Floppy in the Basement

First off, it has been over a decade since “floppy” disks have actually been “floppy,” and several more years since they were really floppy (the 8-inch version). Yet we continue to call them “floppy disks.” I think there was an effort to call them “diskettes” there somewhere. Maybe everyone calls them that now. I still called them “floppies.”

And today I was handed my first floppy disk in about 3 years. I was amazed to find that people still used them.

And, as a Mac user, I was unable to use it. Macs, you see, haven’t had floppies for quite some time, presumably an effect of Steve Jobs waking up one morning and decided they were irrelevant.

What to do? The election is in high gear, and I’ve got to get the mail-in ballot application on the Elections PEI website.

So, down to the basement to the Linux server called “dan” (after my grandfather). It has a floppy drive.

Drop into deep Zen-like state to recall the Linux method for manually mounting a floppy disk from the command line:

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy -t msdos

That works. Copy the file to dan’s hard disk, then email it to myself. Floppy paradox solved.

Comments

Kevin's picture
Kevin on September 6, 2003 - 16:58 Permalink

when nothing wants to make sense

the memories

a simpler time

perhaps

didn’t feel like it then

Kevin's picture
Kevin on September 6, 2003 - 16:59 Permalink

public

free verse

william shatner style

poetry

ahh, ahh

hope it stops

before

life

gives

o

Ken's picture
Ken on September 7, 2003 - 16:38 Permalink

Oh! Media!
When did Floppy become Giga?
Will you hold a bit of my life?
Until the iron in your soul
loses it’s resonance.