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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]

#51

Post by forinti »

bombcar wrote: post #48
networked wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kill…

Only once did I encounter a machine with 2.88 drives. It was a DEC machine. But I don't think anybody had the appropriate media.

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

#52

Post by roywashere »

dragonwriter wrote: post #43
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.

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.

I thought the 5 1/4s were called floppy disks and the 3 1/2s were called diskettes, at least by the people around me, don’t know if that is a Dutch thing or not

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

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

roywashere wrote: post #52
dragonwriter wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought the 5 1/4s were called floppy disks and the 3 1/2s were called diskettes, at least by the people around me, don’t know if that is a Dutch thing or not

"Type 1 Diskette" was the IBM product description for its first 8-inch one; "floppy disk" was used for the same technology in some places before the first commercially-available products. Both terms were general, neither was specific to any subset of the sizes they would later come in.

There were probably some times and places where local common usage made a distinction between some of the forms then in use by using the two terms differently, though.

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

#54

Post by bombcar »

forinti wrote: post #51
bombcar wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kill…

Only once did I encounter a machine with 2.88 drives. It was a DEC machine. But I don't think anybody had the appropriate media.

I saw one on a PS/2 once, long long after it was top of the line. Kept it around as an amusement piece for awhile but had no disks for it.

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

#55

Post by u801e »

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…

> Even emails were not a proper replacement. Initially free providers only supported sending/receiving emails with 1 to 5 MB attachments.

Pretty much every ISP provided an email address for each account. Some email clients supported the MIME multipart/partial subtype which allowed for large attachments to be split up amongst multiple emails.

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

#56

Post by cubefox »

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.

What was the percentage of PCs sold that came with a Zip drive by default? In Germany it was approximately 0%. So most people didn't have one. It was purely used as an external drive for backup purposes.

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

#57

Post by chungy »

cubefox wrote: post #56
chungy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What was the percentage of PCs sold that came with a Zip drive by default? In Germany it was approximately 0%. So most people didn't have one. It was purely used as an external drive for backup purposes.

There were a good few years in the late 1990s that it seemed every prebuilt PC in America had them.

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

#58

Post by snvzz »

kiritanpo wrote: post #28
tymscar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like this: https://amiga.robsmithdev.co.uk

That looks great, I was not aware this existed. However, considering you have to build your own custom Arduino board or be on the waiting list to buy one, it's a bit more complicated than "Just buy a simple USB floppy drive for 15 bucks online".

Better yet, GreaseWeazle[0].

0. https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/

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

#59

Post by qingcharles »

gattilorenz wrote: post #29
zozbot234 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a collection of CD-Roms attached to a computer magazine, 1999-2001 Please upload these disc images to Internet Archive if not included already, so that they can be preserved for the future. Downloads which used to be publicly available might be worthwhile too, but it could be more of a challenge to sort these out.

That’s exactly why I imaged those in the first place :) Well, that, and to relive those years, find the games included in those magazines and finally play them on a Voodoo 2 instead of a poor S3 Virge…

Thank you for doing this.

Someone had uploaded a cover CD from 1994 recently and I was able to download my first piece of commercial software :)

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

#60

Post by snvzz »

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.

Most likely readable.

Note that while GreaseWeazle is an awesome project, I have had more luck reading floppies with the actual Amiga.

I suspect it would help to use a DD FDD like the one the Amiga has rather than an HD one.

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