What is a floppy?

What is a floppy?

A hat with a big brim? :-)

I still have a couple of systems (rarely used/booted) that have floppies, and I have a bunch of data (programs - some major R&D work) on floppies I REALLY need to extract before they become landfill...

you guys are a funny race. You replied to a thread one year later

Sometimes, you see something that grabs you, and you just have to respond. A year later? So? :-)

How about replying to a thread 7 years ago? Do you still use floppy rubberman

Have them, and drives on a couple of old workstations I keep around for "historical" purposes - a Gateway 486 (w/ EISA bus and SCSI array) and a Dell P2-450. My current laptops and workstation don't have floppy drives. I use micro sd cards in a USB carrier instead. A 2GB chip is about $5USD, and a 4GB one is almost as cheap... :-) So, in storage terms, my fingernail size micro sd cards have about 2000x-4000x (over 3 orders of magnitude) more storage, at a small multiple of the price of a floppy disc. I also have IOMega Jaz and zip drives and media on them. In fact, the Gateway boots from a 1GB Jaz disc.

FWIW, the Gateway 486 EISA bus system is what I used to develop a clean-room implementation of TCP/IP for the QNX 2 real-time operating system back in the early 90's. That was before the BSD TCP stack was released into the wild (open sourced). We were building systems to run the US Navy's RAMP (Rapid Acquisition of Manufactured Parts) project, and they needed a secure TCP/IP stack to communicate with the manufacturing cells and assembly lines that our software was controlling. Two of us built the entire stack from the DDN White Book specifications. It is still running today, speeding the turnaround of US Naval vessels when they are in port for repairs. What used to be a 3-6 month stint in harbor/dry-dock, was reduced to a couple of weeks.

Here's bidding adieu to floppy disks.;)

Farewell to thee, oh beloved 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. I shall remember using you to diligently store my Diablo saved games.