I'm still using floppy disks with my Yamaha PSR-630 workstation keyboard — you can arrange an entire song on that machine in no time. Plenty of highly acclaimed vintage music equipment — notably, Ensonique samplers — still use them too.
I got the floppy disks for my machine from Microsoft's supply room when I was an intern there in 2014. At the time, there were still some niche uses for floppies in the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., RAID drivers for Windows XP could only be loaded from a floppy on install, IIRC), but that was on the way out too — so I grabbed half a dozen disks from a pile.
Remarkably, they are still perfectly usable.
The major problem I have with them is that the floppy disk drive on the keyboard is slightly out of alignment. Which means that the only way to read the floopies is to use that specific disk drive.
I've been meaning to replace the drive for years, but never really got to it. I've also considered swapping it out for an SD card reader/USB drive (ones meant to replace floppy drives are readily available), but where's the charm in that?
I got the floppy disks for my machine from Microsoft's supply room when I was an intern there in 2014. At the time, there were still some niche uses for floppies in the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g., RAID drivers for Windows XP could only be loaded from a floppy on install, IIRC), but that was on the way out too — so I grabbed half a dozen disks from a pile.
Remarkably, they are still perfectly usable.
The major problem I have with them is that the floppy disk drive on the keyboard is slightly out of alignment. Which means that the only way to read the floopies is to use that specific disk drive.
I've been meaning to replace the drive for years, but never really got to it. I've also considered swapping it out for an SD card reader/USB drive (ones meant to replace floppy drives are readily available), but where's the charm in that?