karohemd: by LJ user gothindulgence (Gaming)
[personal profile] karohemd
[Poll #1616837]

Date: 9/9/10 02:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ffutures.livejournal.com
About three years ago. I needed a driver for something to go on my nephew's computer, found a floppy and downloaded it, then discovered that his computer didn't have a floppy drive...

Date: 9/9/10 03:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
*nods* That's why I have usually at least one USB stick in my bag and another one in my jacket pocket.

Date: 9/9/10 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ulfilias.livejournal.com
Which sort of floppy ???

The 3.5", the 5.25" or the really old wierd sizes like 8"

Date: 9/9/10 02:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
Whatever type the last one you used was.

Date: 9/9/10 03:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ulfilias.livejournal.com
Hmm. I've had drivers off one or two and i was clearing some out and checking them so its probably not that long ago !

Date: 9/9/10 03:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ffutures.livejournal.com
You forgot 2.5" (Zenith's 286 laptops) and 3" (Amstrad), both much later than those two.

For a very brief while I had a laptop with an external 8" drive.

Date: 9/9/10 03:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
An external 8" drive? That must have been as big as the laptop!

Date: 9/9/10 03:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ulfilias.livejournal.com
When he says laptop he means it was portable, if you had an estate car !

Date: 9/9/10 04:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ffutures.livejournal.com
No - it was an Olivetti PC-compatible 8086 laptop with 3.5" drives and a 10" mono LCD screen.

The adapter socket at the back was for using an external 5.25" drive - I bought the 8" drive in order to use its cables etc. to make an external drive, but spent a couple of days playing about with it and actually managed to read some CP/M data discs before sanity prevailed.

Date: 9/9/10 03:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ulfilias.livejournal.com
Oh there were all sorts of sizes. Heck the spectrum microdrive was the smallest i think i saw and i remember seeing some huge discs at school that had come from a main frame.

Date: 9/9/10 09:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mr-malk.livejournal.com
Wow, the Spectrum microdrive! That was really tiny, wasn't it? I remember seeing a microdrive for the Beeb, and it was humungous! I could hardly believe they were meant to be fundamentally the same type of device!

Date: 9/9/10 03:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] twicedead.livejournal.com
About 10 years ago my old laptop gave up the ghost and it had a floppy drive (and no USB), then there was a couple of years gap before my next computer purchase into floppy free land.

Date: 9/9/10 03:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] briggsy.livejournal.com
But I've found a load of floppies during my recent move and plan to investigate the contents whilst I still have a floppy drive available.

Date: 9/9/10 03:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] robinbloke.livejournal.com
Checked out a load of floppy disks before I dumped them this year; don't even have a floppy drive anymore now :)

Although do still very occasionally have to use them at work to support NT based machines that don't like USB sticks.

Date: 9/9/10 03:42 pm (UTC)
ext_8559: Cartoon me  (Default)
From: [identity profile] the-magician.livejournal.com
Likewise, beginning of May, checking discs before chucking them.

My main desktop still has a 3.5" floppy drive, and I have two USB floppy drives ... one day this will be how secret information is carried around as police won't be able to read it!

Date: 9/9/10 03:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zenmeisterin.livejournal.com
Last week, because creaking computer systems in GP surgeries + practice managers who find email to be newfangled = no other option for remote searches.

Date: 9/9/10 04:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thedinster.livejournal.com
I haven't seen a floppy in my house since I was a wee lass, probably for 10 years or so. But my grandfather (who lives in the Ukraine) still used them about 3 years ago. I think, in the UK, they have pretty much died out.

Date: 9/9/10 06:30 pm (UTC)
matgb: Artwork of 19th century upper class anarchist, text: MatGB (Default)
From: [personal profile] matgb
I ticked 5 and 10, because I dan date it exactly. The week my last presentation was handed in at University the year I graduated, which was 2002.

Date: 9/9/10 08:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] davefish.livejournal.com
Some of our older pieces of test equipment have floppies in them, to get the data off. Kinda ties you to them.

I remember about 5 years ago trying to find a BBC master computer that worked as it was driving a environmental chamber, and if we had to get a new one it would have been £60K.

Date: 9/9/10 08:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] keris.livejournal.com
Some of our oscilloscopes are floppy drive only, so we have the same issue :)

Date: 9/9/10 08:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mansunite.livejournal.com
Some of our older pieces of test equipment have floppies in them, to get the data off. Kinda ties you to them.

Ditto!

Date: 9/9/10 08:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] davegodfrey.livejournal.com
Its been a couple of years now. My computer has a floppy, but it isn't connected as I don't have a cable long enough to be able to plug it into the motherboard.

I've just not needed to use one. The only files I use that are small enough are the occasional PDF and the odd word document. Nothing else fits on 1.44mb.

I'd like to replace it with something, but I haven't found anything particularly useful to go in the slot. ZIP drives are a waste of time these days, and I've got all the card readers I need (many internal ones don't take XD anyway).

Date: 10/9/10 09:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] olithered.livejournal.com
Installing Windows on servers with RAID controllers; you often need to supply the RAID driver via a (usb) floppy.

Date: 10/9/10 03:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] squirmelia.livejournal.com
Depends on what they were used for.. throwing them on the grass and taking photos of them, earlier this year:



Otherwise, at least a few years ago.

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