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The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

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Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#211

Post by shiroiushi »

1letterunixname wrote: post #35
LarsDu88 wrote: post #3

I remember being super hyped for the successor of the floppy disk back as a kid in the 90s... Iomega Zip Drives. And then getting super hyped for the successor to the CD... the BluRay, and wondering what sort of holographic multi terabyte wizardry would be the nextgen of optical disks. Now we are in 2024 and what actually happened is no one owns their movie or music libraries anymore... they are all streamed from som…

In high school, we had a virtual stock portfolio competition. At the time, I was an assistant manager (making minimum wage because I was a depressed kid who looked about 12) at a nationwide small store software (and hardware) store. Zip drives were flying off the shelves, so naturally I checked the company's P&L, SEC statements, and stock data. So I assigned 88% of my stock in IOMG because I could tell it was severel…

>It was an improvement over floppies that were notoriously unreliable and not very durable even in 3.5" form

Sorry, but this is BS. Floppies were supremely reliable, really to an amazing degree. That is, until sometime in the mid-1990s or later: at that point, the drives became cheaper and crappier, and the media quality went straight down the toilet. It was pretty sudden as I remember, and basically coincided with people moving to CD-Rs because floppies were no longer large enough for daily use.

Ask your older friends or relatives if they had a lot of trouble with floppies back in the Apple ][ era, when that was the only disk drive on a computer and people routinely booted their computer with the same boot disk every day; floppies were quite reliable in those days.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#213

Post by M95D »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #3

I remember being super hyped for the successor of the floppy disk back as a kid in the 90s... Iomega Zip Drives. And then getting super hyped for the successor to the CD... the BluRay, and wondering what sort of holographic multi terabyte wizardry would be the nextgen of optical disks. Now we are in 2024 and what actually happened is no one owns their movie or music libraries anymore... they are all streamed from som…

And the thumbsticks got almost as bad as the last of the floppies. Single-use throw-away chinese crap.

I remember a very old XT computer with no HDD that was still booting from the original floopy in ~2001, used daily to play Pentix, until someone (me) connected it by mistake to 220V instead of it's 110V transformer.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#214

Post by dspillett »

shiroiushi wrote: post #206
ryandrake wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to have a non-technical person send me a very large file, and encountered this. There really is no good universal way to do this, even here in 2024! File is too big for E-mail, ftp is too big a technical hurdle for the guy. Dropbox requires accounts and sharing and all sorts of access shit for him to figure out. I ended up enabling WebDAV on an existing web server I have admin access to, and luckily he…

>File is too big for E-mail, Back in the old days, we would have used PKZIP or RAR to split the file into smaller pieces. >ftp is too big a technical hurdle for the guy Back in the old days, even a secretary could figure out how to use the MS-DOS command line well enough to get her job done. I'm not sure what happened between then and now, but these days people just say "I'm non-technical" and refuse to learn anythin…

> Back in the old days, we would have used PKZIP or RAR to split the file into smaller pieces.

Back then there were far fewer non-technical people using email anyway. In my experience people like office admins wouldn't do anything with split archives they would get the local computer person to do it for them (and the same would happen at the receiving end). They were generally aware of zip files, but might get a local tech to compress things for them even if a split archive wasn't needed.

Or they would just send a floppy in the post if the file would fit on there but the email limit at one end or both was less than 1440K. On one occasion because no one was free to help otherwise I remember a secretary driving a floppy between campusesses to deliver updated slides for a talk because she couldn't get it pushed through email (I forget if the biggest blocker was at the sending or receiving end).

Things changed quite a lot when decent GUI zip tools became common, and again when shell-integrated ones arrived in the Win95 era.

Flipping back through time to now, there are two problems that we didn't have back then:

1. Phones don't have particularly good+friendly archivers, and even if one is found security protections might mean said archiver can't access the data it needs from the app that generated it. As well as talking someone through the archiving process you might need to try work out how to open the relevant permissions and describe that to the remote non-technical user too.

2. Often desktop environments are locked down too, and Windows for instance doesn't come out of the box with an archiver, neither CLI nor GUI, that supports multi-volume archives or encryption worth bothering with.

> Back in the old days, even a secretary could figure out how to use the MS-DOS command line well enough to get her job done.

Some would do that, but I wouldn't say they were the majority by quite a margin in my experience. And not just secretaries: higher paid managers & such too. In fact them more so (as they would drop the task on a secretary, who would then enlist the office kid who knew some tech).

