Japan still requires the use of floppy disks

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Japan declares ‘war’ on the floppy disk, yes, the floppy disk

Tokyo: Japan’s digital minister, who has vowed to rid the bureaucracy of outdated tools from the hanko stamp to the fax machine, has now declared war on a technology many haven’t seen for decades – the floppy disk.

The hand-sized, square-shaped data storage item, along with similar devices including the CD or even lesser-known mini disk, are still required for some 1900 government procedures and must go, Digital Minister Taro Kono wrote in a Twitter post.

“We will be reviewing these practices swiftly,” Kono told reporters, adding that Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had offered his full support. “Where does one even buy a floppy disk these days?”..

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Cybertooth

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Alex5723 wrote:

The hand-sized, square-shaped data storage item, along with similar devices including the CD

Floppy disks getting banned I get that but CD’s? My main computer is a Dell XPS 8930 and it has a CD/DVD player. Every computer I have purchased since my first one in 1999 has come with a CD/DVD player. I use it to back up stuff on CD/DVD, make extra copies of computer software, boot from if needed, etc. and to play CD music disks which I have a lot of. I can’t see how a CD/DVD player could be considered to be “outdated”.

You can buy floppy disks at Walmart, Amazon, etc.

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jburk07, Cybertooth, SueW, OscarCP, Charlie

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External DVD Drive:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=external+dvd+drive&crid=3Q884DGB85CY1&sprefix=external+dvd+drive%2Caps%2C112&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

External 3.5″ Floppy Drive:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=external+floppy+drive&crid=9Y94U0XOH89T&sprefix=external+floppy+drive%2Caps%2C118&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

External 5.25″ Floppy Drive is a bit harder to locate (and 5.25″ floppies were extremely fragile).

5.25″ Floppies still offered:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=floppy+disk+5.25+inch&crid=2B7UM6Q08NSI8&sprefix=floppy+disk+5.25+inch%2Caps%2C107&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

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jburk07, Cybertooth

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Where do they get the media to use that technology?

Everything including or preceding the CD went “ex stock” at a previous employer of mine years ago (about 2017 for CD, floppies about Y2K). You can burn a CD to a DVD if you need to – we had more issues with the +r / -r /RW etc media compatibilities of the optical drives out there, and had nothing strange upgrading to DVD drives.. until IDE went “extinct”.. then it got a bit more interesting..

I guess they must have a government facility manufacturing obsolete media not to mention head cleaning disks…

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geekdom

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oldguy wrote:

had nothing strange upgrading to DVD drives.. until IDE went “extinct”

My main tower box computer built in 2012 has an SATA DVD/CD reader/burner that is still working fine.  It doesn’t get a lot of use since I use USB drives and flash drives primarily.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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I always have had laptops, and for me floppies became useless and so no longer used when laptops start coming without SCSI ports, sometime in the early 2000s.

By the way: do recent model laptops, or perhaps desktops, still have SCSI ports?

If not, I wonder what they are using in Japan that can still read floppies.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
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By the way: do recent model laptops, or perhaps desktops, still have SCSI ports?

hightly doubtful that many modern laptop & desktop PCs have SCSI ports anymore, OscarCP.

I know cuz my bro’s HP Spectre x360 thin laptop (an early 2020 model) has no scsi port at all

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OscarCP

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I still have lots of new blank disks and use 3.5″ floppy disks for vintage music gear with onboard floppy drives. Drives still work, as do the floppy disks with data. Must say, it’s a weird timewarp when I need to use them.
When was the last time anyone inserted and heard a floppy drive load a disk?
Even specific sounds are vintage…

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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jburk07

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I’ve got lots of them too, in fact way more than I need but I hate throwing perfectly good Sony, Verbatim, and BASF 3½” floppies away when I still use them now and then.  I even bought a plug-in USB 3½” floppy drive to use with my newer computers that don’t have floppy drives.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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jburk07

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I must admit I haven’t had your joy in retrying old media, in fatc I found after a couple of head passes it started to fail. As to the working fine old optical drive usage is the key. The laser fires up every tome you open “my computer” so the drive can return the disk presence information. If you hardly ever do that and seldom reboot it’ll last. The drives I was dealing with loaded weekly data updates to servers running 24/7/365 so it’s a bit of a different aspect. Also the “until IDE went extinct” was a reference to the fact there was no “drop in replacement.. so some downtime, firmware and software updates were the order of the day.

As to why that is.. about that SCSI interface. It’s still “around” but it won’t be on any laptop as it’s a bit too “heavy computing” for that..

Serial attached SCSI, SAS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI

The physically looks for all the world like a SATA connection but it doesn’t work with that as the weird “jumpers” topsides between the “SATA” data and the power are part of the interface.. attached a pic.

 

 

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OscarCP

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https://www.floppydisk.com/

​
Floppy disks, floppy drives, and transfers from floppy or zip disks.
3.5″, 5.25″, or 8 inch disks.
DS/HD (MF-2HD) and DS/DD (MF-2DD) “low density” floppy diskettes.
IBM format at 1.44 MB, 1.2 MB, 720K, and 360K. Macintosh format.

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jburk07, OscarCP, Charlie, SueW, Cybertooth

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I still have two 8″ floppies from when I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation! That’s when a floppy was really a floppy 😉

Win 7 SP1 Home Premium 64-bit; Office 2010; Group B (SaS); Former 'Tech Weenie'

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jburk07, Charlie

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Thought I’d share a part of my stash

 

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jburk07

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I’m getting a “404 not found” on the attachment PK.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Charlie, if you mean that you clicked on PKs attached jpg, I just clicked and there it was, in its full splendor, PK’s picture of the most treasured floppies.

I would guess that many of us still have floppies somewhere. I certainly do, but purely for sentimental reasons. Even some intact, never open boxes with still the factory fresh, so to speak, floppies inside.

I suppose I could put them up in eBay, or Japan’s equivalent of eBay, to sell them there. But I then think that there may be some customs’ paperwork involved and charges for conversion of currencies both ways, so I sigh and just let it go.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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jburk07

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I’ve got old 3.5 floppies for MS DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 packed up safely in floppy boxes.  I also have boxes of old 5.25 floppies that have really old games on them that I transferred over to 3.5’s later on.  I guess I just keep them for sentimental reasons and fond memories of those early days when I was learning about computers.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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jburk07

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