Dell says Floppies out?

G

Grymblayd

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This post is in regard to the recent NTFS.ORG news item concerning Dell's phasing out of floppy drives.
Just as a note, about six months ago I asked a Dell Tech when he thought we would stop using floppies and he said never!
That was his opinion and it disagreed with mine ( never ..come on ).
Today I finally went into hardware Raid0 and this is actually where this post will come together ...please bear with me.
First , I installed the PCI controller and then the HDDs.
Next I install the WinXP CD ( all this according to the little "manual " inclluded with the controller card)
I press f6 to install the Raid controller ....during this time set-up files are being loaded. I am then instructed to type "S" to install from disk the drivers for the card. Here began my dillema...
The disk was a CD and the only unchangeable option to install from was A: ( the floppy drive) .
I had to cancel out of set-up and use my WIN98 Boot disk( MY PRECIOUS !!!)
to copy the folder from the CD to a floppy. Finally I was able to load the drivers.
If I had one of Dell's new Floppyless PCs I would have been up the proverbial creek without a means of propulsion.

When I configured the array I opted for clusters of 128kb and I am thinking now I should have done 64kb, being that when I encounter "smaller" files than 128 the array doesn't actual do anything. Any opinions on this ?

Grym ( and appreciating the "oldest" thing in my pc) blayd
 
The floppy drive can be handy at times!
I've been using the same one since my 486 ... talk about reliability ;)
 
yeah, if it wasn't for windows xp installation accepting raid drivers off of "A:" only, i wouldn't have a floppy drive. that's all i use it for.
 
they are phasing it out so to speak... ie.. it is still available but more an option than a standard like before...

I suppose they are pushing their own little usb memory stick for storage purposes... it is solid state so unlikely to lose data like floppies... and can hold a heck of a lot more info :)
 
weel, I have a dell laptop that come with an modular floppy, and in the 6 month I have owned this machine, I have never, not once! use a floppy disk. so to me, a floppy is useless, really. I have a cd burner and an external zip drive, and I am on a network, so in my environment, even when I am travelling, I have no need for a floppy.

my opinion. EJ
 
I have no problem with floppies going the way of punch cards...
just don't leave me optionless like XP did with the drivers for Raid during install.

USB is fine ....but still unreliable when it comes to keyboard functionality. ( yes even when enabled in Bios ) There are times when it bloody chokes.


Grym ( and ordering tacos) blayd
 
The humble floppy drive to be done away with?

The last bastion of the x86 architecture and how to recover from just about any problem with PC’s (including BIOS) is being removed from the circus?

Only DEL could do this in its drive to provide even more profits from its declining support structure, which used to be second to none (at a cost).

Let’s assign drive “A” to the master drive boot record (currently on “C”) and see what happens without a floppy drive.

What happened to drive “B” whilst we are on the subject? Anyone currently booting from this drive? Has it vanished?
 

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