Comments on: Who has a floppy drive?

By: Thomas Nikolajsen

Thomas Nikolajsen — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 10:00:30 +0000

Hey, very interesting question!
We will see, I will report back after my tests.
Other are welcome to do same.

Some people has some experience, it indicates that rust isn’t a problem after 15 years, see below.
But I’m closer to 30 years I think, we will see.

– How long will floppy disks maintain data integrity?
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/4781

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 06:39:14 +0000

>> I have hundreds of floppies, including amiga formatted ;)

But how many of those are still readable vs. turning back into rust and delaminating?

By: Thomas Nikolajsen

Thomas Nikolajsen — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 21:30:48 +0000

I have hundreds of floppies, including amiga formatted ;)
You guys don’t pile up your old things?

But I’m not sure I have a floppy drive on a 64-bit x86 system; those days was 32-bit, or 16-bit systems (or 8-bit, but this wasn’t x86, but Z80 or 6502 systems)
Ohh, my first 64-bit x86 system (athlon 64) does have a floppy, no need to fiddle HW. I will try it with current dragonfly in the Christmas days, if not before.

Nice that floppy support is resurrected.. Thanks zrj, nice with some nostalgia ;)

By: guest

guest — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 17:26:29 +0000

A floppy drive is easy to find, a floppy disk aka a diskette, isn’t.