Hello all,
I'm doing a quick research on the use of floppy disks and I noticed that some of the Agilent Analyzers used them.
I'm trying to find if they are still used and when they where last used.
For instance, the 35670A seems to be still active, but I can't seem to find any information about it original release date or if it was refreshed in the meantime. Maybe you can point me in the right direction.
I'm doing a quick research on the use of floppy disks and I noticed that some of the Agilent Analyzers used them.
I'm trying to find if they are still used and when they where last used.
For instance, the 35670A seems to be still active, but I can't seem to find any information about it original release date or if it was refreshed in the meantime. Maybe you can point me in the right direction.
You will find some of these older products still alive (ie. being sold by Agilent) but they are few and far between. The 35670A also came to mind for me, but having trouble thinking of another instrument that is actively sold and still having a floppy drive.
The 1980's and 1990's era products used floppy drives but it depended on the product's architecture. I used to work on the 16500-series logic analyzers and Infiniium-oscilloscopes. The disk drives were used for operating system work and also data transfers. You should note that the disk drives were not always the same format (some were LIF and others were DOS). This was dependent on the R&D team's design choices.
In general, most modern equipment has a USB connector for easy data transfer (of course, can still get data through the bus control interfaces).
As a side note, was cleaning out my office this weekend in preparation for a house move. I found some old floppy disks that were used for work and personal use. They quickly ended up in the garbage can -- because didn't even have a disk drive available to learn what was on the disks. But, also have to say, found a 64MB USB thumb drive and also threw that away. One file can be larger than 64MB in this rich media world we live in...
Hope this helps, Mike