[HN Gopher] Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing
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Floppy Disk / Diskettes // retrocmp / retro computing
Author : rbanffy
Score : 49 points
Date : 2025-10-28 12:49 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (retrocmp.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (retrocmp.de)
| jmclnx wrote:
| One thing I really miss with flash drives, a write protect
| switch.
|
| Yes, I can mount 'ro', but many (all?) Linux Desktops mount the
| drive write through its GUI. I have aliases for mounting and
| never used the pointy-clicky mount in DEs.
|
| FWIW, I am usually in fvwm or cwm, depending on screen size, so I
| mount 'ro' when I want to. But a hw switch on flash drives would
| have been nice :)
| torgoguys wrote:
| Using an SD card (or micro SD in an adapter) connected to a USB
| reader might meet your needs. You can then use the SD write
| protect switch.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I thing I learned only recently is that the write protect
| switch on the SD card is not an electrical switch connected
| to anything in the SD card itself: it just hits a lever in
| the SD socket that opens a contact closure and it's up to the
| system (hardware and software both) to bother to look at it.
| So on many systems the write protect switch doesn't even
| work.
| c22 wrote:
| You might like: https://www.kanguru.com/products/kanguru-ss3
| mrob wrote:
| With the default ext4 filesystem, mounting 'ro' doesn't
| actually prevent writes to the disk. For that you need 'noload'
| too, to prevent journal replay. This can result in a broken
| filesystem if it wasn't unmounted cleanly, although assuming
| it's 100% read-only it shouldn't do any permanent damage
| (perhaps enforce read-only access at the block device level to
| be sure).
| therealmarv wrote:
| I only see a 403
| orphea wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20251002092405/https://retrocmp....
| nticompass wrote:
| As a kid (ok, as an adult too), I knew what the "CH" on floppies
| meant. I was curious, but never asked or tried looking it up.
|
| I forget when, but one day, it dawned on me that it said "HD"!
|
| I guess most of my floppies had their labels on in such a way
| that the flap/door was facing down, so it said "CH". To read
| "HD," then the label would be upside down.
| ionwake wrote:
| I just feel like tech moved so fast that in SOME ways its sad.
|
| I just wish we could still use retro tech in some way without
| having to replace it.
| ochrist wrote:
| I still have a few floppy disks packed away at the loft, but I
| wonder if they still work the next time I turn on my BBC or
| Archimedes.
| forinti wrote:
| The last time I checked, the only 5,25" floppies that still
| worked from that age were the ones in those Acornsoft covers.
| buildsjets wrote:
| A trivia not touched on in the article - IBM 5 1/4" floppy drives
| had dual heads and could read the front and back side of a disk
| without flipping. For cost savings Apple ][ drives had only one
| head so you had to flip the disk occasionally. But to convert an
| IBM 5 1/4" floppy for dual sided used on an Apple, you had to cut
| a second write-protection notch, either with scissors, and xacto-
| knife, a hole punch, or with a dedicated "drive doubler" puncher.
|
| https://atariprojects.org/2019/06/28/make-floppy-disks-doubl...
| layer8 wrote:
| Same for the C64 floppy drive (1541).
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(page generated 2025-10-31 23:01 UTC)