In mid-late 90s, when floppy disks were not dead yet, I used to help my father to extract lots of files from their devices to floppy disks. They were using floppy disks only because an application that they were using to extract and convert data from their devices was designed to only copy files in chunks to floppy disks.
One day, out of curiosity, I opened every single file of the application that they were using to convert and extract data to see if I could make sense of anything. I accidentally found out that there was a config file that had a destination path for copying converted files. It was hard coded to drive A (floppy drive).
I changed the path, tested the application, and it worked. I shared the trick with my father and he shared it with his organization. He became the employee of the year for that discovery.
Floppy disks were expensive on the scale that they were using them, and they often had to deal with a lot of data loss accidents. Their IT team even had a data recovery team specialized to recover data from broken floppy disks because usually it meant they had to send a team back to redo the work.
The storage on the devices they were using was very limited, so often during their week-long operations, they had to extract data before they could continue their work, only to realize later that some chunks were missing from the first part, and then they had to redo that part of operation again.
Mine either. Even putting aside media decay there is the mechanical failure (for 3.5"). For mechanical issues I was the go-to resource among friends and family, and when I worked at my Uni's help desk. I'd open them up and put the spring back together, or if need be take apart the drive to remove stuck disk, canabalize a blank disk-- toss out the media, keep the mechanical bits to slot in the old media.
Unfortunately stuck disks were often corrupted if mechanical failure occured during r/w. Sometimes I was still able to use recovery software to get data off, but plenty of times it was gone.
My understanding is that quality varied a lot, and that near the end (when USB thumbdrives were starting to take off) manufacturers started cutting a lot of corners, with the result that everyone remembers floppies as being more unreliable than they actually were, or at least could be.
Nor mine. I distinctly remember back to college circa 2000, copying a project from my computer in the dorms, walking to a project partner's dorm room adjacent to mine, and in that 15 second walk, having the data corrupted.
Thumb drives weren't common or cheap, yet, though I did have a Zip Drive, as did nearly all of the school's lab computers. I never had a corruption problem with Zip disks, but man, floppies? Seemed like if I walked near them, they'd get corrupted.
Around 1992 or so I was working at a large manufacturer that was still working to eliminate punch cards. Don't underestimate how long a technology can stay in use in organizations where technology is not the main business line.
The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has lost two floppy disks containing personal information on 38 people
Amateurs. In the USA we can do that kind of thing for 38 million people. with the advances in private sector we're on track to do so for 3.8 billion any day now.
Just last year we got documentation for a self-driving car project from a japanese OEM on a DVD. Hilarity ensued, I remember IT running around like a headless chicken trying to find a reader, then trying to buy one, then trying friends and family.
I use floppy disks for my Akai S2800 sampler :)
Originally built around 1992 it still works (and sounds) great!
Modding it to support USB is too expensive, and I quite enjoy some of the limitations it brings. You have to get creative for some things.
I quite enjoy some of the limitations it brings. You have to get creative for some things.
There really is something distinctive from the golden age of hip hop where you were limited sample size and really had to flip and combine many different samples to produce a beat. J Dilla came a little later, but he was certainly influenced by the sound and I think it should be no surprise that his Akai Sampler (MPC3000, which also had a 3.5" disk drive) would be included in the Smithsonian collection [0].
Wouldn't it be interesting if the floppy disks lost were 2.88MB and also only commonly readable in japan, where that rare format of drive was very slightly more popular in the mid 1990s.
I remember in the mid-90s a customer had just prior to my contract with them starting deployed some 3COM enterprise core routers. They were having issues with connectivity to their Banyan Vines servers which I tracked down to an issue with the routers. 3COM had a bug fix but the routers required the use of 2.88MB floppies to upgrade them. Neither the customer or I had a 2.88MB floppy drive to write the upgrade to. It took 2 full days of searching to find anyone who could get me one in less than a month.
I think you mean famicom. Unless I'm mistaken, the famicom and the 64 had floppy drives add-ons (FDS and 64DD), but I don't think the super famicom did. Unless you're speaking of 3rd party tools like those used to copy games, but afaik they use standard floppies.
There's many options to buy affordable 3.5" USB floppy drives on Amazon and eBay. However, I haven't been able to find any obvious options to read 5.25" floppy disks on a modern machine.
There were external 5.25 drives back in the day that connected via parallel port, one of those paired with a parallel to USB bridge should do the trick. The really hard part will be drivers, unless your USB adapter has one baked into the firmware you may find yourself writing your own drivers.
Readit News
One day, out of curiosity, I opened every single file of the application that they were using to convert and extract data to see if I could make sense of anything. I accidentally found out that there was a config file that had a destination path for copying converted files. It was hard coded to drive A (floppy drive).
I changed the path, tested the application, and it worked. I shared the trick with my father and he shared it with his organization. He became the employee of the year for that discovery.
Floppy disks were expensive on the scale that they were using them, and they often had to deal with a lot of data loss accidents. Their IT team even had a data recovery team specialized to recover data from broken floppy disks because usually it meant they had to send a team back to redo the work. The storage on the devices they were using was very limited, so often during their week-long operations, they had to extract data before they could continue their work, only to realize later that some chunks were missing from the first part, and then they had to redo that part of operation again.
https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-government-tokyo-flopp...
This was not my experience.
Unfortunately stuck disks were often corrupted if mechanical failure occured during r/w. Sometimes I was still able to use recovery software to get data off, but plenty of times it was gone.
Thumb drives weren't common or cheap, yet, though I did have a Zip Drive, as did nearly all of the school's lab computers. I never had a corruption problem with Zip disks, but man, floppies? Seemed like if I walked near them, they'd get corrupted.
They just haven't figured out opportunity cost due to poor capabilities, or how much lost productivity there is because of the old system.
Amateurs. In the USA we can do that kind of thing for 38 million people. with the advances in private sector we're on track to do so for 3.8 billion any day now.
Looks like they leaked their sex a second time.
There really is something distinctive from the golden age of hip hop where you were limited sample size and really had to flip and combine many different samples to produce a beat. J Dilla came a little later, but he was certainly influenced by the sound and I think it should be no surprise that his Akai Sampler (MPC3000, which also had a 3.5" disk drive) would be included in the Smithsonian collection [0].
0 - https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2014.139.1?destination=/...