floppy support

[Nils Philippsen]

On Tue, 2011-08-30 at 08:40 +0200, drago01 wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 8:36 AM, Felix Miata <mrmazda at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On 2011/08/30 15:06 (GMT+1000) Chris Jones composed:
> >
> >> I can't see any reason for floppies these days considering their extreme
> >> price per data unit as opposed to usb memory.
> >
> > For some people the price of floppies is a sunk cost, or was never a cost at
> > all (e.g. me, who has over a hundred empty ones acquired 5, 10 or 20 years
> > ago, some at 0 price).
> >
> > Unlike USB chips in most budgets, each floppy is cheap enough to be
> > disposable after one use or dedicated to one small file.
> >
> > Floppies have enough room on them to write down something legible about their
> > content (e.g. DOS boot with FDISK; Memtest86+ v.whatever; BIOS flash for xyz
> > brand AMI BIOS; etc.) which won't interfere with insertion or removal from
> > its reader.
> >
> > Floppies are large enough to be much less likely than a USB stick to get lost
> > between couch cushions or fit through a pocket hole.
> >
> > Not everyone uses hardware with installed and functional OM, bootable USB or PXE.
> >
> > A rude installer might unset a bootable flag or fail to install boot code in
> > the MBR of the only available internal storage, leaving the primary boot
> > device unbootable, and a floppy the only available device to boot from
> > without opening up the machine, if opening up is even any option at all.
> 
> CD/DVD ?

"Write Once Read Many"? Wait... "Write Once Read Once" in this case. Not
cheap enough for that.

Nils
-- 
Nils Philippsen      "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase 
Red Hat               a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty
nils at redhat.com       nor Safety."  --  Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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