how to build a computer without a floppy

jason7385 · Post by **jason7385** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 7:41 am

So the answer is a computer does not require a floppy to run. Another question if I build my own computer from all new parts how will I install a OS without a floppy? Lets say I have a full version of windows 98 but don't you need a floppy to install it? And doesn't a computer not boot up if you don't have a floppy?

myran · Post by **myran** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 7:48 am

yes. works fine for me

quietOne · Post by **quietOne** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 7:50 am

Absolutely. None of my PCs have a floppy drive. They have a worthless capacity, slowness, and instability that is unmatched by any computer media. You should look for a motherboard that allows the BIOS to be upgraded from within your operating system. Many of the latest motherboards offer this for Windows. In my experience that is the only reason for a floppy. You might find programs that want to create restore flopy disks, etc. Boycott any manufacturer so clueless that they do not allow you the option to do this onto CD-RW. You will also want to buy a fast USB 2.0 flash drive to transport files such as the JumpDrive Pro 2.0.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 10:05 am

Floppy drives are no longer required, but sometimes there is an assumption that every PC has one.

I have used a small USB "pen drive" or "thumb drive" to upgrade the BIOS on a motherboard that requires a floppy drive for upgrading the BIOS. Not every one of these devices can look like a USB floppy drive though, so make sure the one you buy has this feature.

David

hyperslug · Post by **hyperslug** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 11:02 am

quietOne wrote:You should look for a motherboard that allows the BIOS to be upgraded from within your operating system. Many of the latest motherboards offer this for Windows. In my experience that is the only reason for a floppy. You might find programs that want to create restore flopy disks, etc. Boycott any manufacturer so clueless that they do not allow you the option to do this onto CD-RW.

Small point, but some ppl still need them for the F6 SCSI/SATA driver load before the NT OS loads on install.

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 11:51 am

I use floppies for:

Memtest86
BIOS flashes (both mobo and agp)
Low level formatting
Harddrive utilities and diagnostics
Raid drivers
Booting OSs that won't boot from the cd
Dos files and drivers for older equipment
Formatting and partitioning harddrives

blinky · Post by **blinky** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 1:32 pm

Other than for the "F6 SCSI driver" jobby you're pretty safe without a drive.

For proggies that insist on making floppies, there's some way of making a bit of your hard drive look like the a: drive and then making a bootable CD from that. I'm sure I've done that before but I can't remember what I did. Of course then you need a CD writer but they tend to be more useful nowadays...

dukla2000 · Post by **dukla2000** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 1:57 pm

jason7385 wrote:S Lets say I have a full version of windows 98 but don't you need a floppy to install it?

You need some bootable device other than the harddrive in my opinion. (On the assumption you one day find your hdd foobared, or as you say installing Win from scratch.) USB pen disks only work with some BIOS - I have built myself a set of bootable CDs since I ditched my floppies. All the stuff Ralf does from floppy I either have a bootable CD (Memtest) or I use a Win98 bootable CD and boot direct to the command line with CD support (Disk partition, BIOS flash etc). My SuSE linux comes on a bootable DVD.

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 2:06 pm

blinky wrote:Other than for the "F6 SCSI driver" jobby you're pretty safe without a drive.

Yep, I can attest to that. I needed to have my floppy disk with sata drivers on it in the drive during the windows install, but apart from that I haven't had to use the floppy _at all_.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 4:13 pm

I need a floppy.....for a quick easy file transfer to an older computer without front USB, you cannot beat it.

Also....my Sony Mavica uses floppy media, nothing else. I'm not buying another camera thank you.

I do everything Ralf does with his floppy, with only a few bad disks. Look you can always buy a USB floppy, but most computers won't boot from them. So what's the big deal? Floppy drives can be bought for less than $10....

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 4:29 pm

Well, why don't you have a 5 1/4" floppy drive anymore?

wsc · Post by **wsc** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 8:26 pm

I use floppy disks for bringing files around campus because the school email rarely works faster than just using a floppy. I also used a floppy to install SATA drivers. Mostly I bought a floppy because my case (Evercase 4252) came with an open spot for a floppy, and it was just all around easier to buy a floppy to fill the spot. For $10, you will be thankful the once or twice you need a floppy when in a jam.

