[P1] SLOW floppy drive

[Jason Bennett]

On Thursday, March 20, 2003, Guy McMickle wrote:

> I have a VST USB floppy drive that operates EXTREMELY slow.  The
> specific model is the one that came with color kit.  I know VST has
> been bought out, and their web page says the driver is built into the
> operating system, but this operation is horribly slow.  Is it just this
> specific model floppy drive, or are all USB floppies affected by this?
> My system is an iBook 500Mhz running 10.2.  Thanks!

You're not alone -- this is a chronic problem with Mac OS X, and 
frankly, it's disappointing Apple hasn't seen itself fit to fix it. 
After all, with high-speed ethernet, Bluetooth, Airport, you'd think 
Apple could at least ask two guys to work a couple days OT to get a 
decent driver. Mac OS X is not *that* far advanced that even doing "old 
fashioned" stuff is impossible because we've "moved on" -- after all, 
its UNIX foundation is twenty-plus years old. Whatever your opinion of 
Windows XP may be, it reads floppies just fine.

My university lab has dozens of nice spiffy coloured last-generation 
iMacs, all outfitted with VST USB floppies so students can back up that 
essay or term assignment and take it home with them. The lab and campus 
bookstore sell individual floppies for this purpose. However, the 
machines are currently running OS 9, and I can't imagine the lab will 
be moving to OS X in the near future because the drives would take a 
nose-dive in performance, so much so that I'm sure the lab folks would 
have to post signs reading "Your computer is not damaged -- OS X is 
dramatically slower than OS 9 when using floppy disks. Welcome to the 
future."

Ever since the iMac came out sans floppy, those little disks haven't 
been a priority for Apple. I don't begrudge moving the platform 
forward, but we're still in a transition period where many of us still 
have years of floppies and data we'd like to retrieve to burn onto CDs 
-- booting in OS 9 (or borrowing a co-worker's PeeCee) so you don't 
have to wait until the next Ice Age for disk copying to complete seems 
a tad unnecessary, but there you go.

Jason