The Floppy Disk (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Floppy Disk (2011)

#41

Post by chias » Sun, Aug 20, 2023, 4:14 PM UTC

roygbiv2 wrote: post #38

velcrovan wrote: post #23

Minidiscs should have won for both audio and data. They’re perfect for long-term archival storage and they’re just plain cool. If only Sony wasn’t so shortsighted.

I wanted a data drive for my mini disks so bad back in the 90s. It just never happened and writeable CDs happened instead.

A guy I knew in high school back then was actually working on that: turning a commercial mini-disk player into a data storage drive. He said it was really difficult because the (lossy) compression was baked into the hardware. I don't remember if he succeeded to any degree.

Re: The Floppy Disk (2011)

#42

Post by u801e » Sun, Aug 20, 2023, 4:50 PM UTC

jasomill wrote: post #26

SillyUsername wrote: post #9

Article has inaccuracies. The HD floppy is to formatted 1.44MB, not 1.2MB, and unformatted capacity was 2.0MB. People did not program word processors themselves as they didn't exist, typewriters did. Later, pre disk, magazines type-ins and software on (magnetic) tapes were common means of software distribution. How to tell me your under 30 without telling me you're under 30 :D

Pedantically, the PC DOS 3 1/2" HD format is 1440 * 1024 bytes[1], so either 1.47456 MB (SI) or 1.40625 MiB (IEC), though "1.44 MB" was the official IBM designation for the format. [1] 2 sides / disk * 18 tracks / side * 80 sectors / track * 512 bytes / sector = 1,474,560 bytes = 1440 * 1024 bytes

I remember the free space on a 1.44 MB freshly formatted floppy disc under DOS 5.0 was 1,457,664 bytes. I guess the file system metadata used up 16,896 bytes.

Re: The Floppy Disk (2011)

#43

Post by Brian_K_White » Sun, Aug 20, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

I don't think "people called it the sneakernet" until much later after any other kinds of nets existed for a while.

Also it's not exactly remarkably virtuous to be willing to obsolete an old thing when you own the new thing. Most companies even artificially obsolete their stuff as fast as possible just to make you buy the new thing. Then I saw the domain. Why was this even posted?