Linux Kernel's Floppy Disk Code Is Seeing Improvements In 2020

[bkydcmpr]

Did they even bother to test the change on a real floppy drive?

[Viki Ai]

Yeah, the race to the bottom came with high unreliability of the disks. People say that even floppies weren't all that bad in the 80's. Memories of frustration while trying to access data on some disks (CDs too) made me a early converted to flashdrives. I still have my first one, a blue, 1GB Corsair Flash Voyager (still works!).

I remember a day doing a 45 min bus ride to a friend's house to bring back a pack of floppy disks full of arcade ROMs (MAME), only to find out that disk 5 or 6 was corrupted... (in the "single big Zip file in multiple disks" days). Still makes me mad 20 years latter.

In the early 90's I recall there were floppy disk brands you avoided like the plague if you valued your data. And as the 90's progressed, more and more and more brands joined the list. Until by the end of the decade, none were left.

And then I got my very first USB thumb drive!!! It was 16MB!! ... (yes M)

[Viki Ai]

It's sad that flash drives with hardware write-protect switches seem to be extinct now.

I have these bookmarked on AliExpress:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3296...765d2e0epTORne

Though I can't guarantee that switch is a /physical/ hardware write protect. My own interest is more in them being SLC flash.

[Delgarde]

My computer has a floppy drive in it. My motherboard has no connector. It's just sitting there, all day long, disconnected. Poor floppy drive.

I was in the same situation for several years... the case originally came with a floppy drive, and removing it would have left an unwanted hole in the front panel.

[Veto]

I use 3.5" floppies at work to transfer images from an old Tektronix oscilloscope...

[ed31337]

Zip drives and Jazz drives were the bomb!

Zip drives were the time bomb. Seemed really good and spacious at first, but then once your drive got the click of death, suddenly you just lost a whole lot of data... POS.

[acobar]

I still have some DVD-RAM media and all of them still work properly. Unluckily, my old cartridge compatible driver from Panasonic died and I had to extract the media from the package. But I don't really use them that much, not even pendrives, except to create installers. All my data moving happens through the network. When there is no direct network access, not even with VPN, I just 7zip the whole thing with a password and use google drive, dropbox or skydrive, works pretty well. Don't see myself using an old floppy anymore, though, TDK provided pretty reliable ones (still have and old computer with a floppy reader combo for 3 1/2 and 5 1/4 from Epson, damn good piece of hardware).

[acobar]

It was a quick update and optimisation to Floppies so once we hit DEFCON 1 around the world and governments starts moving to their old, dusty, cold-war era bunkers full of "IBM-PC" compatible PCs, CRT monitors, floppies, and tape reels, with token ring topologies and coaxial networks; we can update them to the latest mainline stable kernel and fight of the hordes of zombies that the new coronavirus vaccine will create/mutate in the populations around the world.

Don't know what you are using man, but need some of it for my recreation too.

[DanglingPointer]

It was a quick update and optimisation to Floppies so once we hit DEFCON 1 around the world and governments starts moving to their old, dusty, cold-war era bunkers full of "IBM-PC" compatible PCs, CRT monitors, floppies, and tape reels, with token ring topologies and coaxial networks; we can update them to the latest mainline stable kernel and fight of the hordes of zombies that the new coronavirus vaccine will create/mutate in the populations around the world.

[DanL]

Out of curiosity if your device still has a floppy hasn't support for most of the components in it already been removed?

I know some Socket AM3 mobos still had floppy connectors, so it's not really that old.