Will diskettes ever have a comeback?
Iomega did get some success with their Zip format, and higher capacity diskettes such as magneto-optical were also pretty common in enterprise settings I believe.
Will diskettes ever have a comeback?
Tyler Reyes
Easton Thomas
are you retarded or something
Luke Lopez
For what purpose. Other than nostalgia, what advantages would the even provide that a normal flash drive doesn't? I'm not that old but I'm old enough to remember floppies and they were horrible. USB flash drives are the best damn thing since sliced bread. You can't ruin them with magnets or bend them in a backpack or pocket, and they store so much more data. You can't ruin them with magnets either. You can get 8GB flash drives for the price of a fancy coffee. That's nothing and they last for years. I keep a 64GB flash drive on my car keys.
Why would I want to replace something like that with an objectively inferior technology?
Jason Clark
but I have my zip disquettes right here
Nathan Williams
I like the aesthetics of large external disks, and I would like to know if there's a chance the concept will return.
>For what purpose.
It would be suitable for large external storage since it's far cheaper than flash memory at this point.
Dominic Ross
>Will diskettes ever have a comeback?
No, because flash memory is a thing now
William Evans
triggered
Samuel Perez
>It would be suitable for large external storage since it's far cheaper than flash memory at this point
A 1TB mechanical USB disk that costs $50 and is compatible with everything comes up and slaps your diskette's ass. How do you respond?
Aaron Thompson
>mechanical USB disk
So a diskette with it's own built-in reader?
Benjamin Hernandez
For general use among consumers? No. Electromagnetic tape is still used in the enterprise to store huge amounts of data backed up in a cost effective manner and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
Easton Ortiz
floppies are shit, you've clearly never used them. The argument "BUT HEY LOOK NIIICEEE~~~~" is too dumb to even consider
Bentley Morris
Nice mental gymnastics, faggot. You damn well know what I meant. The external HDD still exposes a common USB interface which allows anything made in the last 15 years or so read and write it. Your diskettes need an adapter to be used for anything except shitty square frisbees.
What we have now isn't perfect but fuck you for even suggesting a return to the proprietary hardware hell that was the 90s and early 2000s.
Zachary Brown
>proprietary hardware
The 3.5 diskettes were a standard technology with a lot of different manufacturers. I'm a bit unsure about magneto-optical, but I'm pretty sure Zip was the only actually proprietary format.
Joshua Jackson
.. why?
Juan Roberts
There were many other proprietary disks, but they were either obscure or used for a specific purpose rather than general data storage (ie those tiny optical disks the original PSP used).
Jeremiah Davis
3.5 floppies were shit.
5.25 floppies from my childhood are still readable.
Henry Sanchez
I wouldn't like floppy to return, but as ninche product for retro machines sure as heck would.
Leo Kelly
>Spinning magnetic media
I'm convinced of the absolute superiority of magnetic tape.
James Nelson
I still have a ton of Amiga 3.5 disks that are still readable.
It's impossible to find any DD 3.5 disks for use with Amiga and Atari ST for decent prices nowadays.
The only time tape has been used for anything but backup storage was as a cheap storage medium for 70s and early 80s home computers. Awful for that purpose since it takes like an hour or more to load a game.
Justin Gutierrez
>takes an hour or more to load a game
>LTO-8
>Native Transfer Rate
>360MB/s
Slower than SSD speeds but significantly faster than spinning magnetic media - assuming it's sequential. LTO is the absolute best large-scale backup solution, tapes are cheaper than HDDs per TB, only the drives are expensive. Some cheaper consumer-grade tapes were pretty useful for backups in the past - I used to backup my stuff on MiniDV tapes through dvbackup, they hold ~10-13gb.
Kayden Rivera
I was referring to how slow the tape loading mechanisms were on 80s home computers like the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum. They used regular Compact Cassettes.
Anthony Bell
I like them and wish they were common again, but I don't think that'll ever happen when usb drives and hosting stuff online have become so common. I might trust dumb media like a diskette or optical drive more than something smarter like a usb drive (due to the firmware problem), but I still think it is a bad idea to share files on media like that with other people. I'd use them to sneakernet files between computers, but I don't need that due to my file server.
Jason Watson
Do you even DAT?
Robert Nelson
Just use a IDE CF card reader as secondary drive insead.
