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Platystemon posted:3½″ floppy quality went to poo poo in the twilight years. I wonder how much of it was "manufacturing QC went down the drain" rather than "everything being sold today is new old stock that has been collecting dust in a warehouse for 10+ years." I used to work for FujiFilm, who used 3.5" floppies for backup data, and any time the software driving the printer was updated or reloaded we had to make a fresh set of backups. From about 2007 until I left in 2012 it wasn't uncommon to have a failure rate in the high 60% pulling from a "new" box of floppies.
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Nov 26, 2014 19:17
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Bonzo posted:Spent many, many rainy afternoons with this right here. Late to the party but I played the gently caress outta this thing
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Nov 26, 2014 19:30
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Geoj posted:I wonder how much of it was "manufacturing QC went down the drain" rather than "everything being sold today is new old stock that has been collecting dust in a warehouse for 10+ years." I used to work for FujiFilm, who used 3.5" floppies for backup data, and any time the software driving the printer was updated or reloaded we had to make a fresh set of backups. From about 2007 until I left in 2012 it wasn't uncommon to have a failure rate in the high 60% pulling from a "new" box of floppies. Seriously? A real, actual corporation like FujiFilm was using floppies for backups in 2012? Is that common?
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Nov 26, 2014 19:51
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MondayHotDog posted:Seriously? A real, actual corporation like FujiFilm was using floppies for backups in 2012? Is that common? This was on equipment that was developed in 1999-2000, was new/installed in 2003-4 and has since reached its end of life. I remember hearing rumblings just before I left that they were looking into patching software that would allow using a thumb drive for backups because finding floppies - much less working ones - was becoming a major challenge. Geoj has a new favorite as of 20:06 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 19:53
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MondayHotDog posted:Seriously? A real, actual corporation like FujiFilm was using floppies for backups in 2012? Is that common? Most airlines still use floppy disks to update their navigation software. An industry crisis was averted when electronic dataloading was made popular (computer basically emulates the floppy loader). Some AIrbus aircraft still have floppy drives in the cockpit.
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Nov 26, 2014 19:57
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MondayHotDog posted:Seriously? A real, actual corporation like FujiFilm was using floppies for backups in 2012? Is that common? Startlingly so. There are lots of devices out there that work just fine for that they do and can only export information to a floppy. It seemed like a great idea in the 90s when nobody thought they would ever become obsolete. And it isn't really feasible to just replace the machine because they are six or seven dollar figure piece of equipment that works fine otherwise.
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Nov 26, 2014 20:07
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Don't a lot of synthesizers and music equipment only export to floppies still?
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Nov 26, 2014 20:12
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I had to buy floppies a year or so ago and ended up going to about 5 stores before I found a single box of them. Had to spend way too much for 25 of them when I only needed one. The girl at the register was like "We still sell these?" I was pretty amazed the drive still worked after sitting in my case disconnected for about 10 years.
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Nov 26, 2014 20:17
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Elliotw2 posted:Don't a lot of synthesizers and music equipment only export to floppies still? Yeah - but luckily some folks have worked on a replacement. Storing the presets (so just slider a = position 5, slider b = position 6 etc. - not the actual sound) is something you can do on the computer easily so you don't need to touch a floppy drive unless you want to read your old stuff, but samples are generally another matter because it's a total pain to transfer them via MIDI and there's usually no other way to get them in there easily. Of course, you're screwed when a manufacturer decides "hey let's use some poo poo obscure format like QuickDisk or a non-standard compliant floppy drive". SCSI interfaces for a CF card are also pretty popular, and old samplers usually can't deal with sizes over 4 GB or so anyway.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:25
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Elliotw2 posted:Don't a lot of synthesizers and music equipment only export to floppies still? You'll run into a lot of not-that-old digital oscilloscopes that use floppies. The newest ones have an Ethernet port and you can just point a web browser at the scope, but my first year at college (2005-2006) we still had to use floppies.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:38
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There's not as much medical equipment out there now still exporting to floppies, but there's some. Especially a lot of things like EKG machines, stress test computers, and what not. Back when I was a biomedical technician (just a couple years ago), it was a nightmare when I had to do things like update/reload firmware on those things, because the floppy was the only way to get it onto the machine. We had to keep a couple old legacy computers around with floppies and serial ports running XP just for reasons like that. Speaking of serial ports, plenty of medical equipment, even new stuff, still uses them for exporting logs, updating firmware and software, etc...Thankfully, most of them will work with a USB-to-serial adapter, at least.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:40
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It's amazing how slow big business is to update their poo poo, though I suppose it's not surprising. I started working for a Fortune 500 construction company after college in 2006, and our cost management system was still in DOS. Everyone was surprised that 21-year-old me knew what it was.
