FloppyGeddon

[Mark Ogden]

A short article on the demise of the floppy disk

https://www.raconteur.net/technology/the-floppygeddon-cometh

[Herbert Johnson]

On 5/21/2025 7:06 AM, Mark Ogden wrote:
> A short article on the demise of the floppy disk
>
> https://www.raconteur.net/technology/the-floppygeddon-cometh

I follow this stuff because I maintain a Web page on floppy disk
technology, that still gets some attention. I did some homework today,
briefly. If anyone has further follow-up, let me know. I'll add it to my
Web page.

https://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/drive.html

The author of the article is an international journalist on computing
technology, out of London. raconteur.net is apparently an aggregator of
tech-ish business-ish commercial news content from major publications
(or people writing for them) that's also out of London.

The article says stuff. Today I only have time to follow leads and poke
at assumptions.

As far as modern production of floppy diskettes? Folklore says:

> Actually Jens bought the last disks Athana produced, many moons ago [early 2000's]. He was also offered their machines, but that was way too expensive. Those machines went to scrap some months later.
... but the volume of NOS (unused stock) is so huge compared to demand,
that it doesn't matter for our meager purposes.

As far as degradation of media? It's Mylar film with epoxy-coatings
containing iron or (high-density) cobalt particles in certain
alignments. Dry residential environments serve to preserve them fairly
well. The exception is very poorly made disks from cheap manufacturers -
the "paint" flakes off! This is from empirical evidence in my hands,
from my eyes.

Mold is the biggest problem after wear; mild soap solution (or more
exotic, some evaporative hydrocarbon) and very careful scrubbing deals
with most mold. And one only does that, for data recovery (or one is
very cheap).

> Tom Persky, the self-proclaimed ‘last man standing in the floppy disk business’, recycles and sells diskettes on floppydisk.com

also see from 2022:

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-standing-in-the-floppy-disk-business/

They've been around for some years, and seem reputable. The site says:

> We buy floppy disks that are new in sealed packs.
> We recycle other disks at no cost to you.
> If you send more than 200 disks, we offer a small shipping offset.

NOS disks are in various hoards from the billions (says the article)
produced in the 1990's. Many used disks are one-time use backup disks,
and so are barely worn. Even disks that are unusable, become
"promotional disks" you can print stuff upon, make greeting cards, etc.

So contrary to the article - which suggests Persky will retire and
business will end because there's no more producers of diskettes - they
have more supply than demand most likely. So the business will likely be
resold, and/or the inventory passed along. And then there's ebay and
private sales of diskettes.

as far as "Linux doesn't support floppy drives", I've followed that story.

https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/30/torvalds_floppy/

> Linus Torvalds is killing off support

It's true that in 2019, it was reported that FDC controller support in
Linux lacked a developer. But USB floppies were still supported as a USB
device with a FAT file system (the USB drive does all the rest). But at
various times since, people have stepped up to provide some maintenance.
Here's a late 2022 report:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.2-Floppy

Also a 2022 report on Puppy Linux:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=7562

I didn't look for more recent content about Linux and floppy block devices.

About modern hardware support of floppy drives.

Modern intel/AMD mobos don't have a floppy controller connector of
course. But a controller might be buried in the superIO chip in use. But
the needed chip-pins aren't accessible to add some connector; and the
BIOS might not support it. The PCI bus might not support a floppy
controller chip at a BIOS standard address on a PCI bussed card. But
these considerations are above my pay grade to determine.

But 1) there's plenty of legacy 32-bit mobos that *do* have FDC pinouts.
I'd have to see if DDR2-memory mobo tech still had FDC's, and if some
relatively modern Linux distributions would support them. But I recently
ran Damn Small Linux (DSL) from a 2025 32-bit distribution, on an
ancient tiny network workstation. So a modern Linux on an old mobo is
not out of hand. Or, networking an old mobo system to a modern system.

And 2) there's all kinds of bit-level USB hobby devices to access floppy
drives, some read only. And other hobbyists are just fooling around and
creating Rasp Pi Pico class devices that are USB accessible. Creating
something that can locally operate a floppy drive may be done just as a
challenge. I don't follow that stuff much.

I gotta do other work today.

Regards Herb Johnson


--
Herb Johnson, New Jersey USA
http://www.retrotechnology.com or .net
preserve and restore 1970's personal computing
email: hjohnson @ retrotechnology dot com
or try later at herbjohnson @ comcast dot net