Finally, Death of the 3.5 inch floppy disk

[Don McKenzie]

Sony to discontinue 3.5 inch floppy disk
April 24, 11:34 PMJapan Headlines ExaminerJoshua Williams

Sony announced on April 23rd that they will be discontinuing sales of
the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan in 2011. The news marks a
major end to a nearly three decade history of the disk type that the
company helped to pioneer.

According to Sony, they introduced the 3.5 inch floppy disk size to the
world in 1981, and began sales within Japan in 1983. Sony had shipped
approximately 47 million disks within the country at its peak around the
year 2000, but that number had fallen to around 8.5 million by 2009,
Sankei News reported.

http://www.examiner.com/x-16352-Jap...y-to-discontinue-35-inch-floppy-disk-in-Japan

Cheers Don...



--
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[Don McKenzie]

Hardly "death of the 3.5 inch floppy disk" to announce that one vendor
will stop making them. Even 5.25" DSDD media and some 8" formats are
still in production, as well as 3" flippies.

Hi Lewin,

Considering Sony produced the first 3.5" floppies, and currently hold
70% of the world market, and many other manufacturers have pulled the
plug, I would say death is very close to describing what the usage will
be in 2011.

Some people still go to drive-in cinemas, use Betamax video format,
rotary dial phones, and Edison wax cylinders, so these aren't dead either.

Only thing that is really dead, are people that fall off the perch.


Cheers Don...


--
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[Don McKenzie]

They still charge us a 'service fee' on the phone bill if we opt for touch
tone service.

Just a thought.
How many kids 15 or under would know what a rotary dial is, or ever used
one?

Then, how many kids 15 or under, have ever written, or read a file
to/from a 3.5" floppy?.

Not a lot I would think.
I can't remember when I last used a floppy, must be many years. Would
have been to prop up a short leg on a table.

Footnote **
I laugh when the little ones of today, have to look at the back of your
camera, after you take a picture. What did we do before they put the
screen there?

Cheers Don...




--
Don McKenzie

Site Map: http://www.dontronics.com/sitemap
E-Mail Contact Page: http://www.dontronics.com/email
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[Mr.T]

Footnote **
I laugh when the little ones of today, have to look at the back of your
camera, after you take a picture. What did we do before they put the
screen there?

Most people waited 3 months to get their film processed before they found
out he photo was no good!
Digital camera's have at least seen a rise in people thinking about what
they have shot. Unfortunately camera phones have seen a fall in the quality
of many of those "photo's".

MrT.

 

[Mr.T]

Sony to discontinue 3.5 inch floppy disk
April 24, 11:34 PMJapan Headlines ExaminerJoshua Williams

Sony announced on April 23rd that they will be discontinuing sales of
the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan in 2011. The news marks a
major end to a nearly three decade history of the disk type that the
company helped to pioneer.

According to Sony, they introduced the 3.5 inch floppy disk size to the
world in 1981, and began sales within Japan in 1983. Sony had shipped
approximately 47 million disks within the country at its peak around the
year 2000, but that number had fallen to around 8.5 million by 2009,
Sankei News reported.

WOW, still 8.5 million sales in 2009 from one company alone! So far from
dead then.

MrT.

 

[John Tserkezis]

Sony announced on April 23rd that they will be discontinuing sales of
the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan in 2011. The news marks a
major end to a nearly three decade history of the disk type that the
company helped to pioneer.

Someone forgot to tell microsoft.

The only way to load device drivers (drive interfaces, SCSI drivers
etc) when installing windows is via the drive at A:. And that's your
only option.

Short of creating a magical alternate boot install CD/DVD for every new
model of box we get. Not looking forward to it.

 

[Mr.T]

Quiz: Which music format showed the greater percentage sales growth in
2009; was it (a) Compact Disk - Digital Audio, or (b) stereo vinyl 33
1/3rpm LP?

(c) Digital music downloads.
(d) Music DVD's


Vinyl rose from a *VERY* small base, and CD's fell due to digital downloads
and DVD's.

