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Retrotechtacular: The Floppy Disk Orphaned By Linux
About a week ago, Linus Torvalds made a software commit which has an air about it of the end of an era. The code in question contains a few patches to the driver for native floppy disc controllers. What makes it worthy of note is that he remarks that the floppy driver is now orphaned. Its maintainer no longer has working floppy hardware upon which to test the software, and Linus remarks that "I think the driver can be considered pretty much dead from an actual hardware standpoint", though he does point out that active support remains for USB floppy drives.
It's a very reasonable view to have arrived at because outside the realm of retrocomputing the physical rather than virtual floppy disk has all but disappeared. It's well over a decade since they ceased to be fitted to desktop and laptop computers, and where once they were a staple of any office they now exist only in the "save" icon on your wordprocessor. The floppy is dead, and has been for a long time.
Still, Linus' quiet announcement comes as a minor jolt to anyone of A Certain Age for whom the floppy disk and the computer were once inseparable.
Next thing, someone will be removing punched card and paper tape reader support. Where does it end?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:55AM (12 children)
I have nostalgia for 5 1/4" (mini) floppy, but not for 3 1/2" (micro) floppy. I bet only some old mac users feel nostalgic for 3 1/2" floppies.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:57AM (3 children)
This gives me some real nostalgia too [youtube.com] :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @01:21AM
Green or amber, that is the question.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 27 2019, @03:57AM
Obligatory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM_sAxrAu7Q [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday July 27 2019, @09:05AM
It gives me notalgia, but that's probably because of an old back injury.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @03:13AM (2 children)
From what I hear, 8" floppies are the minimum, as is an owner at least 6' tall.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:27AM (1 child)
> From what I hear, 8" floppies are the minimum, as is an owner at least 6' tall.
Yeah, but on the other hand those 8" floppies had to be inserted real gently into the slot, otherwise they got bent or broken
The 3.5s may have been much smaller, but because they were stiffer you could bang em in as hard as you wanted
What you really wanted of course was an 8in hard one, they were called "winchesters" for some reason, I can still remember the first one of those I had, all 20megs of it...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @04:40AM
Speak for yourself...did they come in black?
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:25AM (3 children)
Talk about nostalgia... I started with 8" floppies.. and a Z80 S100 computer....
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:29PM
Same here, Z-80 S100 bus computer running CP/M. Our 8" floppies spun all the time (like a hard disk) and gave surprisingly fast access to the word processor we ran.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday July 27 2019, @04:54PM (1 child)
Nostalgia Schmustalgia -- There are plenty of instances where floppies are still in use today. I'll give a real example. A test setup for a modern military part uses an old oscilloscope with only a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive as a way to save the waveforms. So we saved the data onto a floppy disc and used a USB floppy drive to download the data and run calculations with a PC. There is so much red-tape involved with modernizing the process that it takes literally years to get approval. Numerous such cases!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @08:34AM
Maybe they should consider donating hardware then.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday July 29 2019, @04:13PM
The first computer in my house was some IBM machine with a 5.25" floppy drive and a 3.5" floppy drive, no HDD. I have great memories of using a BASIC computer game book to type out a program and run it. I also remember an old Alf game and some other stuff. It was quite an interesting experience growing up with Personal Computers. It's amazing how far we've come since the 1980s. My daughter's first memories will likely be of playing on a Tablet. It makes me wonder, just how much more advanced technology will be, when she's my age.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"