Post by **Rusty075** » Fri Jan 02, 2004 8:42 pm

I haven't installed a floppy drive into a working machine of my own in a couple of years.

But I do keep a floppy drive in my tool drawer, complete with ribbon and Y-adaptor already attached, just in case. For nearly every use now its just as easy to throw the files you need onto a generic-boot CD-RW, but there are always exceptions.

Gooserider · Post by **Gooserider** » Sun Jan 04, 2004 7:47 pm

chylld
Well, why don't you have a 5 1/4" floppy drive anymore?

Actually, I DO have a 5.25" FDD, two of them in fact

one for 1.2mb disks and one for 360K disks (remember those??)

I will grant that they are on my old 386 machine that I haven't booted up in a couple of years (actually I need to check to see if it is Y2K compliant, or if I need to reset the date to something phoney to make it work...) However, those old formats are out there, and every once in a great while you need to read something on one of them...

I agree that there are fewer and fewer times when you need a floppy (especially since I don't need to install MS products) but IMHO a 3.5" FDD is cheap enough that the cost isn't an issue, so it's worth throwing one in, especially since there really isn't any other hardware that uses that size bay...

Gooserider

Ginta · Post by **Ginta** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 2:24 am

Radeonman wrote:I need to get myself a 5.25" disk to rescue all the information I have sitting on my stack (probably 100 or so) of them. Arrrr, they're tough biotches to find.

I know these guys have a few stacks gathering dust in their warehouse.
http://www.pcliquidator.com/detailproduct.asp?which=541

I actually packed one away in a antistatic bag a few years back just in case, and sure enough one of my clients needed one to retrieve some old data few months ago. Until good bios support for USB bootable flash drives have been mass marketed for another 3+ years, floppy drives will still be around.

Bri · Post by **Bri** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 9:07 am

I’m embarrassed to ask but just how does one “create” a bootable CD?
I have always created bootable floppies like so: FORMAT a:\ /s /u
-Bri

davidstone28 · Post by **davidstone28** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 9:37 am

I haven't read the any of the above other than the original post so apologies if I'm repeating anything already posted, but 99% of the time you don't need a floppy.

However, to install certain features on certain motherboards, you HAVE to install from floppy. For example, on the Gigabyte Nforce2 Pro2 motherboard, you HAVE to install the Silicon Image SATA drivers from floppy if you're installing windows onto a SATA drive which you're intending to boot from. It is NOT possible to install the drivers in any other way. If you don't install them, you can't install / boot Windows off the SATA drive.

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 12:35 pm

Bri wrote:

I’m embarrassed to ask but just how does one “create” a bootable CD?
I have always created bootable floppies like so: FORMAT a:\ /s /u
-Bri

Do a search on google. I had to make a bootable cd once and the tutorial I found had me using some special kind of program whose name escapes me at this point in time. It's pretty easy to do once u have the program however.

ColdFlame · Post by **ColdFlame** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 3:45 pm

Unfortunately it _not_ easy to create a bootable CD. It is also very difficult to create a bootable pen drive unless the manufacturer of the pen drive supplies the utility to do that.

I guess there are several good points for floppies:
1) drivers during Windows install
2) Memtest86
3) maybe some others

But I can happily report that I have a bootable pen drive and it can do everything else very successfully! Plus DOS loads in 0.0001 second from a pen drive

chylld · Post by **chylld** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 3:54 pm

Hmm yeah I suppose it was a pain in the . but it really only took me a good hour or so.

Regardless... I have a floppy in my system, if not for the need for sata drivers, for the effort I invested in spraying its bezel black

davidrees · Post by **davidrees** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 11:27 pm

Its pretty easy to make a bootable CD using Nero 5+

The trick is - you need to make it on a machine WITH a floppy.

I was having a devil of a time reinstalling without a floppy - I had my brother in law make a bootable CD that is actually the Win98 startup disk.

