this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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abandonware empires (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

My friend's dad has a CNC machine that requires floppy disks to load the design patterns. He's worried that a mechanical failure of the disk drive will eventually be the end of it, rather than the machine itself being obsolete. It's been going strong for almost 40 years now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Look for usb floppy emulators, you can have the floppy images in a usb flash drive. No moving parts or need to find expensive floppies.

[–] Couldbealeotard 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If this thing relies on floppy, I don't imagine it would be USB compatible

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's reverse: you get a board that has a floppy interface on one side and a USB socket on the other. You plug in a USB drive and the board uses a file on the drive as the floppy disk, pretending to be a floppy Drive connected to the interface. It's a little less convenient because you have to deal with disk images but it works without moving parts.

[–] Couldbealeotard 2 points 1 year ago

I see, like those car radio cassette to aux cable modules

[–] pyt0xic 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It might be possible to buy an old floppy drive off ebay and switch out the broken one of that happens, as long as there are no proprietary connectors and such...

[–] ASeriesOfPoorChoices 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Compaq would like a word.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ah yes, Compaq, the company that used non standard power supplies but with the standard wire coloring and connectors. I had several customers blow up their motherboards after buying standard replacement power supplies.

[–] grayman 4 points 1 year ago

GoTEK SFR1M44-U100 3.5 Inch 1.44MB USB SSD Floppy Drive Emulator Black https://a.co/d/hJwq736

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Almost 40 years, so it's been running since the 80s? Damn, older than Windows.