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Nov 26, 2014 22:28
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Bobby Digital posted:It's amazing how slow big business is to update their poo poo, though I suppose it's not surprising. Like someone earlier said, replacing otherwise functioning six or seven figure systems, and getting all of the required certifications and operating licences, can be a huge pain in the rear end for systems-critical industries like medicare, nuclear or aerospace. Stuff is used until their end-of-life-cycle and replaced along the other infrastructure when the entire plant/vehicle/system is upgraded or scrapped. As a work assignment, I had to find a motherboard and a case able to house a full-sized ISA-card for reading sensor data, and install DOS 5 and the certified program from 3½ inch floppies, in 2007. Without that particular subsystem, the other options were 2M+ replacement hardware or complete shutdown.
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Nov 26, 2014 23:06
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Geoj posted:I don't think this will happen until laptops themselves are rendered obsolete. They're far too useful in corporate/office settings to go away, and I'm sure they're a highly profitable accessory for OEMs. Before I had an office job I didn't think they were worth having but when you routinely connect your laptop at the same place every day they're indispensable. It's getting very hard to find an actual dock, though - I think the only ones Dell had last time I checked was a few specific latitudes. The rest have USB3 docks, and those are ... not quite the same.
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Nov 26, 2014 23:28
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many people posted:docks I bought a Henge dock for my MBP, and it sucks. After dicking with it for a week, I started wondering why literally everything wasn't already wireless.
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Nov 26, 2014 23:38
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I work with big rear end printing presses (~4 million pages an hour), and things like the oven still run on win98. These things needs to 'just work', and arranging spare parts for the industrial computers or paying a greybeard to fix them is much cheaper then doing big replacements. Still, that can bite you in the rear end. One time, the oven was getting serviced by the electrician and after fixing his thing, he turned it off and on a couple of times to test his work. Unknown to him, the win98 computer running a equally ancient Oracle DB didn't like being turned off and on halfway through the startup sequence 5 or 6 times. Took half a day sorting that out.
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Nov 26, 2014 23:40
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Maimgara posted:I work with big rear end printing presses (~4 million pages an hour), and things like the oven still run on win98. These things needs to 'just work', and arranging spare parts for the industrial computers or paying a greybeard to fix them is much cheaper then doing big replacements. Still, that can bite you in the rear end. One time, the oven was getting serviced by the electrician and after fixing his thing, he turned it off and on a couple of times to test his work. Unknown to him, the win98 computer running a equally ancient Oracle DB didn't like being turned off and on halfway through the startup sequence 5 or 6 times. Took half a day sorting that out.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:26
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Pham Nuwen posted:You'll run into a lot of not-that-old digital oscilloscopes that use floppies. The newest ones have an Ethernet port and you can just point a web browser at the scope, but my first year at college (2005-2006) we still had to use floppies. Oh man, I remember those. You can use a floppy disk or an extremely flaky serial connection with a proprietary program that barely works!
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Nov 27, 2014 03:02
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Pham Nuwen posted:Your memory is going, old man, they were 8" floppies. I've got a box still in the closet from when I had the PDP-11.  Someday I will find a way to read you again, Atari 5200-vs.-ColecoVision flame wars and VT100 escape-sequence movies.
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Nov 27, 2014 05:02
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Pham Nuwen posted:You'll run into a lot of not-that-old digital oscilloscopes that use floppies. The newest ones have an Ethernet port and you can just point a web browser at the scope, but my first year at college (2005-2006) we still had to use floppies. Oh, that reminds me of...  HP-IB/GPIB/IEEE-488 Designed in the 1960s, and it's a fair bet that almost every chip in your smartphone was tested on equipment that is controlled via this interface.
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Nov 27, 2014 07:07
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Computer viking posted:It's getting very hard to find an actual dock, though - I think the only ones Dell had last time I checked was a few specific latitudes. The rest have USB3 docks, and those are ... not quite the same. I work in an office that exclusively uses HP hardware and drat near every desk has a laptop dock, including people using the current generation of ultrabooks. YMMV based on which OEM you buy from apparently...
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Nov 27, 2014 07:12
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Elliotw2 posted:Don't a lot of synthesizers and music equipment only export to floppies still? Huge, incredibly expensive SSL recording consoles still use a floppy-based memory system for the computer and automation programming. Not the ones that are produced these days, mind you... But any of the famous G and E series and the like have them. strangemusic has a new favorite as of 09:17 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 09:13
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Geoj posted:I work in an office that exclusively uses HP hardware and drat near every desk has a laptop dock, including people using the current generation of ultrabooks. YMMV based on which OEM you buy from apparently... Thinkpads and other business-level notebooks still have docks. However, it wouldn't be the first time when a useful technology suddenly is "obsoleted" because a fashionable replacement is considered "good enough", though I'm not too concerned for now. Lincoln posted:I bought a Henge dock for my MBP, and it sucks. After dicking with it for a week, I started wondering why literally everything wasn't already wireless. Until we can also get wireless power sufficient for a laptop, it's just much more convenient to stick it in a dock and have everything instantly work without having to bother withe the wireless bullshit.
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Nov 27, 2014 10:51
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One of my friends works at a programming company and they have a division that still puts things on to punch cards because that is what some of their clients still require.
