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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 9/15/2004: |
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The death of an computer old
friend – the floppy disk , part 2 Floppy
disks actually stopped flopping around the late 1980’s, when Dos 3.3
supported the 3.5 inch disk – encased in a plastic shell – which
held 1.44 Megs of data which replaced the 5.25” old style floppy disk -
which actually did flop because it was a thin magnetic disk in a paper cover. We did a
Raw Bytes Torture Test well over a decade ago, where we dropped the old and
new floppy disks from one of the top floors of the Paulsen bldg downtown. The
old style disks fluttered to the ground like a butterfly and worked as soon
as we put it in a disk drive. The new style floppy fell to the ground like an
anvil and shattered into unusable fragments. Most new
computers today don’t come standard with a floppy disk, so how do you
give someone a file you have on your computer if they’re not on your
network, or if they’re not on the internet. For
several years now new computers have come with writable cd-rom
drives, which allow you to copy a file from your computer, put it on a cdrom drive, and give or mail it to someone who needs
your file. But there are
some problems related with cdrom technology. First of
all you have to have a writable cd-rom drive in
your computer, which most of the major vendors now sell as standard
equipment, in order for you to be able to copy a file to it to give to
someone else. A standard cdrom drive will not allow
you to do this. Second,
most computers come with different types of cd-rom
writing – or burning as it’s called – software, which can
get a little complicated. Some software allows you to prepare a cdrom disk so that it can be written to and later
restored to your computer, but maybe not to other computers. So they usually
have an option that allows you to create a cdrom
disk which can be read universally by other computers. And you should use
this option when you are going to give a cdrom disk
to someone else. Then you
need to buy writable cdrom disks (CD-R), which are
relatively inexpensive, but you only can write to them once, and that’s
it. So if you burn a file to a cdrom disk and eject
it, and then remember you have another file to copy – you have to use
another new cdrom disk. Unless of
course you buy –rewritable cdroms disks,
which are a little more expensive, and for some reason harder to find than
regular writable cdrom disks. And then
there’s the problem of how much data you can store on a cdrom disk, which is currently around 700 Megabytes or
so. And then
you need to remember that if you are creating a music disk – as opposed
to a data disk – you need to buy Music cdrom
disks. And then
you will find that most cdrom burning software
allows you to create single cdrom disks, which hold
up to 700 Megs of data. But what if you want to actually do a backup of your
computer, perhaps 3 gigabytes of data? Well, you
either have to keep all your files in folders which hold less than 700 Megs
of data – the limit of a crdom – or you
need to buy special Backup cdrom software which
will allow you to copy large amounts of data on multiple cdrom
disks. But then you have to be
there to change the cdrom disks when they fill up. So
perhaps the old standard – a tape backup system – which can
backup your entire computer unattended – is still the best method. But
there is a new file copying technology which doesn’t use cdrom – but does use the USB ports which are built
into all new computers now – and I’ll talk about that next week. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2004 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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