Or got off youre ass and look for floppies online
>1 hour to load.
you lair
most games only took a 1/2 hour to load for cassette tape.
on 2.5" floppy it was 10 minuites
5.1" floppy was 20 minuites roughy
You do realise why technogly exists right?
also
Pic realted has exist for a while now.
and works with C64 and pentuim 1 machines since for ever.
sure its hard to use but when did that ever stop anyone?
Thomas Rogers
>it takes like an hour or more to load a game.
C64 tapes were only slow due to compatibility reasons. Fast Loaders alleviated the problem, speeding up save and load times by a magnitude
en.wikipedia.org
5-10 minutes with Turbo Tape
Connor Lewis
>Or got off youre ass and look for floppies online
None of the existing floppy formats have capacities that make them worth using over flash memory.
>most games only took a 1/2 hour to load for cassette tape.
I've never actually had any computer which loaded stuff off tape, I just know it took quite a while to load most games.
>Pic realted has exist for a while now.
I'm well aware of the Gotek floppy emulator. I haven't gotten one though since I like reading and writing diskettes with labels.
Cameron Johnson
Jaz, Rev, Cliq, WORM, Bernoullis, Syquests, etc. There were hundreds of psuedofloppies
Austin Sullivan
>It's impossible to find any DD 3.5 disks for use with Amiga and Atari ST for decent prices nowadays.
warosu.org
Not this troll again.
Nathaniel Brooks
>3.5 floppies were shit.
It's the smaller size of the disk. You fit the same amount of data into a smaller area and reduce reliability.
Mason Rogers
5.25 disks usually fit less data. Amiga format 5.25s fit exactly the same data, but I think DOS formatted ones fit less.
Andrew Gutierrez
Being ignorant or not knowing isn't the same as being a troll. Out of all my years on image boards and IRC, it feels like I've never seen anyone use the term correctly. 10-15 years ago it was very common to accuse someone of being a troll simply because they dared to disagree.
There is no point in nitpicking about a timescale of 1 hour or 30 minutes when either one requires you to get up and do other stuff around the house while you wait for stuff to load. Assuming the software or computer didn't crash on you while loading.
Lucas Morgan
>Will diskettes ever have a comeback?
Hard drives already use the same tech more or less, they just don't bend (seriously, try disassembling a HDD and bending the disc).
Joseph Gonzalez
>The only time tape has been used for anything but backup storage was as a cheap storage medium for 70s and early 80s home computers. Awful for that purpose since it takes like an hour or more to load a game.
The average cassette game was 16k or less. Usually you were looking at a couple of minutes at most and it's not as if anyone used cassettes on a computer after the early 80s (didn't stop IBM from putting a cassette port on the PCjr for some braindead reason).
Ryan Reyes
>5.25 disks usually fit less data
The raw unformatted capacity of a double density 3.5" and 5.25" disk is the same (1MB). Most computers never used them to their maximum capacity for reliability reasons.
Asher Walker
>it's not as if anyone used cassettes on a computer after the early 80s
Yeah, that's what I meant, besides some of the poorer European countries like Spain they died out at some point around there. The disk drives for the C64 were pretty expensive though since they contained the same processor the actual computer did.
Elijah Harris
I'm saying you're the same troll in the archived thread who was saying he couldn't find any DD 3.5" disks and then rejecting suggestions to use a floppy emulator.
Josiah Miller
>and it's not as if anyone used cassettes on a computer after the early 80s
Did I just imagine all those C64, Speccy, and Amstrad tape games? Nobody bloody had a disk drive on their 8-bit machines.
Gavin Young
DAT could have been great, it's a shame they're so expensive compared to other tape formats.
Zachary Howard
The issue with diskettes is more that USB sticks are cheaper to manufacture and have no moving parts. CDs have survived mostly because of their relative simplicity--a CD player has no moving parts but the motor spindle.
Brayden Brooks
So that's how you put on those clips.
Kayden Foster
Ignore him then. Still. Having an opinion or saying something as harmless as "I can't find media" is hardly being a troll, even when you repeat it in other threads. Learn what troll means. Nobody is going to have a flamewar over a statement like that when it can be easily countered by a link to a webstore. The flamewar would end with the link.
Camden Reed
Goteks are nice, the only problem is that they're designed for standard PC floppy formats and require custom firmware for non-PC retro machines like TRS-80s.
Jackson Howard
USB drives contain firmware that can be replaced with malware. And you wouldn't even notice until it's too late. Antivirus probably don't know how to deal with that either.
Liam Martin
>Having an opinion or saying something as harmless as "I can't find media" is hardly being a troll
He was told he could have used a Flash floppy emulator, but he just kept "bbut I want da real thing because mmuh retro aesthetic".
