Really?? 10 Floppy disks for $9??

[techguy9]

I just can't wrap my head around this. Micro Center's latest flyer shows that they sell 10 floppies for $9??? Really?? What are these guys thinking?! I thought people give away BULK BOXES of these floppies! The store sells THUMB DRIVES with a million times more memory for a lesser price! Am I missing something major or are these people really out of their minds?

 

[bunnspecial]

Limited market...I'm surprised that they still sell them at all. BTW, I'm not familiar with "2mb" floppies-the normal high density 3.5" is 1.44mb. Those are also the crummy ones with the plastic dust cover-a normal PC floppy drive is fine with these, but they're a hair thicker than metal ones and I've found that "auto loading" Mac floppy drives will rip the dust cover off about half the time. Of course, the disk will work fine, but that leaves you having to fish the dust guard out(sometimes taking the computer or even the drive apart.

Since I still play with a lot of old Macs, I keep a supply on hand(although a 1.44mb can't be reliably reformatted to 800K or 400K). I've grabbed a lot out of the trash in the last few years(almost all with metal dust guards), and I picked up a 100 brand new, blank ones at a flea market for $2 earlier this year(albeit with plastic).

 

[Jessica Lares]

The fact that I still remember reading this article years later and was reminded of it is sad:

The mystery of the mega-selling floppy disk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8646699.stm

And here's this one:

40 ways we still use floppy disks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8651750.stm

Definitely limited market, but those who still need them will gladly pay up. It's like the later Newtons which still go for pretty pennies.

 

[maflynn]

Its 2015, there's probably so few people that use floppy disks and only one or two manufacturers that the price is high since no one is really buying them anymore.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Its 2015, there's probably so few people that use floppy disks and only one or two manufacturers that the price is high since no one is really buying them anymore.

Yeah, this exactly. You're just as likely to pay through-the-roof prices for SDRAM or even DDR1 RAM, simply because they're end-of-life and are no longer being manufactured. It's not to say they're worth that amount of money, or that anybody's even buying them.

 

[bunnspecial]

Yeah, this exactly. You're just as likely to pay through-the-roof prices for SDRAM or even DDR1 RAM, simply because they're end-of-life and are no longer being manufactured. It's not to say they're worth that amount of money, or that anybody's even buying them.

I buy SDRAM and DDR RAM all the time.

I've been paying about $4/stick for 512mb PC-133. This is new manufacture RAM from China. I often buy big lots of good pulls(and usually name brand RAM) for less than that, although I can count on some either not being good or not being "Mac Friendly." I bought some new 512mb Samsung PC-133 SO-DIMMs for about a $3 each not long ago.

1gb DDR is still running about $10/stick, but that's not a terrible price. I'm just not going to spend $80 to fill up a G5

I also can still get a lot of SDRAM, DDR, and even DDR2 as free pulls from junked computers, although often these are smaller capacity sticks. I have a huge box of RAM that I've gotten this way, and every once in a while I spend an evening sorting and bagging it by type, capacity, and speed(sometimes that can be really fun if they aren't marked explicitly and you end up Googling the per-chip specs).

RAM starts to get really pricey if you want high capacity 168 pin FPM, 72 pin SIMMs, or 30 pin SIMMs. I've been working on installing OS X 10.5 on a PowerMacintosh 8600, but one of my delays has been buying the RAM to make it happen. OWC sells 5v, 4K FPM 168 pin DIMMs with capacities of 128mb. The 8600 can take 8 of them, for a total of 1gb-what I really want to run Leopard. The problem is that paying $80 for RAM is a hard pill to swallow(especially when I only paid $25 for the computer).

 

[keysofanxiety]

I buy SDRAM and DDR RAM all the time.

I've been paying about $4/stick for 512mb PC-133. This is new manufacture RAM from China. I often buy big lots of good pulls(and usually name brand RAM) for less than that, although I can count on some either not being good or not being "Mac Friendly." I bought some new 512mb Samsung PC-133 SO-DIMMs for about a $3 each not long ago.

1gb DDR is still running about $10/stick, but that's not a terrible price. I'm just not going to spend $80 to fill up a G5

I also can still get a lot of SDRAM, DDR, and even DDR2 as free pulls from junked computers, although often these are smaller capacity sticks. I have a huge box of RAM that I've gotten this way, and every once in a while I spend an evening sorting and bagging it by type, capacity, and speed(sometimes that can be really fun if they aren't marked explicitly and you end up Googling the per-chip specs).

RAM starts to get really pricey if you want high capacity 168 pin FPM, 72 pin SIMMs, or 30 pin SIMMs. I've been working on installing OS X 10.5 on a PowerMacintosh 8600, but one of my delays has been buying the RAM to make it happen. OWC sells 5v, 4K FPM 168 pin DIMMs with capacities of 128mb. The 8600 can take 8 of them, for a total of 1gb-what I really want to run Leopard. The problem is that paying $80 for RAM is a hard pill to swallow(especially when I only paid $25 for the computer).

