Technology

59288 readers

4045 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

317

5.25-inch floppy disks expected to help run San Francisco trains until 2030 (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world

52 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Fluke@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

New disks?

They haven't made floppies for years now, iirc.

[–] realbadat@programming.dev 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can grab a 10 pack of DS, HD 5.25" on Amazon for $30 apparently

[–] frezik@midwest.social 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Floppies got worse over time. Stuff that was commercially duplicated was usually high quality, and those are still OK for the most part. The consumer-level blank disks, though? By the late 90s, those were hot garbage. You'd buy a 10 pack and at least 3 of them had to be thrown out. We're burning through the old stock from that time, and with degradation over time, it's now more like 6 out of 10 being thrown out. It's not like the "good" ones in the box are going to last, either.

[–] realbadat@programming.dev 3 points 7 months ago

I don't expect them to, just noting there are still new ones out there.

And while something new is being developed/tested, having a metric fuck ton of backup floppies isn't the worst idea.