SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 27 2019, @06:38AM (8 children)
Above I mention recently inheriting some important floppies. Some would read on some drives I have, some not at all. Many of my drives don't seem to work at all (anymore) on test floppies. They spin cleanly, stall, then you get data error message. Not sure what's failing- they're clean, undamaged, everything is set correctly. Frustrating! I've had many optical drives and players die- the lasers seem to have limited life, but there's nothing in a floppy drive that would electrically "wear out" (no bad caps). Trying to find test / calibration / alignment info...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:27PM (7 children)
Also the cheap plastic lenses degrades and becomes too lossy. Older glass ones won't.
Well, the heads also age and some can accumulate magnetic debris in their air gap. The plastic gears and the lube dries out, the magnets lose strength...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 27 2019, @03:36PM
Very interesting, I did not know that. Makes sense for sure. My main stereo rack CD player is an early 80s Magnavox that still works almost perfectly. Sometimes laser "head" flutters, but I'm too lazy to try to fix it. I just power cycle it, open / close tray, try again, or give up and do something else. Maybe it needs alignment / calibration- I doubt any caps have died.
I know about all of those things and keep them clean and carefully lubed (I'm real good at that sort of thing). Carefully blow out any dust, and most of mine are very clean inside.
BTW, heads don't have an "air gap" or it would fill with debris. There's a magnetic insulator of some kind, but never air. It's more that the head can accumulate a buildup of debris which causes the tape / disk to become distant from the gap. I've never seen any kind of wear or buildup on a floppy head, but I carefully clean them anyway.
Many tape heads can become permanently magnetized, so there exist head demagnetizers, of which I have 2 or 3. In a floppy the magnetic pole piece is made of ferrite which doesn't typically retain magnetism, and even if it did, the electromagnetic energy would remove it instantly during operation. Can't hurt to degauss them and try anyway...
Not sure which magnets you refer to... Typically 2 motors, spin and head carriage movement and they work perfectly...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27 2019, @03:53PM (5 children)
From my own experience, the main killers are rust/corrosion due to poor storage, and failing capacitors. Well, when they were commonly in use the #1 killer were the retarded monkey fuck users that wouldn't follow simple usage and care directions.
IBM PS/2 systems are plauged with failing capacitors, and their drives were a proprietary form factor, so they can't easily be replaced.
On the other hand, find a Fujitsu M2551A with no corrosion, and it will almost certainly work fine.
Broken plastic gears are mainly a problem with very early drives, especially in Macintosh 128k/512k/Plus machines.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 27 2019, @07:33PM (4 children)
Good info, thanks.
No corrosion in any of mine.
Dust has been the biggest problem in my experience. Coming from some background in higher-end equipment, it always really bugged me that PCs suck dirt and dust into the drives. I'm used to equipment sucking air in, usually in the back, through a FILTER. People with HVAC generally have much dustier computers. I have air compressors and blow guns. Of course the dust sticks to the gears and lead screws, so deeper cleaning and re-greasing is necessary.
Very little experience working on Mac drives, but I suspect it's the motorized eject that gets the broken gears.
I always had best luck with Teac drives, but many others were great. I'll look to see if I have any of the Fujitsu, and thanks again.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday July 28 2019, @03:11AM (3 children)
Teac for 3.5", Fujitsu for 5.25"
Never seen a deader of either. Seen deaders of other brands.
Dunno about Mac FDDs but some CDROMs of similar vintage used a teeny tiny belt to open the tray. Belt dries out and breaks, no more tray open... tho could probably fix it with a suitable rubber band.
The way to keep dust and lint and cat hair out of the drives (floppy or optical) is to have one more intake fan than you have outgoing fans. Higher air pressure inside the case means air constantly flowing out every crack and crevice, including the mouths of these drives. (Even when I lived in dust-and-cat-hair-central, this kept my drives crud-free.) Whereas if you have equal or fewer intake fans... air flows IN those drive mouths, bringing along every passing bit of floating crud.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 28 2019, @03:57PM (2 children)
I have a 3" floppy drive that was belt driven, and the belt disintegrated. I know the specs, but I'm having the hardest time finding a replacement in the US.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 29 2019, @12:56AM (1 child)
Check with these guys: http://www.russellind.com/prbline/prb.htm [russellind.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @02:22PM
Thank you for that link. I'll see if the conversion from metric comes up with something close in their catalog.