Winn L. Rosch Hardware Bible, Sixth Edition

Floppy Disk Interface

Some things are immutable, changing not at all as the years pass—the constellations in the sky, the crags and rocks of tall mountains, your credit card balance. The floppy disk interface fits in there pretty well, too. It's basically the same connection used on the first personal computer more than two decades ago. It sits there, waiting for you to slide in a boot disk so it can show you all of its stuff.

Part of the reason for this immutability is that the function of the floppy disk hasn't changed over the years. The floppy disk remains a boot device, a data-exchange system, and a backup system—although an increasingly feeble one. At one time, however, it was your only choice for each of these functions. The world has, ...