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Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

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Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#41

Post by chungy »

cubefox wrote: post #35

This format was great initially, but it was hopelessly undersized after around ten years. It was a shame there was never a proper successor. The 1.44 MB double density were simply too little after many years, it wasn't even enough for a single DOC file with a few images. This created the situation where for a long time, it was a major pain to exchange small-to-medium sized files. A successor format with 10 to 50 MB c…

Writing off the Zip disk as a footnote is incredibly weird to me. They were massively popular and everywhere, especially before CD-Rs got cheap. I probably have more Zip disks in my closet than 3½" floppies.

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#42

Post by bombcar »

tomxor wrote: post #10
jerriep wrote: post #5

Fun fact: In South Africa we called these a "stiffy" because it was so rigid compared to the 5¼-inch floppy.

:D Hah perfect, I can totally imagine that with the SA accent... and frankly more logical, I never got why they were called floppy disks in most of the world considering their predecessors.

Because by the time the 3.5s came out, "floppy" had become a word meaning "removable" instead of "bendy" - the alternative being "hard disks" which were fixed storage (internal or external).

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#43

Post by dragonwriter »

tomxor wrote: post #10
jerriep wrote: post #5

Fun fact: In South Africa we called these a "stiffy" because it was so rigid compared to the 5¼-inch floppy.

:D Hah perfect, I can totally imagine that with the SA accent... and frankly more logical, I never got why they were called floppy disks in most of the world considering their predecessors.

They (and their 8" and 5¼" predecessors) were called floppy disks because of the disc of storage media within the outer casing, not because of the casing which was not particularly floppy for the 8” and 5¼” versions, and rather rigid for the 3½” version.

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#44

Post by dragonwriter »

bombcar wrote: post #42
tomxor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:D Hah perfect, I can totally imagine that with the SA accent... and frankly more logical, I never got why they were called floppy disks in most of the world considering their predecessors.

Because by the time the 3.5s came out, "floppy" had become a word meaning "removable" instead of "bendy" - the alternative being "hard disks" which were fixed storage (internal or external).

No, the media of the 3½” was just as floppy as the media that was the source of the name for 5¼” and 8” floppies.

It was never about the outer casing for any of them.

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#45

Post by networked »

bombcar wrote: post #39
cubefox wrote: post #35

This format was great initially, but it was hopelessly undersized after around ten years. It was a shame there was never a proper successor. The 1.44 MB double density were simply too little after many years, it wasn't even enough for a single DOC file with a few images. This created the situation where for a long time, it was a major pain to exchange small-to-medium sized files. A successor format with 10 to 50 MB c…

There was the SuperDisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk which saw some popularity in Asia. The real problem was the cost - the real key to floppies is you didn't care if you got it back (at the time people used them, very early on they were more pricey). So CDs did eventually replace them for sneakernet, and USB sticks have finally become cheap enough to be disposable.

According to https://goughlui.com/2013/05/02/tech-flashback-iomega-zip-10... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWW67iPgXI (which shows a comparison table from a contemporary magazine article), the SuperDisk LS-120 was slower than the Iomega Zip. It was a pretty cool idea to make the drive backward-compatible with 3.5" floppies. As a child reading computer magazines I kind of wanted one—or a Zip drive. However, the lower speed combined with launching after Zip (1997 vs. 1994) really explains why the LS-120 did not succeed on par with Zip. According to the video I linked, iMac owners bought USB SuperDisk drives for their regular floppies. (I ended up eventually getting a CD-RW.)

What I think might be a bigger shame is that some version of FD32MB (maybe less dense and less slow) did not arrive earlier and as an industry standard. In 2001 it was far too late for it. Here is an article announcing the FD32MB technology: https://www.theregister.com/2000/10/23/32mb_on_a_humble_flop.... The Wikipedia page for the Superdisk also mentions it. Might it have had a chance if it had launched with the SuperDisk LS-120 in 1997? I am not sure. (And how would the reliability have been with mass adoption? Worse than 1.44 MB floppies'? Maybe it was for the better.)

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#46

Post by mrWiz »

chungy wrote: post #41
cubefox wrote: post #35

This format was great initially, but it was hopelessly undersized after around ten years. It was a shame there was never a proper successor. The 1.44 MB double density were simply too little after many years, it wasn't even enough for a single DOC file with a few images. This created the situation where for a long time, it was a major pain to exchange small-to-medium sized files. A successor format with 10 to 50 MB c…

Writing off the Zip disk as a footnote is incredibly weird to me. They were massively popular and everywhere, especially before CD-Rs got cheap. I probably have more Zip disks in my closet than 3½" floppies.

In my experience you couldn't assume that a person had a Zip drive. My family didn't have one, but given some effort/motivation I'm sure I could have found a way to read a Zip disk I was given.

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#47

Post by wazoox »

yodsanklai wrote: post #23

Suppose I pick my 30+ year old Amiga floppies from the basement. Any chance that there are still readable? what would be the simplest way to copy the content on a modern storage so I could inspect them on an emulator.

I'm using daily 30 to 35 year-old floppies. They're almost certainly fine unless you kept them in really bad conditions.

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#48

Post by bombcar »

networked wrote: post #45
bombcar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was the SuperDisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk which saw some popularity in Asia. The real problem was the cost - the real key to floppies is you didn't care if you got it back (at the time people used them, very early on they were more pricey). So CDs did eventually replace them for sneakernet, and USB sticks have finally become cheap enough to be disposable.

According to https://goughlui.com/2013/05/02/tech-flashback-iomega-zip-10... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWW67iPgXI (which shows a comparison table from a contemporary magazine article), the SuperDisk LS-120 was slower than the Iomega Zip. It was a pretty cool idea to make the drive backward-compatible with 3.5" floppies. As a child reading computer magazines I kind of wanted one—or a Zip drive. However, the…

There was also the (quite hard to find) 2.88 MB floppies, which actually had software support in the various OSes at the time.

LANs themselves had also come down in costs so even ad-hoc computers near each other often had Ethernet or similar, so the demand never really picked up.

Those who needed big transfers offsite used Zip (or Jaz, those things died like flies) until CD-Rs became cheap enough.

And then Apple killed it all.

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#49

Post by UncleSlacky »

AkBKukU wrote: post #31
rwmj wrote: post #18

It's a shame that he glosses over 3" disks. They were widely used in the UK of all places throughout the 1980s because Amstrad selected them for their Z80-based office systems. I'd love to know what cheap deal Alan Sugar got with Hitachi to offload old stock that made this happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW

(I'm the video author) The focus was more on how the Sony drive became the standard and less about all the competing formats. The CFD was the only serious competition and, in the US at least, it never reached the levels of putting up a fight like the ZipDisk vs. SuperDisk or Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. The Amstrad was the only system OEM I found that really used it, so while it did have some market it definitely wasn't wide…

Tatung also used them on the Einstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatung_Einstein

Re: Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk [video]

#50

Post by rasz »

chungy wrote: post #41
cubefox wrote: post #35

This format was great initially, but it was hopelessly undersized after around ten years. It was a shame there was never a proper successor. The 1.44 MB double density were simply too little after many years, it wasn't even enough for a single DOC file with a few images. This created the situation where for a long time, it was a major pain to exchange small-to-medium sized files. A successor format with 10 to 50 MB c…

Writing off the Zip disk as a footnote is incredibly weird to me. They were massively popular and everywhere, especially before CD-Rs got cheap. I probably have more Zip disks in my closet than 3½" floppies.

click of death killed ZIPs as serious proposition
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