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On 06/03/2010 09:26:22, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
> I seem to remember something about the floppy images being dropped
> because few current (or even recent) systems have a floppy drive at
> all, much less a bootable one.
Yeah, but the floppy disk drive was already obsolete 10 years ago. It's
just taken this long for it to fall down dead. Good riddance to it.
Why would anyone want an unreliable, slow and tiny capacity device when
you can get GiB capacity USB sticks everywhere nowadays?
Not providing floppy disk installation images doesn't imply dropping
kernel support for floppy drives. My ancient system has a floppy, and
if I blew the dust out of it and could find some media it should work
just fine with FreeBSD 8.0.
In fact, if you need to support older equipment, free OSes like FreeBSD
are really your only choice. Drivers for old devices tend to stick
around in the source tree for much longer than in any commercial
offering. They might suffer from bit-rot due to lack of developer
access to samples of kit, but if you really need something like that
fixed you probably could get patches. In fact, I think the primary
reason for dropping old device drivers is usually because they don't
receive any attention during the occasional code refactoring that
occurs: no one complains, and the device sits around unusable or needing
special backwards compatibility shims for a while, then gets quietly
deleted.
- --
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard
Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
Kent, CT11 9PW
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