A couple of members have mentioned recently about having floppy drives. I'm guess they mean the 3.5" drives. I've not heard anything about the 5.25" or 8" drives in YEARS!
However, you might want to look at this article and stock up. Yes, there are other manufacturers of the floppies but if a major one like this stops then the others will probably be following behind and eventually the drives themselves will be gone!
FYI - I found the article from a post link on another board.
goodgotd
Member
unless literally forced to, I'll not use anything less than a cd-r, and that only for short-term use.
I have a few 3.5" drives and a thousand or so used floppies (and a couple boxes of new ones) for emergency use- probably a dozen 5.25" drives of each type- 360k and 1.2 meg, even though all the 5.25" floppies got backed up to 3.5", then to cd-r and then dvd-r.
I also have 3 8" floppy drives and a couple boxes of new disks for 'em.
I'm looking for a way to make a thumb drive look like a floppy for the idiotic authors that insist on having a boot floppy to start recovery tools, though most of the time I can fake them out by choosing the right type of emulation on a bootable cd/dvd.
Whiterabbit-uk
Games Guru
The above posts just go to show, even if manufacturers stop making floppy drives many computer enthusiasts will always have some spares lying around. I', sure even when present systems have been superceeded by something new we will still have a couple of the things hiding in a corner. I too have spares which I've been loath to part with for many years even though I no longer use them. Most of my spares such as old graphics cards,MoBo's, cpu's, memory, psu's, HDD's and sound cards tend to get thrown out after a few years simply because they are no longer compatible with newer systems. all my AGP cards have now ben thrown out (apart from a NVidia 7600 GX 128Mb card which I reckon someone could still use if they aren't into the latest games (it's only got shader model 2 whereas most recent big bucks games require shader model 3.0)
Several years ago I tried to set up a hardware giveaway/exchange on the site I used to help run, but over the year it was up only a coule of entries were added to the database.
I still think there's a market out there for older components, but where to find that market is a problem. In the mean time I'll continue to recycle my older components to the bin except of course my dear old floppy's lol.
I believe a lot of Machine Embroidery sewing machines still use the 3.5" floppies to enter the patterns into the machine. I don't have such a machine so I'm not positive. That indicates a wider "side market" besides "pure" computers.
Those machines are expensive and I can see the users not wanting to buy a new one just to get a different entry method. Many are far more expensive than PCs.
Suze
Member
To Whiterabbit-uk: There is a website, http://freecycle.org, that is very popular in the U.S. and allows anyone to join a local 'chapter' (or two) at no charge. Its only purpose is for members to post 'WANTED' or 'OFFERED' items to the rest of its members, which helps to minimize dumping unwanted stuff into landfill [one man's garbage is another man's treasure!].
I checked and there's a link for the UK: http://uk.freecycle.org/, which has additional links of interest. Maybe you could post your older components (except, of course, those floppies) on it . . .
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