Thank you for the detailed response! I hadn't realised EOL parts were so cheap.

 

[bunnspecial]

Thank you for the detailed response! I hadn't realised EOL parts were so cheap.

If we really want to talk about cheap stuff...

I have another HUGE pile of IDE/PATA drives lying around. Without counting, I'd guess that I probably have about 100 stashed here or there.

A lot of them are, again, pulls that I got for free(pulling them myself) and some are pretty low capacity(4-20gb). Even so, I find 80s and 120s fairly often. I like these capacities, as Macs made prior to 2002 don't natively support drives larger than 128gb at full capacity.

I've paid for bigger drives, although I did get a virtually new 500gb WD Black with a late 2011 manufacture date as a free pull(I think SMART showed it with about 200 power on hours).

Microcenter carries refurbs in 80, 160, and 250gb. They are a dollar or two more than refurb SATA drives of the same capacity, but even so 80gbs run about $6 each, 160s run $12-14(depending on brand-WDs are more than Seagates) and 250gbs are around $20. I never leave the store without buying a big stack.

All the above is true for 40 pin 3.5" drives. 44 pin 2.5" drives(laptop drives) are somewhat of a different story, and big capacities-especially at high rotational speeds-get really pricey even when well used. It's been a while since I've bought a platter 2.5" PATA drive. Instead, I buy mSATA SSDs, which run $40-50 each for 120gb or so. I then use enclosures that mimic the form factor of a 2.5" PATA drive. Not only are they cheaper, but also can saturate the ATA/100 bus in late model Powerbooks(I'm not aware of any platter drive that came) are silent(15" Powerbooks have the drive right under the trackpad, and 7200 rpm make uncomfortable vibrations. IMO, the make a great replacement, and I frequently get compliments on how fast and responsive my late-model Powerbooks are. About a month back, I used almost nothing but my last generation 1.67ghz 15" Powerbook for a week, and while it was slower than even a Core2Duo Macbook, it was still plenty fast for web browsing and other light uses.

 

[lowendlinux]

I still use floppies and last year bought a new floppy drive.

 

[keysofanxiety]

I still use floppies and last year bought a new floppy drive.

May I ask why?

 

[lowendlinux]

Some BIOS' can't be updated or flashed with anything other than a floppies. I still have work laying around that is still on floppy *shrug*

 

[Arran]

May I ask why?

Drink coasters?

 

[Abiatha Swelter]

Limited market...I'm surprised that they still sell them at all. BTW, I'm not familiar with "2mb" floppies-the normal high density 3.5" is 1.44mb.

As I recall, 2mb was the blank unformatted capacity, 1.44 was the usable capacity after formatting. So you'd sometimes see 2mb on the box, even though you never really used that.

 

[kaltsasa]

If we really want to talk about cheap stuff...

If you want to talk not cheap stuff. Old SCSI drives for old macs. I remember them going for pennies on the dollar in the late 90s early 2000s. But now finding working stock is expensive. Pretty sure I tossed my share of SCSI drives in the trash during that era. I have all the regret.

 

[bunnspecial]

If you want to talk not cheap stuff. Old SCSI drives for old macs. I remember them going for pennies on the dollar in the late 90s early 2000s. But now finding working stock is expensive. Pretty sure I tossed my share of SCSI drives in the trash during that era. I have all the regret.

Isn't that the truth. I've bought a handful of 50 pin SCSIs, but it's a crap shoot to get a working one

The last one I bought was when I needed a drive for my SE. The original 20 or 40mb drives are outrageous, so I opted for a 500mb Quantum. It worked(although I ended up using it elsewhere), but set me back $30 or $40. I lucked into a big lot of hard drives on Ebay about a year ago that had three good 50 pin drives(2x2gb and a 500mb) plus a bunch of big IDE drives for about $40. My 7100 had a dead hard drive(that sounded like a chainsaw when the computer was powered up) so I stuck the 500mb drive in it and was pleasantly surprised when the computer booted to a fully functional OS 8.1 desktop.

I helped clean out a lab a few months back, and got a HUGE stack of 9gb 80 pin 10K drives. I think all said and done, I ended up with about 50 of these drives. Some were used pulls, but a lot of them were new in box unused. I've installed a few with 80 pin to 50 pin adapters(cheap from China) and they work great, albeit 10K drives are annoying.

And, as another story, I bought a beige G3 tower back in March with the factory "Jackhammer" UW 68 Pin SCSI card set up in RAID and 3 4gb 10K drives. For a G3, the I/O on it is fast, but it's annoying loud with three 10K drives going(they have an obnoxious whine that's not present on 7200 RPM or 15K drives). The real prize in the $25 computer, though, was a brand new Seagate 73gb 80 pin 15K drive stuck down in the bottom.

One of these days, I'm going to put one of the 9gb 10K drives in my Quadra 700(talk about overkill) and then transplant its 160mb drive to my SE.