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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 Reziac on Sunday July 28 2019, @02:41AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Sunday July 28 2019, @02:41AM (#872166) Homepage

    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.

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