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> I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers and then I have to work through their computer because you can’t even
by h0l0cube 5y ago
> I have to give them a hard copy. They have to scan it and then put it in their computers and then I have to work through their computer because you can’t even email mine or anything.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoSurely someone can write this fellow a program to convert to ASCII and a USB floppy drive to move the files, or better yet, an SD card IDE drive for his old PC.
- h0l0cube 5y agoHe could probably have used a modern PC with internet connectivity too. I'm guessing convenience wasn't the point. (If it's a machine from the 90s, it might not even have USB.)
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoNah the USB drive is on the other end. To read his floppies.
- h0l0cube 5y agoOh right, never contemplated such a thing to exist.. but there it is in Google. I wonder if worries about electronic media becoming unreadable over time are overstated
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoDon't worry about your worries being wrong-worries, because your worries are real-worries. Those USB floppy drives have about a 1 in 3 chance of actually working. There's last I looked only one manufacturer left and no real quality control on them. I bought a $30ish at one point and it simply just doesn't read floppies. Not sure it even showed up in the USB device tree. And that's 3.5". I can't imagine how to solve this for 5 1/4" and 8" floppies. Or tape media from the 70s mainframe days, etc.
- h0l0cube 5y agoYikes, my worries were understated. I suppose there's a bunch of special components that they don't even manufacture anymore. Tbf, $30 is a bit too low. If I was serious about archiving or accessing old documents and wanted a reliable floppy drive, it's something I'd pay ~$300 for.. depending on the value of what was being recovered, someone might even pay $3000 for a specialist to recover it.