Yeah, we need prison reform.
US prisons are a business instead of a federal service. Not saying that government would do a better job but if its federal at least the basic policies can be fixed nationwide vs state by state.
I can’t imagine what computers they’re using that still have floppy drives. How do they even get tech support for them?
There are USB and sata floppy drives. As for tech support? If it doesn’t work then warranty or replace, there isn’t much else you do with drives beyond that for modern drives either (unless I’ve missed something by not paying attention for years). I may be wrong on the last point, think some hard drives may be repairable but don’t think it was common for consumer level stuff. The worst case is probably a stuck disk that loses it’s protector then gets replaced, both the drive and the disk when copied over.
think some hard drives may be repairable
no not at all and all storage modules regardless of the medium will eventually lose the ability to read/write data until the total integrity of the drive is compromised resulting in total storage module failure
Oh I was thinking more about bad springs and arms than the platters themselves for that part (okay I’m not sure why or if I saw but I believe the old ones used springs in some function maybe the arms so quite old memory at this point don’t quote me), the moveable stuff that can wear out easier. A more specialized repair if possible, not the platters themselves though without losing the data.
If I remember right, I think what you are recalling are old skool hard drives where you had to park the heads! Some of them had inserts and things because there were indeed springs. I could be out to lunch but it feels like that’s what you’re remembering
Is that not all old ‘hard drives’ like before SSD ones or did I misrecall something? Like anything with a platter. Anything newer would be solid state right? Maybe I was more commercial drives, did have that in my background but it’s been a decade now heh.
It’s hard to say because I’m not sure of your age or familiarity with tech… But the generation of platter hard drives circa 80-90s had to have the heads “parked” for transport or shut down, etc. there was the DOS command PARK and some had physical inserts.
Technology improved and the read heads became more stable and less prone to error as the 90s got underway, and the need to park hard drive heads became a relic of the past.
This is all way before SSD came into the picture. It’s hard to imagine there was a time where if you did not tell the hard drive read heads to move away from the platters, they would physically touch it and crash the drive. Pretty nuts when you think about it!
They make USB peripheral floppy drives now for like $15. Its like the shittiest thumb drive ever.
I got for for a 486SX project! They’re pretty sweet. push buttons on the front to switch between 99 virtual floppies. I had forgotten just how much you can’t do on 3.1, 95 and 98 without a standard floppy drive available.
Fun fact: As of El Capitan from 10-ish years ago, Macs can no longer read floppies. They removed drivers from the kernel so some people upgraded and couldn’t read their disks anymore.
Wait, do the USB diskette drives not present as standard Mass Storage block devices??
I’m afraid that it’s been years so I don’t remember the details.
I bet the Linux kernel still supports them
I remember having to juggle something like 6 floppy disks just to load Dune II on our family’s old, hand-me-down Amiga 2000 back in the early-to-mid 90s. How is this still a fucking things 30+ years later?!
For profit prisons. Bet they sell floppies for like 10 times what they should cost, which honestly should be free since it’s essentially trash nowadays.
Well unless you’re me and you have this idea for a giant wall art piece of old school pixelated graphics made from colored floppies connected together. Yes I’m a nerd. But if you have any old floppies you want rid of hit me up.
Surely it’d be cheaper for them to switch to a more common media like cheap, crappy flash drives than sourcing out floppy drives?
Good times, using pkzip to install Doom II from like 10 floppies I got from my friend. And then there’d be an error on disk 7 randomly, so you’d have to start over and hope nothing fucked up for no reason.
Wow I thought they’d upgrade to zip disks by now
CD-RW would be better.
I know the flash drive ban is about being able to hide files or have a bootable alternative OS.
But floppy disks have a that metal slide cover that could easily be made into a shiv. Unless they can only have the kind with plastic slides.
You can’t boot Linux from 20 floppy disks?
I mean… Yeah, you technically can. But it won’t be a particularly modern or useful OS.
They should be GRATEFUL they get floppies. Until a few years ago all you got was a Turkey feather and some coal-black.
In 2025?
At least give them a zip or jazz drive!
Hey, I had to load software off of cassette tapes on my apple ii…
Damn, what were you in for?
8-bit crimes
Adolescence probably. It’s a lifelong sentence for some people.
Do we really want prison officials driving around looking for more floppy disks and a drive from 1985?
Floppy disks were still in use well into the 2000s. They were required to install XP if you needed raid drivers.
Lol they don’t even have 2.88MB floppies!
Time to dust off PAR2. At least you’d be able to get a 20MB file after compression.
It feels like it been 15+ years since I’ve touched PAR.
Is it still a thing for newsgroup binaries?