This is very useful because a Win98 startup disk gives you real mode (DOS) CDROM drivers and you can use it to load any MS OS.

Just make a CD with all your tools, drivers and OS, then burn it and tell Nero to make it bootable - it will then ask for a floppy disk to use as an image - insert a genuine Win98 startup disk and there you go.

You boot off the CD and it actually reads it as if it is a floppy - so the Win98 dealy boots it using a cdrom driver and you then have cd access after the PC comes up - super dooper handy dandy!

Jan Kivar · Post by **Jan Kivar** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:01 am

Ultimate Boot CD

I'm not sure whether it has a DOS prompt for those BIOS updates but...

Cheers,

Jan

Ginta · Post by **Ginta** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 5:46 pm

http://www.bootdisk.com is a good resource. I use this self extracting Dr. Dos disk image for making bios flash floppies when I need them. Saves me from having to keeping track of dos boot floppies.

jib · Post by **jib** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 3:48 am

Some tips if you have a bootable atapi cd/dvd drive (as most of us do, I would guess)

* Using Nero you can easily create a 'boot floppy' with the create bootable cd feature. Switch the floppy image used for emulation to whatever boot floppy image you want to boot.

* Problem is sometimes you do not have those images yet. Well, install this virtual floppy driver and get rawwrite for windows. Using these tools your floppyless machine are ready for even those programs insisting on creating boot floppies. If you want you could even use your virtual A: as a source of boot image data in Nero (see Step 5 of this tutorial)

Good luck.

Lawgiver · Post by **Lawgiver** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 8:26 am

Well, since floppy drives cost next to nothing, and it is still the simplest and most compatible way to transfer small files in absence of a network, I see little reason not to include one in your system.

...But you can always consider something like this: http://www.directron.com/fa404.html

jason7385 · Post by **jason7385** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 9:33 pm

I still think the floppy is way too much trouble, I had so many floppy disk problems I rather email the file to my email account. Usually when I bring a floppy disk from school to home and home to school and then school to home again the disk dies on me and this happens over 50 percent of the time. As a teen I tend to play around with floppy disk and they never last long but if I email it or burn it on CD the file never gives me an error.

Ginta · Post by **Ginta** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 2:14 am

jason7385 wrote:I still think the floppy is way too much trouble, I had so many floppy disk problems I rather email the file to my email account. Usually when I bring a floppy disk from school to home and home to school and then school to home again the disk dies on me and this happens over 50 percent of the time. As a teen I tend to play around with floppy disk and they never last long but if I email it or burn it on CD the file never gives me an error.

As a lab assistant at my school the biggest problem students don't understand about the treatment of floppy disks is that they need to buy a solid hard plastic case to carry their disks in. Most of them smash them in books and binders, or throw them unprotected in backpack pouches where they suck up dirt and get their doors bent up (which then jam in the lab computers). I've seen many students lose their school work by mishandling floppies and what's worse

they still do it after they've been told why the disk went bad.

BlueTide · Post by **BlueTide** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 2:37 am

So, if we manage that 99% without a floppy and the only thing we need it for is OS install /BIOS updates, why not have a floppy drive temporarily onnected? It only needs a power and data cables anyway, so having a side open for a few hours shouldn't be that much of a problem?

Post by **Ralf Hutter** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 4:38 am

BlueTide wrote:So, if we manage that 99% without a floppy and the only thing we need it for is OS install /BIOS updates, why not have a floppy drive temporarily onnected? It only needs a power and data cables anyway, so having a side open for a few hours shouldn't be that much of a problem?

That's what I used to try and tell the "anti-floppy-ites" too, but they seem so rabidly anti-floppy that they don't even want a drive or disks anywhere near them, even if it's hidden away out of sight. So I've giving up mentioning it any more. It's like I'm wasting my breath.

It makes perfect sense to me though. So you don't want to even have a floppy in your system, fine. Don't install one but spend the $9 to buy one and keep in hidden away in a closet so nobody even knows it's there. That way you can pull it out and connect it up temporarily in the off-chance that you might ever need it. $9 seems like cheap insurance to me.

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