disk. It takes about a little over a minute and a half to burn 700MB worth of data to a CD with a 48x burner(it takes a couple of seconds to burn 1.44MB of data to a CD). Burning to a CD is alot faster, CD Media doesn't get bad sectors and almost any computer you encounter this day and age has a CD-Rom. It takes less time to open or copy those pictures(or any file for that matter) from a CD than it takes on a floppy. There is no hassle to using a CD.
quote:
Originally posted by M. O'Brien:
I always test the floppy disk before I put a BIOS flash file on it.
I do now if I use a floppy(usually never). I learned that you should a long time ago. Of course I learned the hard way.
My opinion won't change. I hate floppies. As I already said....Apple was smart for killing them off in thier Mac line-up a long time ago.
[ September 25, 2003: Message edited by: Viper ]
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I personally like floppies. They are stupidly small but on the plus side every computer has a floppy drive (which can write data) but very few office and college/school computers have CD burners. I personally need a floppy drive and use mine a fair bit still.
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quote:
I also like little USB memory sticks. They are small, they hold a hell of alot more data than 1.44MB(the smallest one you can get is 50MB and they go past 250MB), they are compatible of any computer with a USB port(regardless of wether it is PC, Mac, etc and regardless of the OS)
Those little things should really be considered. They are more reliable than floppies and write faster than CD's.
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Yeah but they cant be accessed from the bios, and thats pretty much the only place you need a floppy. So floppies still stay for me.
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can't newer bios boot from usb drives? The 2.8 gig P4 machines that our school bought have the option to boot from a usb drive.
[ October 06, 2003: Message edited by: TheCruelOne ]
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yes. nearly everything now can boot from "USB block devices"