Jeremiah Jackson
I had so many 1.44MB disks fail on me that it wasn't even funny.
Jaxson Kelly
I don't really see a need for it.
Lincoln Martinez
Which is an opinion. Having opinions does not make someone a troll. Gotek fags tend to be pretty annoying anyways. The device works, but seems very clunky in use. I guess for some people, just using the actual floppies seems like the better solution. I would personally look for a replacement for both, since I don't want to swap disks or deal with the clunky gotek devices.
Henry Hill
Athana still makes new 8" media for US government legacy systems.
Matthew Wilson
>The device works, but seems very clunky in use
Can't be worse than actual floppies.
Parker Sanders
>5-10 minutes
I remember games on the ZX Spectrum taking less than that, and C64 with a fast loader is supposed to be faster.
Benjamin Sanchez
>I'm saying you're the same troll in the archived thread who was saying he couldn't find any DD 3.5" disks
You know you can just use 1.44MB disks with the hole taped up.
Aaron Garcia
One day I'm gonna find one of those Russian boards for storing data on VHS tapes.
John Thomas
Take floppy out, put another well labeled floppy in. Seems a bit easier to deal with than digits on a display. Finding a fresh batch of floppies and keeping backups of them is pretty annoying tho. So is loading data from current computers over to those floppies.
I would be all about IDE to CF adapters and WHDLoad. Won't have to fuck around as much with floppies. Wont have to fuck around with a gotek device.
Evan Baker
Blake Nguyen
There's also the HxC.
Jordan Gray
What is this guy's obsession with floppy labels? I never labeled any disks of mine or very rarely.
Carson Edwards
We're talking about new formats that would essentially be modernized diskettes.
It's cool having a box full of disks with pirated games, demoscene material, diskmags and whatnot.
Brayden Stewart
Minidiscs should come back just because they look cool.
Michael Barnes
Kayden Cruz
Is that easier to use than the Goteks?
Justin Adams
Bluray was originally supposed to come in a casing like that since they needed more protection due to the higher information density. They however switched to a more durable material instead, and because of this Bluray discs are supposed to last longer than both DVD and CD.
Samuel Miller
HxC is just some custom firmware for the Gotek that supports a wide variety of disk formats.
hxc2001.free.fr
Benjamin Torres
>this guy's obsession
You mean "these guy's obsession". Unless the media is temporary only, I always label stuff. In a pile of 20 or so floppies, finding which two are for that one specific application would be rather tricky.
Robert Carter
Actually no, it's a completely different gadget that uses CF cards rather than USB sticks.
Jack Morgan
Did the Spectrum even have a disk drive besides those machines Amstrad made with a built-in one that took some weird proprietary disks?
Bentley Turner
The reason diskettes died out was because it wasn't possible to make them in larger capacities that worked reliably. Thing is, they're a contact media and on Zip Drives, where the capacity was several hundred megabytes, this would necessitate a rotation speed over 1000 RPM that would quickly rub the magnetic coating right off the disk.
To make a long story short, they went up against the laws of physics.
Ryan King
>It's cool having a box full of disks with pirated games, demoscene material, diskmags and whatnot
Yep, it's one of those mmuh retro aesthetic hipsters.
Levi Martinez
>The argument "BUT HEY LOOK NIIICEEE~~~~" is too dumb to even consider
^This.
Dylan Baker
>what are seeks
Gavin Howard
i had the Spectrum ZX-3, which came with a diskette drive
Luis Morgan
I don't believe there's any new 3.5" DD media still being produced unless there's some chink sweatshop I don't know about. Yeah the other guy said one company produces new 8" media for the US military but that's not the same stuff.
Dominic Diaz
Yeah, that's one of the Amstrad models.
Jacob Richardson
I was a floppy partisan once upon a time but I've become increasingly moved by the concept of using HxCs and whatnot with retro boxes.
Ayden King
>Amiga
>5.25" disks
...
Parker Bennett
Why haven't we seen a sata to female usb 3.1 for flash drives?
It would be a cheap alternative for devices without USB boot and embedded Linux.
Matthew Flores
I think some versions of the Amiga 2000 did ship with a 5.25 drive, and there were some external 5.25 drives for it too. The disks act exactly like regular Amiga DD disks.
Isaiah Torres
Jeremiah Johnson
ITT: Autism
Oliver Jackson
Why do people always assume making a similar post two days in a row is spamming/trolling?
