As you say, to each his/her own. But although mechanical devices are indeed more prone to issues, the same argument could be applied to the rest of the system; when your unobtainium PAL or LSI chip fails you'll probably replace it with a modern replacement.
Just a question of where you choose to draw the line. Personally, I just spent some time this weekend reviving some obscure IMI hard drives that hadn't been run for at least 25 years and it was a real delight to not only get them going again but to discover that one had a functional OS installation on it that I thought I'd lost long ago. I suppose there's some of that the very first time you get your Gesswein emulator working, but it ain't the same thing. Another issue is that I have several hundred floppy disks, some with fairly rare stuff on them; maybe I'll get around to archiving them some day but in the meantime they're fairly safe on disk (unlike the box full of extremely rare Burroughs paper tapes that I threw out before I discovered that there are folks who are actually interested in that kind of old crap ;-) m On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 9:38 AM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk < [email protected]> wrote: > > On 1/23/2023 9:02 AM, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote: > > Agreed; might as well just replace the whole system with an emulator > while > > you're at it. > > > > m > > > > On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 3:41 AM Christian Corti via cctalk < > > [email protected]> wrote: > > > >> On Sat, 21 Jan 2023, Bill Gunshannon wrote: > >>> Later today I plan to try FlashFloppy. My goal is to eventually > >>> replace all of my mechanical floppies with solid state ones. > >> Why would one want to do that? > >> My goal would be the opposite. Upgrade all vintage computers with floppy > >> drives ;-) My experience is that, if handled correctly, floppies are one > >> of the most durable media, and they are definitely more fun on vintage > >> equipment than any form of modern replacement. For exchanging data > between > >> the new and the old world, maybe it can be an option. But for classic > >> computing? No way I would replace a floppy drive if it isn't broken. > >> > >> Christian > > > To each his own. My interest is not in museum pieces that stand on a shelf > > and look pretty. I like to actually work with them. Mechanical disk > drives > > are so old today they are prone to constant failure. None of my > original TRS-80 > > drives still function. If I replace them with TEAC FD55's they are no > longer > > original so what difference is there if I replace them with a GOTEK and > USB Stick? > > And the disks themselves become unreliable with repeated use. The > replacements > > also allow for trying things the mechanical disks are incapable of. > Like really large > > floppies with255 tracks. > > > bill > >