> FTP isn't hard, it's just a few commands, and it's much easier to tell someone how to send FTP than to use any GUI, since you can type out the exact commands to use:

The issue with that was (still is) that they will need telling each time. It isn't their job to do these technical things so if they don't have an active interest they aren't going to spend time learning it, so they can work out the exact sequence for next time unless it happens often enough that they learn by repetition. It isn't hard, but it isn't natural or familiar to many. It is only natural to you and I because we do that sort of thing regularly (or have done it enough in the past that it has become wired in).

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#215

Post by hypercube33 »

creatonez wrote: post #204
esafak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why they shoehorned 3M into the article. Floppies rose and fell independently of 3M.

3M is only interesting in retrospect. They were one of the first manufacturers to get out of the floppy business, but they also had some of the highest quality disks. So as soon as floppies started dying, the durability and quality fell off a cliff. But if you come across a 3M disk in the modern era (floppies are still used by textile equipment), it might actually store your data without breaking.

Actually I think they spun off their media business to imation who kept making CDs and floppies

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#216

Post by mensetmanusman »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #70
0x0000000 wrote: post #32

> If you ask the average person what the company 3M does, odds are if they have a few gray hairs hanging out on their scalp, they might say that the company makes floppy disks. That's crazy, I wouldn't think anyone would first and foremost associate 3M with floppies instead of adhesives, even those with a few grays like myself. They make post-its for chrissake, and we're gonna pretend they're most known for floppies?

Nerdy but - last Xmas 3M got hundreds of dollars of my family money. I got speed tape, ruby tape, silicone fiberglass hi-low temp tape. I don't really need them, I admire the engineering and I'm kinda afraid to use these tapes given how much they cost. But yeah, the 3M brand = adhesives in my household.

My favorite is their nuclear duct tape:

https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-17542R/3M-Duct-Cloth-...

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#217

Post by mensetmanusman »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #38
fdr wrote: post #5

> If you ask the average person what the company 3M does, odds are if they have a few gray hairs hanging out on their scalp, they might say that the company makes floppy disks. I think that's an interesting perception of the public. I think of 3M making all sorts of things, generally, I admire the company...in spite of some rather grotesque blunders and bad behavior. But the first thing that comes to mind is adhesive…

I immediately think of their products I use on a regular basis. There are so many. - micropore tape for mycelium and tissue cultures - reusable respirators and cartridges - net sanding disks - double sided tape for so many things - foam ear plugs and earmuffs - scouring pads for shop/kitchen/aquarium - HEPA air filters for work and home - command strips for all kinds of hanging and affixing needs - adhesive spray, mo…

The double sided tape that unreels from a dispenser with no liner still baffles me, and I have a PhD in materials science.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#218

Post by mensetmanusman »

fomine3 wrote: post #203
fdr wrote: post #5

> If you ask the average person what the company 3M does, odds are if they have a few gray hairs hanging out on their scalp, they might say that the company makes floppy disks. I think that's an interesting perception of the public. I think of 3M making all sorts of things, generally, I admire the company...in spite of some rather grotesque blunders and bad behavior. But the first thing that comes to mind is adhesive…

I suspect that Chinese also trusts 3M brand because random AliExpress products tend to have "3M" branded adhesive seal (perhaps fake).

An area of huge counterfeit is companies purchasing low cost legit adhesive with a 3M logo on the liner, and then coating a different adhesive on it that looks like it would work but doesn't and selling for profit.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#219

Post by mensetmanusman »

xbar wrote: post #163
xyst wrote: post #26

3M is a company that does not deserve any praise. The handling of contaminated water supplies with PFAS has forever ruined many lives.

I am sorry to see you being downvoted. I feel completely betrayed by 3M. All of the fondness I had for the brand from floppy disks to early post-it notes, painter's tape, and scotch taping gifts with my mom.... all of them are tained with the horror of 3M's complete disregard for everything and everyone for all time.

There were definitely a few bad apples, but much of the blame extends to the military. Events like this were probably inevitable for those that are students of the history of technology development.

Re: The Rise and Fall of 3M's Floppy Disk (2023)

#220

Post by shmeeed »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #218
fomine3 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that Chinese also trusts 3M brand because random AliExpress products tend to have "3M" branded adhesive seal (perhaps fake).

An area of huge counterfeit is companies purchasing low cost legit adhesive with a 3M logo on the liner, and then coating a different adhesive on it that looks like it would work but doesn't and selling for profit.

Is that really a thing? I always imagined they would just counterfeit the liner too.
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