Re: Is an optical burner obsolete now days?

Ben Myers wrote:
Daddy wrote:
A 2.88 floppy - that's practically a collectors item.

I won't admit to being old, but I remember feeding punched paper tape into a tape reader.

Daddy

William R. Walsh wrote:
Hi!

Before you get too far with this, I readily admit that "unique" would
be a good way to describe my computing environment.

How many here actually BURN DVDs or CDs now days?

I do, and I do so very often. Many of my optical discs are rewritable,
and as such, they get rewritten very often when I need to use one for
a different purpose. It's hard to beat the price, especially for discs
that you give away.

I also still use diskettes very often. Where I used to make sure that
all my computers had floppy drives, it's come to the point where a few
do not simply because the case makes it impossible or the motherboard
lacks the connector. For them I keep a USB floppy drive handy,
although it does not come out all that often.

Perhaps the most used medium of exchange that I have between computers
is the network that links them. I don't have any computers that are
not members of the network in some capacity. I have a couple of
servers used for various things and one network attached storage
device.

Of course, having multiple generations of computer technology (386 and
up PCs, 68K, PPC and Intel Macintoshes, RS/6000, Linux) in operation
means that one medium won't do it for data transfer between systems.
The lowly 3.5" high density floppy diskette probably comes the closest
of anything to being a common denominator across all of these systems.
(I have a very few systems with 2.88MB floppy drives. These are
*sweet* when I'm using one and find something that won't fit on a 1.44
diskette by just a little bit.)

I'm starting to think that as cheap as flash memory and
hard drives are getting that having a "burner" is a
waste of money.

I have yet to prepare a bootable USB key. The systems I have that can
even boot from a USB device all have floppy or optical drives. This
may change with my recent acquisition of a netbook.

I have more external hard drive enclosures than I can shake a stick
at, but those aren't set up to be bootable either. I use them
primarily when I go offsite to work on a customer's computer and find
that I need a safe place to stash their data while I work on another
problem or perform an upgrade that would require moving their data
temporarily out of the picture.

William

Want to buy a couple of 2.88MB floppy drives pulled from DEC systems? I still have a couple.

Want to buy a 10-pack or even a carton of 100 2.88MB floppy diskettes, factory sealed?

Back in the prehistoric DOS days, there was also a funky utility that allowed you to format a regular 1.44MB floppy to have around 1.6MB, IIRC. Used it a few times.

Long ago (when else?), I wrote software to process paper tape input. What a pain in the ass paper tape was, piling up on the floor, tearing and tangling... Ben Myers

"...a funky utility that allowed you to format a regular 1.44MB floppy to have around 1.6MB..."

As I recall, it incorporated a portion of the diskette surface that was normally unused. But there were compatibility issues that prevented it from becoming widespread.

Daddy
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is an optical burner obsolete now days?
    ... I won't admit to being old, but I remember feeding punched paper tape into a tape reader. ... For them I keep a USB floppy drive handy, ... Perhaps the most used medium of exchange that I have between computers ... (I have a very few systems with 2.88MB floppy drives. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Is an optical burner obsolete now days?
    ... I won't admit to being old, but I remember feeding punched paper tape into a tape reader. ... For them I keep a USB floppy drive handy, ... Perhaps the most used medium of exchange that I have between computers ... (I have a very few systems with 2.88MB floppy drives. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Is an optical burner obsolete now days?
    ... Perhaps the most used medium of exchange that I have between computers ... The lowly 3.5" high density floppy diskette probably comes the closest ... (I have a very few systems with 2.88MB floppy drives. ... I wrote software to process paper tape input. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Is an optical burner obsolete now days?
    ... A 2.88 floppy - that's practically a collectors item. ... I won't admit to being old, but I remember feeding punched paper tape into a tape reader. ... Perhaps the most used medium of exchange that I have between computers ... (I have a very few systems with 2.88MB floppy drives. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: cannot write to cd says it is full or write protected or damaged
    ... Open a document on a floppy ... Word regularly trashes documents on floppy drives! ... I know that for some with shared computers ... Also how would u write protect a cd?? ...
    (microsoft.public.word.docmanagement)