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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: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:55AM (25 children)
There are only two reasons to have a floppy drive:
1) You're old, or have a passion for history and old timey computin'
2) You're in IT, and whatever God forsaken hardware you need to administrate requires it for some reason
As for #2, that's where the USB support comes in. That's not going to last that much longer either.
The next real moment for us is when they retire the first USB interface, leaving millions of tons of old USB storage/devices unsupported. That will be slightly more impactful than the loss of a floppy that 99% of people haven't used since the Matrix movies first came out.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @01:59AM (10 children)
3) You're operating a machine which costs hundreds thousand USD and takes designs in form of 720kB Quad-density floppy, the documentation is scarce but the source code print-out (perforated paper filling an entire box) is available, however no assembler for its CPU survived. Case authentic.
FYI, the USB floppy drives are junk, I checked it with 6 of these. Ended with just an old PC for archiving and not breaking disks, as it happens with USB floppy drives (they have a nasty habit of starting and stopping their motor until disk becomes destroyed).
And better think what will happen when the only way to store data will be to connect to the "cloud". We're definitely going in this direction, we got dumbed-down Windows first, then Linux divided between filesystem tools usable almost only by programmers and GUI with features trimmed down to resemble Tamagotchi. We are probably the last generation which puts own OS and programs on "our" computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Saturday July 27 2019, @02:14AM
Tragically, the majority of computer users are now tablet and phone users, not IT users (professional or amateur)
So need and want drive form and function.
Wifi and bluetooth now "just work", which is wonderful.
Storage on the cloud is "more convenient", which is not wonderful at all, if you care about ownership or privacy.
The fact that multinationals and TLAs are very happy about their access to your data is reaslly only a symptom. The cause is consumers who just want "convenience".
Most users, even the bright, educated ones, see any antagonism for "cloud" as paranoia, even those who should know better.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @02:24AM (5 children)
No, I think you're wrong. We're the last generation that doesn't have a computer in our head.
And yeah, I can think of all sorts of evil/hacking/horrors that can happen with that, but I bet it's true. Who needs the cloud for storage, when you have every book, video, song stored in your head? Or whatever?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday July 27 2019, @04:28AM
Got your Musk hub implanted yet?
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/07/18/elon-musk-wants-to-link-brains-directly-to-machines [economist.com]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @09:02AM (2 children)
If there will be a complete technical documentation allowing to audit the thing, open source software with possibility to expand, final solution of a power problem, a hardware kill-switch then... why not?
But what we see from mobile devices market, there will be documentation for developers only used only to force us buy certain products, software written by companies to put ads in our dreams and all attempts to implement a kill-switch would be illegal. Sorry, I'm going in this direction as much as I went with smartphones (checks what time is it on Nokia 6510) :).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @09:58AM (1 child)
Why not!?
I see you're referencing smart phones, and you're agreeing it's a "bad thing", but I have to still take exception at your line about how auditing would help. Or it being open source.
Because, how about #1, nothing is EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER secure. No auditing, no open source or not open source, no method of development, or QA as of yet, has EVER produced hack-proof, bug proof software. EVER!
If you don't consider every daemon, every piece of software, every operating system unsecure -- you're living in a fool's paradise. It's ALL buggy. It's ALL unsecure.
You see all those security vulnerabilities, for everything? You do realise that in many cases, those are exploited for days, months, sometimes YEARS, even DECADES yes DECADES by black hats to exploit systems! I'm talking about exploits that go unnoticed for 5 years, silently and judiciously used in quiet ways.
But you want this in your head? People hacking your ipv6 address, corrupting files/data? For this thing to work, there has to be a way to get data in and out, yes?
Imagine:
- if the thing is lined to your optic nerves, imagine constant messages flashing faster than your conscious mind can keep track of. Or while you sleep! Constantly!
- same is true of other methods. If you somehow develop a new method to communicate (like an extra sense, almost) with the thing, some other line of I/O, imagine while you sleep that constantly saying "OBEY" or whatever
Or how about it being used to track you, with GPSv3, and a network connection you can't shut off? How about it being used to manipulate you in countless other ways?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:46AM
I totally agree that these systems should be considered unsecure. But first of all, the hardware kill-switch. No, the toy we have with wi-fi, this is NOT a hardware killswitch. The real killswitch disconnects power and the chip is as useful as a brick.
A moment ago I read about these "latest" invention in brain-computer interface, and... Who the hell invented putting electrodes into brain IN 2019?! Are we in 1950s? Seriously, last time I was in BCIs (ca. 2004-2005) it was like MKG under hf current and it was working to the stage that it was possible to reproduce it in semi-lab conditions (I remember we used a trimmed-down design which was not published but could be reversed from source footage... from mid-1990s). To make a device to play "TV tennis" without hands, it was possible to use hardware which makes a typical ham radio enthusiast laugh, but this was still working, without putting electrodes into brain, with a 5cm-wide band around head. The side effects were not that bad (sea sickness symptoms after 30 minutes of continuous use, but these were mostly related to the "flashes", a smaller side effect).
Now I read more and more about this newest "invention" and I still cannot understand why the hell they are using these wires. Is it a form of human-computer Tivoization?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:14AM
There will be a computer in your head, but the information will not be stored there. It will be stored in the cloud. Better don't ever go to a place without a decent network connection.
