Building PC, to floppy or not to floppy?

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

Dr Teeth a écrit:
....
** Amateurs built the Ark, but professionals built the Titanic.**
.................................................w ithout floppy DD:-)

I use my floppy DD often for Maxtor PowerMax, IBM DFT, memtest... and
even with the good ol' W98 boot disk!

Roy

"Scott" wrote in message
et...
I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.

I second the 2 above.

Additionally I can tell this:

My friend insists on not having a need for floppy and he hasn´t got one
installed.
I happen to own a spare one which I keep in my desk. My friend there and
others have to bite the apple from time to time to borrow it.
You need a floppy.

The stupidest thing I´ve heard of are those Abit mobos without serial and
PS2. What do people do if they need to access their DSL modem via management
cable?
And a normal external 56K modem cannot be used without serial.

Best to have it all installed. Costs next to nothing.

Scott wrote:

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.

Failsafe BIOS upgrades...

Scott wrote:

I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.

Failsafe BIOS upgrades...

Dr Teeth:

No True. there are Floppy controller based tape drives. good only for Win9x/ME
however but its worth noting.

Dave

| They are cheap and you never know when you may need one...when you
| cannot go out and buy one. Also, AFAIK, nothing else can be connected
| to the floppy connector on the motherboard.

"Scott" wrote in message
et...
I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

It's possible to build a PC without a floppy that is internal. Most
motherboards today support USB floppy. Thats what I use. I got Teac USB
floppy. As for PS/2 keyboard and mouse - these are all emulated through the
USB ports. You no longer need PS/2 ports. And you don't need serial ports
either as USB takes care of that. There are USB drivers for DOS that let you
take advantage of a mouse and keyboard or other USB devices. I try to avoid
DOS as much as possible. Crossing my fingers I haven't used it in the last 6
months. The onlything I need DOS is for Symantec Ghost 2003 which by the way
supports USB and firewire now. Do I use a PS/2 keyboard, mouse or serial
devices anymore? NOPE! All gone. Never had a problem. Although I keep my
USB floppy around in a bag somewhere. And it works just like an internal
floppy to boot! My .02

Matt

"Matt" wrote in message
et...
It's possible to build a PC without a floppy that is internal. Most
motherboards today support USB floppy. Thats what I use. I got Teac USB
floppy. As for PS/2 keyboard and mouse - these are all emulated through
the
USB ports. You no longer need PS/2 ports. And you don't need serial ports
either as USB takes care of that. There are USB drivers for DOS that let
you
take advantage of a mouse and keyboard or other USB devices. I try to
avoid
DOS as much as possible. Crossing my fingers I haven't used it in the last
6
months. The onlything I need DOS is for Symantec Ghost 2003 which by the
way
supports USB and firewire now. Do I use a PS/2 keyboard, mouse or serial
devices anymore? NOPE! All gone. Never had a problem. Although I keep my
USB floppy around in a bag somewhere. And it works just like an internal
floppy to boot! My .02


BTW. For a true USB solution - use a flash card reader and boot from it!
Thats what I do most of the time. The 1.44MB size of a floppy is not
important when booting with a CompactFlash card. As a matter of fact my boot
CF card is 256MB! Do you need a floppy nowadays? No.

yeah..generally, you don't need a floppy... but, you'd probably feel better
having one..just in case
you need to boot off one, or make a floppy with something on it for someone
else... if you stay in your
own world..then, not much need for a floppy drive... so long as you have an
alternative boot device to
your hard disk.

jeff

"Scott" wrote in message
et...
I'm considering not putting a floppy drive in my new computer. I have a
LAN
and the other computers have floppies. Anyone see a reason why I should
include one? Thanks.
-- Scott

I agree with the "don't need". On my own computers I have barely used a
floppy in a couple of years. I do all BIOS flashes from the HD in safe mode.
Frankly, my favourite device for replacing the floppy is the USB thumb
drive. If you have a recent BIOS, you can boot from any USB mini drive as
well. Now that they are so cheap everybody should have one.

64-128MB for around 35-45 dollars CAN...
http://www.canadacomputers.com/storage.html#usb
64MB for $14.99 US, the same as a floppy!
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati....asp?CatId=900

Same price, way faster, can hold 50x the data and the drive is portable. Now
that's a good argument

bye, Rick

"Matt" wrote in message
news:jsDSa.94309$OZ2.20056@rwcrnsc54...

"Jeff Labute" wrote in message
. ca...
yeah..generally, you don't need a floppy... but, you'd probably feel
better
having one..just in case

But Oh! Do you trust floppies like you do CompactFlash cards! You
shouldn't.
Floppies can get erased, corrupted by the slightest dirt and are generally
unreliable. That's why I either use a boot CD or a boot CompactFlash card
now. My data is much safer wether it be BIOS upgrades or just running
plain
DOS. It's all on my flash card now. Floppy drives don't make me feel
better.
They make me ****ed half the time cause some of my floppies get corrupted
and I hate having to worry about them darn floppies.