Once upon a time, in a land called Mississippi, there was a man named Mark Necaise. Mark had a special talent: he traveled to horse shows, adding beautiful designs to jackets and vests with his magical embroidery machine.

Now, Mark's machine was no ordinary machine. It was a second-hand wonder, crafted by a company called Tajima many years ago. But there was a catch: the only way Mark could make his machine work was by using something called floppy disks.

Floppy disks were like little magic wafers that held important designs and instructions for the embroidery machine. But here's the problem: floppy disks weren't made anymore! They were old and rare, like treasures from a distant past.

Mark had started with eight floppy disks, but four of them had stopped working. He tried everything to fix them, but nothing worked. He worried that he wouldn't be able to make his embroidery magic anymore.

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You see, Mark wasn't the only one facing this dilemma. There were others, like Davit Niazashvili from faraway Georgia, who still relied on floppy disks to update old airplanes. It was like using ancient scrolls to cast spells on flying machines!

But why were people still using floppy disks, you ask? Well, some folks couldn't afford to upgrade their machines, while others simply loved the old ways. But many agreed with a wise person named Florian Cramer, who said that floppy disks were like toxic waste and shouldn't exist anymore.

Despite the challenges, Mark and others like him continued to work their magic, hoping that one day, they wouldn't need floppy disks anymore. Until then, they held onto their last precious disks, hoping they wouldn't run out of magic. And so, the adventure of Mark and his mysterious floppy disks continued, reminding us that sometimes, old things still have a bit of magic left in them.

Most of these machines cost thousands of pounds, and some aren’t even that old, so owners want to keep them around for as long as possible. Imagine having a machine that's like a time traveler from the past!

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People go to PLR for upgrades because they can’t find disks, but also because they can’t get replacement drives. Even though floppy drives are becoming harder to find, PLR still sells between 2,000 and 3,000 units a year. That's a lot of floppy magic!

The floppy disk might never truly disappear. There are people in the world who still love old things, like phonograph players from 1910. So, it's hard to believe that the floppy disk will vanish completely.

Some of these industrial machines that use floppy disks can last for 30 to 40 years! Tom Persky runs Floppydisk.com, where he sells about 1,000 disks a day. He used to buy disks for as little as $0.07 each, but now he sells them for $1 each.

One type of floppy disk, the ancient 8-inch introduced by IBM in 1971, is almost extinct. There aren’t many left, and the ones that are left are sold for $5 each. As for the 3.5-inch floppy, there are still some out there, but nobody knows exactly how many.

Tom Persky isn't planning on waiting forever. He's 73 years old and says he'll only work for another five years. He doesn't think anyone will take over his company when he's gone. It's like he's flying a plane and running out of gas, but his job is to land the plane safely. It's a big responsibility!

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