Bentley Perry
Everyone knows 1.44MB disks are shit because and after the early 90s, the quality of the things went down the drain.
William Price
It's pretty cool that my Hi-MD player can use both regular Minidisc and Hi-MD discs as Mass Storage, fucking slow though.
Isaac Jones
Two options. One is to write custom firmware for the floppy emulator, the other is to have a modded DOS to handle 720k floppy formats. The latter is probably better because you get triple the space of the standard 180k TRS-80 format.
David Carter
>I like the aesthetics of large external disks, and I would like to know if there's a chance the concept will return.
lol. I like the aesthetics of Laserdisc user, but there's about as much chance of those returning as floppies or DVD-RAM making a comeback. USB flash has killed them, you can keep making larger capacity drives and not have to change the interface used to access them, the way you'd have to upgrade your DVD writer to a blu-ray burner if you wanted higher capacity.
Wyatt Rogers
>flash memory cant be put in a cartridge
Samuel Cooper
>I like the aesthetics of large external disks
Dropped.
Jose Davis
>USB flash has killed them, you can keep making larger capacity drives and not have to change the interface used to access them
If you want to nitpick, most floppy drives standardized on the Shugart interface early on.
Andrew Clark
You could make one yourself. It'd be a fairly simple project with modern tools, like an fpga. You could almost certainly get better efficiency too. The ArVid only used a tiny channel space of the potential 6MHz wide signal, so it only stored at ~233kB/s for 2GB on a 2.5 hr tape. If you encoded at 4MHz bandwidth with a conservative SNR of 24db, you could hit 2.25MB/s for a total storage for a whopping 19GB per tape.
Jace Clark
Not an official one, and Microdrives don't count.
James Howard
Hell with it, you could even make your own homemade floppy disks if you wanted. I mean, it's just Mylar with an iron oxide coating and you can get the stuff from any chemical supply outfit.
James Fisher
if you idiots don't know, magnetic tape and diskettes are still in use in large archiving servers: they provide a super cheap, and secure way of storing data for long periods of time (80+ years), and although they don't provide good random read/write speeds (since they can only have one stream of data at a time, and at a speed which doesn't damage the magnetic tape), they are pretty good at sequential read/writes (260+MB/s), and for archiving huge amounts of data:
en.m.wikipedia.org
extract from Wikipedia:
>The smallest SL8500 library holds up to 1,448 tape cartridges, for 1.4 Petabytes of online uncompressed storage. An equivalent amount of PC-class hard disk storage would be priced at $100,000 or less for the drives.
>Sony announced in 2014, that they had developed a tape storage technology with the highest reported magnetic tape data density, 148 Gbit/in2 (23 Gbit/cm2), potentially allowing tape capacity of 185 TB.[11] It was further developed by Sony, with announcement in 2017, about reported data density of 201 Gbit/in2, giving standard tape capacity of 330 TB.
There, now educate yourself on why tapes are still used (though never for home use)
Parker Perez
>if you idiots don't know, magnetic tape and diskettes are still in use in large archiving servers
As we've mentioned before, the US military still uses 8" disks for certain purposes and Athana produces new 8" media for them. Apparently it's considered preferable for security reasons (that is to say if someone steals an 8" floppy with nuclear codes, how are they going to stick it in their MacBook?)
Gavin Butler
Depending on the format used, some 8" disks could store over 2MB which is more than a 1.44MB disk and also more reliably due to the much larger disk surface.
Levi Gomez
>Not an shark
Xavier Turner
>and although they don't provide good random read/write speeds (since they can only have one stream of data at a time, and at a speed which doesn't damage the magnetic tape)
That ties in to what I said earlier about how Zip drives and other attempts at "super" floppies failed due to the high rotation speed damaging the disk. Standard floppies spin at (usually) 250 or 500 rpm which should not damage the media provided everything is kept clean and dust-free. Zip drives had a rotation speed of something like 1000 rpm which led to disk damage and quick failure of media.
Blake Bailey
>There, now educate yourself on why tapes are still used (though never for home use)
Tapes were never used for home use if you discount cassettes used as home computer storage in the 80s.
Henry Wright
Just use tape, the drives are expensive as fuck but storage is super cheap
Bentley Martinez
I never said they were lol
Asher Wood
Caleb Hall
I certainly could (hell, I teach digital modulation among other things), but that isn't as fun as actual old hardware.
Parker Cox
>>>/csg/