There will exist upgrades with local storage. But those upgrades will be very expensive, and normal people won't be able to afford them. People who have to work in places without proper network connection will get them through the company, possibly just borrowed for the time of their job. And of course if you're rich, you'll always be able to afford it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:04AM
Do you need the latest version of Linux for legacy floppy-using machines?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 28 2019, @02:39AM
I have a USB floppy drive that so far has destroyed no disks (occasionally used for a floppy boot, tho I have some old disks that need reading) ... but the drive inside is a Teac, which may make a difference. Or it may be your OS and its drivers are the culprit.
I've noticed that this USB floppy drive read a boot disk about 4x faster than a drive on the FDD port... guess that tells us where the bottleneck was...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Sunday July 28 2019, @07:59AM
Almost all MIDI instruments that used floppies for instrument banks etc. have a "floppy driver emulator".
Usually a literal hardware replacement for a floppy drive, indistinguishable from a real floppy drive, that uses microSD cards to actually hold the data (and changing discs is done from an LCD panel on the front by selecting a different image file from the microSD.
Retro gamers have been building and selling the same things for their systems forever too.
There's no reason to be using an *actual* floppy drive any more... and they are just as likely to fail as the discs themselves.
Do yourself a favour, take out the drive, check the interface (IDE, etc.) and see if you can use a floppy emulator with it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday July 27 2019, @02:19AM
There are a great number of CNC machines still in service that load their programs (and sometimes their OS!) from floppies. Many of these machines still have a value of tens of thousands or more on the used market, and replacement costs of hundreds of thousands.Tyoical service lives are 20-30 years, sometimes more if well cared for.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday July 27 2019, @05:43AM (2 children)
I'm in category 1.
At a rough (mental) count, I've got five 5 1/4 drives, and six 3 1/2 drives. Many are kept as spares.
I've never seen an 8 inch one in the flesh, I'm a bit too young (or unlucky) for that.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 28 2019, @02:41AM
I've got a similar collection... tho I did thin things down when I moved, and only kept the Teacs (and whatever was in random PCs of uncertain heritage). Have yet to see a Teac FDD fail, even under hard and regular use; have seen a few dead Sonys and a whole lot of dead Mitsumis.
So was pleased to note that the no-name USB unit I bought a while back has a Teac FDD inside.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @10:07AM
How many still have write rings laying around?
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday July 27 2019, @09:00AM
3) You maintain/support/upgrade military systems which usually have a life of type of up to 20 plus years. Obsolescence issues due to the use of floppies is usually pretty minor though.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nuke on Saturday July 27 2019, @09:03AM (3 children)
4) You still have documents and stuff that were saved on floppies years ago that you must get round to copying off one day.
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:41AM (2 children)
Yeah I thought of that too but unfortunately for us it's already covered under:
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 28 2019, @02:43AM (1 child)
The really scary thing is ... we have data on floppy disks that are older than most of the people posting here...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @04:26PM
And if you haven't used it in decades, what are the odds you ever will?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday July 27 2019, @10:06AM
Motherboards, RasPis, etc. are still coming out with USB Type-A ports. Maybe these will fall out of use and get replaced by Type-C, but USB itself will be around for a long time.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @02:03PM
Add to those two
3. Musician with a keyboard with a floppy drive...(thankfully there are replacement SD card 'solutions')
Dare I mention that I also have a Sony digital camera with a floppy disk drive? (fully functional, 'joke' birthday present last year from one of my sisters...)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @03:15PM
They have a very simplified controller that can only handle PC style floppy formats, and next to no or no error recovery capabilities.
With a normal 26 pin floppy drive there are some tricks you can do with access to the floppy port for some levels of recovery, and with the drive itself there are various flux systems to recover disks of the majority of formats out there, utilizing a standard PC compatible 5.25 or 3.5 floppy drive.
The loss of floppy drive support because 'omg bitrot might happen' is a sign of the failure of linux, after 30 years, to have any form of stable ABI. It's not like the systems that have 26 pin floppy or IDE interfaces have changed in the intervening decades. For hardware and software purposes they were almost exactly the same up until the final two or three generations of x86_64 PCs when they broke all that legacy stuff at the chipset level thanks to HPET or APIC changes which interfered. Since both AMD and Intel did it within one generation of each other, I can only assume it was collusion to try and provide an excuse to eliminate these old ports from modern systems.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Sunday July 28 2019, @01:51AM
Maybe your old computer is too old to have USB?
If you cannot find an old server, maybe it got sealed inside a wall . . .
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server_discovered_after/ [theregister.co.uk]
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Unixnut on Sunday July 28 2019, @11:36AM
> The next real moment for us is when they retire the first USB interface, leaving millions of tons of old USB storage/devices unsupported. That will be slightly more impactful than the loss of a floppy that 99% of people haven't used since the Matrix movies first came out.
I really doubt that will happen. The day they retire the first USB interface is the day USB itself gets retired.
USB 1.1 is still used for its original purpose (replacement for PS2, rs232, etc...), most commonly for keyboards, mice and other input devices. Every generation of USB after that up to the latest is backwards compatible with the USB1.1 standard.
The one thing that may change is that the old rectangular USB physical interface may change, but as all the standards are backward compatible electrically, all you would need is an adapter to make use of all the old USB hardware kicking around.
USB after all, stands for "Universal Serial Bus", and its well on its way to becoming truly universal. I don't see it going away anytime soon.