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Nov 27, 2014 12:01
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strangemusic posted:Huge, incredibly expensive SSL recording consoles still use a floppy-based memory system for the computer and automation programming. Not the ones that are produced these days, mind you... But any of the famous G and E series and the like have them. I don't think SSL even makes huge consoles anymore. I think they stopped at the J series. Not that anyone can blame them.
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Nov 27, 2014 12:06
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The thinkpad x1c isn't quite a core series thinkpad (though mine came with the business level warranty by default). Still, it's probably a harbinger of things to come: It's powerful enough for most uses, weighs ca nothing, has a larger screen than the X2xx series, and you can stuff it in a shoulder bag. Even for the hardcore business users that has a certain allure... but the tradeoff is that if you want LAN or a dock, it's USB or nothing. Sure, the T440s and the like will keep selling to companies that really need them, but I can very easily see a future where dock connector are as common as SCSI scanners. (And talking about lenovo, it annoys me that a decent T440 s or p is almost twice the price of a decent macbook retina here. I have a feeling their prices are meant to be negotiated down by corporate purchasing departments.)
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Nov 27, 2014 12:56
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Computer viking posted:(And talking about lenovo, it annoys me that a decent T440 s or p is almost twice the price of a decent macbook retina here. I have a feeling their prices are meant to be negotiated down by corporate purchasing departments.) I have a straight no questions asked 10% off on any Lenovo laptop for private use because of a rebate system through my workplace. They really don't expect anyone to pay full price.
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Nov 27, 2014 15:08
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Computer viking posted:
I was working with a young guy recently and he pronounced this as "ess-see-ess-eye" and it took me a minute to clock what he was going on about
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Nov 27, 2014 15:33
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Mousepractice posted:I was working with a young guy recently and he pronounced this as "ess-see-ess-eye" and it took me a minute to clock what he was going on about It took a few years before I heard anyone pronounce it - I fear I did the same for a while.(Well, "ess-seh-ess-ee" - this isn't an English - speaking country.)
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Nov 27, 2014 15:42
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Computer viking posted:It took a few years before I heard anyone pronounce it - I fear I did the same for a while.(Well, "ess-seh-ess-ee" - this isn't an English - speaking country.) I knew someone who pronounced it as "sexy". We just thought he was weird.
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Nov 27, 2014 16:00
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How the hell do you pronounce that, if not just saying the letters?
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Nov 27, 2014 16:25
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"Scuzzy."
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Nov 27, 2014 16:25
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I always considered that one of the "deeper" hidden jokes in ReBoot that Hexadecimal's pet was named Scuzzy.
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Nov 27, 2014 16:45
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The Ape of Naples posted:I don't think SSL even makes huge consoles anymore. I think they stopped at the J series. Not that anyone can blame them. I'm pretty sure you could, in theory, order a Duality with big fat (48 and up) channels even today. Though I don't know who would, unless they were absolutely Scrooge McDuck wealthy. I guess the AWS is more of their focus now... And that's about as far from a floppy based computer controller as you can get! strangemusic has a new favorite as of 17:24 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 17:19
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KozmoNaut posted:I have a straight no questions asked 10% off on any Lenovo laptop for private use because of a rebate system through my workplace. They really don't expect anyone to pay full price. I guess LogBuy? Hell, that even works for ex-employees.
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Nov 27, 2014 19:57
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Kidney Stone posted:I guess LogBuy? Hell, that even works for ex-employees. Exactly. For anything where you don't actually need to show the card itself, it'll basically work forever as long as you know the rebate code. For one store, it's currently "logbuy14". No points for guessing next year's code.
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Nov 27, 2014 21:39
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Did someone say obsolete computer jokes!? I think I clipped it out of an Amiga magazine back in the day.
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Nov 27, 2014 22:20
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Exit Strategy posted:I knew someone who pronounced it as "sexy". We just thought he was weird.
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Nov 27, 2014 22:43
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Desert Bus posted:One of my friends works at a programming company and they have a division that still puts things on to punch cards because that is what some of their clients still require. It's kind of funny to think that even with all the methods of data storage invented in the last 40 years or so, paper is still the only thing that we know for sure will still be here hundreds of years from now and retain it's data. Assuming it's stored correctly of course. As far as I remember, the figures (on average) are something like this: Magnetic media - 10 to 20 years Factory pressed CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray - 30 to 50 years Archival quality CDRs/DVD-Rs/Recordable Blu-Ray - 100 years SSDs and other flash based media - 3 to 6 months unpowered, longer based on write cycle, max probably 10 years Paper - stored in a constant temperature/humidity environment - indefinite I keep reading stories from time to time about newly researched mediums that could last millennia, but as far as I know nothing has made it to market yet even in the high end. There may be some really esoteric stuff in use by the NSA or some such, but I haven't read baout it yet. If anyone has any inside knowledge of this I'd love to hear about it.
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Nov 27, 2014 23:08
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About the only things better than paper is carving it into rocks
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