Obsolete media

[ewx]

(A search for a particular CD turned into a general clearing-out operation. I have a 2in thick stack of coasters, too, now.)

Comments

[reddragdiva]

I have to reinstall FreeBSD on the house server at some stage. (5.3rc1 to 7.0.) I'm going to need to find two, or is it three? floppies to boot from, 'cos the BIOS is too thick to manage CD or USB boot.

[(Anonymous)]

FX: peeks into the cupboard where hardware goes to die.

Say, how many thousand floppies did you say you needed? Do you need some more spare boxes of similar vintage?

[pndc.livejournal.com]

(Umm, thanks LJ for losing my cooking and posting that anonymously.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I don't think anything I've got now is old enough to not be able to boot from CD. I kept a couple of floppies to be historical artifacts (I've had a 5.25" around for years that I never even used).

Someone mentioned recently that the Linux kernel no longer supports booting directly from a floppy (presumably you can still put LILO or Grub on a floppy with a kernel). That was one of the things informing my clearout, actually. (Err, I don't have a reference for this and I'd be academically interested in finding one...)

[reddragdiva]

This is a Compaq AP400 (previously my desktop, now the household server) whose last BIOS dates from 2001. So I'd call it stupid on Compaq's part.