Floppy disk will be discontinued.

[l u k e]

Sony plans to discontinue production of the floppy in March of 2011.
I saw this and the first thing to come to mind were guys using older Haas machines, how will this affect the guys running floppy drive machines?

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/...e-floppy-disk/

[pfred2]

I tried to boot off a floppy drive on one old machine I have here and it just wouldn't work anymore. So I for one say good riddance to bad rubbish when it comes to floppy drives. They never worked all that swift even back in their day.

FWIW Panasonic always seemed to make the best floppy drive to me. And my hats off to PB Blaster yet again, I sprayed some into a can cap, then brushed it onto some parts in one FDD here and it revived it after a few full formats and disk scans.

Maybe a market will open up for a flash drive replacement that you can plug into a floppy port? That'd be one handy gadget there!

[Kipper]

Agreed with the good riddance sentiment....about to format and reinstall on an Osai controller in the morning......No fun with 6 diskettes!

I always preferred Mitsumi drives....back in the day

[l u k e]

I guess what I'm getting at is, what will your option be? Was there more than one way to load your programs on the floppy drive machines?

[TheBigJW]

There is this on eBay.

USB Converter for Haas CNC Machines with a Floppy Drive.




John

[2C00l4M3]

As long as, there are buyers .... floppy won't go away just yet, at least for next 15 years.

[Kipper]

Originally Posted by 2C00l4M3 As long as, there are buyers .... floppy won't go away just yet, at least for next 15 years.

Hmmm...no FDD port on the latest motherboards....PS2 is a "legacy" device even on 5 year old machines.....How do you get 125,000 lines onto a floppy disc...equates to 2MB on a 1.44 (1.38)MB diskette.....Maybe an SSD replacement?

[charger19690]

You can always do RS232, which to me is the only way to go. The newer controls have ethernet. No need to be a program courier.

Mike in MN

[Ydna]

I wouldn't be surprised if Haas started selling a rebranded conversion kit (or offering it for field-install) to convert floppy drives into something more modern, likely USB. Many other industrial manufacturers offer similar kits since a good chunk of their hardware is only compatible with computers from the turn of the century (pre-PCI expansion cards, etc).

Of course a Haas solution would probably be more expensive than the ones available from other sources, but it'd probably be backed by warranty or something.