Once again proving that unqualified statistics prove nothing at all!

MrT.

 

[Mr.T]

I explicitly did not include digital downloads for obvious reasons.

Yes you appeared to be making an invalid point.

I consider all physical media formats equally obsolete, so obviously it
doesn't make sense to measure buggy whip sales against gasoline sales.

How silly, even digital downloads must end up on some "physical media
format", even if it's a hard drive.
And IF you consider vinyl to be analogous to buggy whips, why the silly quiz
in the first place?

BTW, I refuse to believe the music DVD one - I've never even SEEN a
music DVD. It's like SACD; it's an acronym, there were/are devices
that can play them, but they're a mythical unicorn format.

Now that's *really* silly. I have about a hundred, and there are *many*
thousands currently available.

MrT.

 

[John Tserkezis]

Actually, rumour has it, this is not the case in the two latest
revisions of their OS. I say rumour as I have not ever tried
installing one of these latest creations -- the one Windows Vista
machine I used had it preloaded, and I've never touched Windows 7.

No idea about Vista, but have installed Win7 several times so far, and
yes, your only option is F6 to look at drive A:.

But yes, you make a valid point ... and I shall make a note to stock
up on 3.5" floppy disks while they're easily available, as some of the
ones I have at home are slowly decaying with age.

Indeed. I've never had much luck with the longevity of 3.5" disks.
They simply do not last. And, owning to the fact we don't use them too
often, (we get boxs with newfanged interfaces when we're least expecting
it) we grab the first disk that's been kicking around in cabinet here.
After we go through several bad ones, we throw them out to find there
are none left.

As I said, we can create a custom boot disk, this is very doable, but
we could have that box up and running in several minutes verses lots more.

Contrary to popular belief we DO have more important things to do than
screw around with installs that don't like to play with the other children.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

Someone forgot to tell microsoft.

The only way to load device drivers (drive interfaces, SCSI drivers
etc) when installing windows is via the drive at A:. And that's your
only option.

My latest machine lacks floppy support on the motherboard (Asus P6T
WS). They suggest using a USB flash drive or USB floppy for RAID
drivers.

Short of creating a magical alternate boot install CD/DVD for every new
model of box we get. Not looking forward to it.

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[John Tserkezis]

But when I tried to write to some of them they all failed miserably,
even the newest ones. Non-formattable, complete scrap. And some of
them had been written just once or twice, so my guess is that even
unused new disks will age and become unusable within max. 10 years.
As if the brownish magnetic stuff they are covered with dries and
hardens
over the years and the tiny magnets inside remain stuck forever .

Now that you mention it, my experience mimics that too. Long term
storage appears to be very much pot luck, but much longer than what I
would have though reasonable for floppy media.

Writes on the other hand, pretty much all long term age disks proved
failure prone in this regard.

 

[John Tserkezis]

My latest machine lacks floppy support on the motherboard (Asus P6T
WS). They suggest using a USB flash drive or USB floppy for RAID
drivers.

That's nice, but USB flash drives won't ever map to A: or B:. This is
done intentionally, and it makes perfect sense. But it doesn't help the
fact that Windows will not look at *any* other drive than A:.

So, that leaves USB interfaced FDDs, or, as already suggested, creating
an alternative boot disk with the drivers included.

 

[Doug McIntyre]

That's nice, but USB flash drives won't ever map to A: or B:. This is
done intentionally, and it makes perfect sense. But it doesn't help the
fact that Windows will not look at *any* other drive than A:.

I have a Flash Drive that mimics part of its space as a USB Floppy
that *does* map to drive A: or B:. Unfortunately it doesn't work very
well with most systems.

So, that leaves USB interfaced FDDs, or, as already suggested, creating
an alternative boot disk with the drivers included.

Of course this is all only just for WinXP (ie. that Windows release
from 8 years ago), or Server 2003 from 7 years ago..

