When I bought my most recent computer (just over a year ago), WoC said they didn't install a floppy drive as standard any more, but offered to put one in for an extra £4. I decided it wasn't worth it, and haven't regretted the decision yet.
I only use floppy drives now on my BBC Micro, which, in turn, I only use for its Hybrid Music System, either for listening to the music (which I'd have sampled digitally and turned into a CD by now if not for this problem (http://lethargic-man.livejournal.com/86714.html?thread=371898#t371898), or for using my Music 4000 keyboard, which is the only thing stopping me forgetting altogether how to play the piano or read sheet music).
The household FreeBSD server is a Compaq AP400 Professional Workstation, i.e. a workstation built with server components (ECC RAM and all). It doesn't boot from CD, so reinstallation requires finding a floppy and installing bootables on it.
I have a stack of games here, too. I just never play them.
It's funny. I used to play X*L*C*R (http://www.michael-grant.me.uk/xlcr.html) (a game I wrote) lots when I first got my Master (it was Heriot-Watt University's last eight-bit machine, and I intercepted it on the way to the skip in 1998), and when I first got a decent computer of my own in 2000, I had to deinstall the Tetris which came built into Emacs, as I otherwise just wasted far too much time playing it; but now I feel no compulsion to play games at all. The operating system I'm currently using (Fedora 8 Linux) comes with a bunch of simple games, but I've never played them even once.
Given the same decision a year or two earlier I thought "fuck it, it's only 4 quid". Since then I think I *have* used it a couple of times, as I have some very old PC games on floppy still. Mostly I just boggle at the fact it always tries to read the floppy drive when shutting down, and I've no idea why!
Why the "only" in "I only have computers that don't even have a space for a floppy disk drive"? I do have some computers with no space for a floppy drive, but also have others that have either space or drive.
I have floppy drives with capacities all the way down to 80KBytes.
D'oh! Only just noticed the "only" in the "I only have computers..." option. Well, I do have some computers with no space for a floppy drive, just as I have some with spaces and some with drives.
I also have a piano with a floppy drive, which is why I occasionally use diskettes for data storage. Very, very rarely I'll use one for work, but thankfully USB flash drives are a lot more accepted in customer environments now than they were five years ago.
I didn't say never for using a floppy, because I have done in the past. Although I've not used a floppy for storing documents in at least a decade, and I don't think I've had to boot a machine from floppy in at least 5 years.
I haven't used a floppy for a while, and when I did it was on a computer that had no floppy drive (the XP CD I had doesn't have SATA drivers built in, and will only look for additional drivers on a floppy). I did have a spare drive, but that computer's power supply didn't have a connector for it. http://www.flickr.com/photos/armb/284977764/
Before that, something to do with resizing partitions on a Windows formatted disk to make room for a Linux install, IIRC (on a computer that had a drive).
I do still have an Amiga in a cupboard, and if I ever do anything with it that might involve floppies (it has a hard drive, but no network card).
HP Beast is old enough to have a floppy drive still. It had some use when I was transferring things from old disks I had lying around, and it occasionally gets used for things like memtest86.
At work none of the Dells have disk drives built in but we have a solitary USB one. We also have a job lot of floppies our software used to fit on, before the Enterprise Bloat occurred... ;)
I have quite a few floppies; I should go through them and take images of them, and discard those that don't work any more (quite possibly the majority by now).
I think I'd count those in the 720/800 and 1440/1600 categories, as they are the same disks more efficiently used rather than actually a different medium in any way.
Last time I used a floppy was IIRC a downloadable image with a linux kernel and just enough userland to resize ext* filesystems. I'm sure an install or live CD would be easier these days.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 11:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:12 pm (UTC)The House contains some 3-400 floppy disks which I "must check out one day to see if there's anything important on them". Hah, yeah, right.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 12:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:11 pm (UTC)3" : an Amstrad CPC 6128
3.5" : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/orlith/ and others
5.25" : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/carenath/
8" : http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~pmaydell/hardware/faranth/
I also have a spare 8" drive in the junk pile.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:18 pm (UTC)It's funny. I used to play X*L*C*R (http://www.michael-grant.me.uk/xlcr.html) (a game I wrote) lots when I first got my Master (it was Heriot-Watt University's last eight-bit machine, and I intercepted it on the way to the skip in 1998), and when I first got a decent computer of my own in 2000, I had to deinstall the Tetris which came built into Emacs, as I otherwise just wasted far too much time playing it; but now I feel no compulsion to play games at all. The operating system I'm currently using (Fedora 8 Linux) comes with a bunch of simple games, but I've never played them even once.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 01:34 pm (UTC)I don't play it much because of the hassles with UK/US TV standards. But it still works :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 02:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 03:16 pm (UTC)I have floppy drives with capacities all the way down to 80KBytes.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 04:37 pm (UTC)I also have a piano with a floppy drive, which is why I occasionally use diskettes for data storage. Very, very rarely I'll use one for work, but thankfully USB flash drives are a lot more accepted in customer environments now than they were five years ago.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 04:48 pm (UTC)And about 2,500 of the damn things that are just taunting me, that I really should image into .ADFs while they're still readable.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-17 08:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 08:52 am (UTC)The Windows FastFind indexing thing (or its successor)
Your antivirus.
Lots of peeps used to switch fastfind off, coz it's crap.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 08:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 09:00 am (UTC)I did have a spare drive, but that computer's power supply didn't have a connector for it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/armb/284977764/
Before that, something to do with resizing partitions on a Windows formatted disk to make room for a Linux install, IIRC (on a computer that had a drive).
I do still have an Amiga in a cupboard, and if I ever do anything with it that might involve floppies (it has a hard drive, but no network card).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-18 04:43 pm (UTC)At work none of the Dells have disk drives built in but we have a solitary USB one. We also have a job lot of floppies our software used to fit on, before the Enterprise Bloat occurred... ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2008-02-19 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 09:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-19 07:40 pm (UTC)