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posted by martyb on Saturday July 27 2019, @12:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the retro-things dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday July 28 2019, @01:52AM (3 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Sunday July 28 2019, @01:52AM (#872148)

    Wow! Impressive project.

    Your post gave me personal insight. I did more electronics projects as a kid. I started working as a tech at 17, went full-time until college at 23, and now only do small things here and there. Now I realize why- I've gotten paid to solder 8000 pins! I guess that takes some of the fun out of it. I wonder if GoFundMe will pay me to do my projects again.

    So what OS do you run on the Z80? CP/M? Or no OS?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Sunday July 28 2019, @06:33AM (2 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 28 2019, @06:33AM (#872217) Journal

    CP/M is the default used to interface with the disk drives etc. But as an alternative I can boot into a command line and use assembler and the routines provided by an on-board ROM which is limited to interfacing to the keyboard and the cassette player/recorder. It has a memory of 64k RAM now, but started life with a 2k ROM, 1k of system memory/video RAM, and just under 1k of user RAM!

    People are always amazed by what can actually be achieved with such a small amount of user memory. They always 'correct' me by telling me that I meant to say 64Mb or even 64Gb! Assembler is the most efficient in terms of memory usage, but I also have Pascal, Modula2 and one or two other compilers available when using CP/M.

    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 29 2019, @12:49AM (1 child)

      by RS3 (6367) on Monday July 29 2019, @12:49AM (#872475)

      Again, very cool. My first microprocessor system was a Kim-1 - 6502 based.

      I used to use CP/M way back in the day- one system was an Osborne-1, which I liked, and another I can't remember the brand name, but it had 2 Z80s.

      I did some Pascal in college, and may have had Turbo Pascal somewhere, but never used it post college. Is it fairly efficient on the Z80? (output small?)

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday July 29 2019, @09:41AM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 29 2019, @09:41AM (#872567) Journal

        It's been a while since I programmed in Pascal - if I do anything on the Z80 I use assembly language. I cannot remember which compiler I last used. I have Turbo Pascal and another from one of the US universities, possibly MIT. I cannot say how it compares with today's compilers but I do remember that when I got my first compiler (Pascal-Z80 or Pascal-80?) I was very impressed but I don't think that I have a copy of that compiler on disk.

        Modula-2 was also good but is a language that is rarely used nowadays.

        My primary language now is Python 3 but I haven't bothered looking if anyone has been daft enough to try to port it to the Z80. I would imagine that would be an almost impossible task.

        As I say, the Z80 computer is primarily used as a teaching aid, but it does record local weather conditions via an interface card - for no other reason than I can, and it demonstrates that even the old CPUs can still carry out useful tasks and shouldn't be forgotten. If somebody is starting out today I would probably recommend a RaspPi for doing similar tasks and a lot of other jobs too that the Z80 would struggle with.

        Hobbyists tended to either be in the Z80/8080 camp or the 6502 camp. There was much (friendly) rivalry and banter between the various user groups with each CPU having some strong points where it scored over the other. I note that the Z80 is still being manufactured under various names, I'll have to see if the 6502 has had similar good fortune. I can see plenty of 6502 programming books but a quick search hasn't revealed any chips yet.

        I'd better get back to trimming my grey beard and oiling my knee and hip joints now.....