Vista & Win7/Server 2008 either release have methods to read in
RAID/HBA drivers off flash or USB devices during installation while
booted into WinPE. And its easy to make a new WinPE boot environment
with said drivers if needed.

 

[Joerg]

I have stashed away 3-1/2" disks and also 5-1/4" floppies. In production
the lifetime of machines is often many decades and there are numerous
machines that will not be re-programmable via any other means.


Until recently we paid an extra tax via the phone bill to finance the
Spanish-American war which AFAIK ended in 1898 ...

Just a thought.
How many kids 15 or under would know what a rotary dial is, or ever used
one?

Then, how many kids 15 or under, have ever written, or read a file
to/from a 3.5" floppy?.

Not a lot I would think.
I can't remember when I last used a floppy, must be many years. Would
have been to prop up a short leg on a table.

Footnote **
I laugh when the little ones of today, have to look at the back of your
camera, after you take a picture. What did we do before they put the
screen there?

We learned how to take good photographs, in my case I took classes.
Because the cost of a 24 or 36 roll of 35mm film (or 12 exposures in the
6cm by 6cm days) was rather substantial and you could not waste any of
it. So we spent some time getting the lighting right, making sure
everything else was just right, and so on. Often there was no chance to
re-take a shot because you would not know until several days later
whether the result was ok or not.

 

[SG1]

No idea about Vista, but have installed Win7 several times so far, and
yes, your only option is F6 to look at drive A:.


Indeed. I've never had much luck with the longevity of 3.5" disks.
They simply do not last. And, owning to the fact we don't use them too
often, (we get boxs with newfanged interfaces when we're least expecting
it) we grab the first disk that's been kicking around in cabinet here.
After we go through several bad ones, we throw them out to find there
are none left.

As I said, we can create a custom boot disk, this is very doable, but
we could have that box up and running in several minutes verses lots more.

Contrary to popular belief we DO have more important things to do than
screw around with installs that don't like to play with the other
children.

I have some disks from 1993 that are still readable. I have some from later
that are gibberish, reformat did not help them come back to life. Guess it
depends on the manufacturer.

 

[Joerg]

WOW, still 8.5 million sales in 2009 from one company alone! So far from
dead then.

Let's assume a retail price of 50c a pop. And that's a lot because that
is what I paid in the early 90's for top quality disks. This would be
$4.25 million in gross revenue. In the world of big corporations that
generates a long-stretched yawn, followed by the drop of the axe.

 

[Joerg]

Actually, rumour has it, this is not the case in the two latest
revisions of their OS. I say rumour as I have not ever tried
installing one of these latest creations -- the one Windows Vista
machine I used had it preloaded, and I've never touched Windows 7.

But yes, you make a valid point ... and I shall make a note to stock
up on 3.5" floppy disks while they're easily available, as some of the
ones I have at home are slowly decaying with age.

Interesting. What's decaying about them? I've got Fuji MF2HD from the
90's and they still work fine.

 

[F Murtz]

Sony to discontinue 3.5 inch floppy disk
April 24, 11:34 PMJapan Headlines ExaminerJoshua Williams

Sony announced on April 23rd that they will be discontinuing sales of
the classic 3.5 inch floppy disk in Japan in 2011. The news marks a
major end to a nearly three decade history of the disk type that the
company helped to pioneer.

According to Sony, they introduced the 3.5 inch floppy disk size to the
world in 1981, and began sales within Japan in 1983. Sony had shipped
approximately 47 million disks within the country at its peak around the
year 2000, but that number had fallen to around 8.5 million by 2009,
Sankei News reported.

No wonder the sales have fallen, I have not seen any for sale for a year
or so in any of the big chains or even computer markets.

 

[atec7 7]

No wonder the sales have fallen, I have not seen any for sale for a year
or so in any of the big chains or even computer markets.

They are still around but the usb stick far out sells them

 

[Magnum]

They are still around but the usb stick far out sells them

Hardly surprising because Sneakernet with a floppy = 1.4Mb.

Sneakernet with a USB stick = several Gb.