From floppies to floppies

[Lee]

One of the things I see discussed here on the forums are HDD and Floppies. Now with the advent of the SSD floppies are being pushed even more into the museums of lost computer technically. Most people remember only the 5 1/4" and the 3 1/2" size floppies. However, there was an eight inch floppy that started it all.





IBM started the use of the floppy starting with the eight inch. I remember in the mid to late 1970's when IBM was putting out a word processing computer (did nothing else) they came with the 8' floppies. The navy used them for some years because they could be programed to be used with the different forms that were used for a specific function (leave papers, DD-214s, etc.).

Floppies were finally pushed out because they could not hold all the information that the new programs/applications that started coming out in the 1990's. The CD finally brought the kiss of death to floppies. If you remember Microsoft Office 4.3 you will remember it came with twenty four 3.5' floppies, or you could order the CD version. Windows 95 was the first OS Microsoft put out on CD (took eleven 3.5" floppies). DVD's are now the kiss of death to CD's.

What will be next. . .Thumb/flash Drives, or SD cards—maybe something even better.

 

[logicearth]

What will be next. . .Thumb/flash Drives, or SD cards—maybe something even better.

Probably digital downloads off the internet will take over then actual physical media. Granted I'm sure physical media will still exists for those without high-speed internet.

 

[arkhi]

Hey! Look at the mechanics of that 8' reader!

 

[FuturDreamz]

Random fact:
the 8 inch was released 23 years before I was born, the 5 1/4" 16 years and the 3 1/2" 10 years (according to Wikipedia).

Most likely what will happen is maybe that SD cards become the new medium, due to the capacities can be increased over time without requiring your systems to be upgraded (with sdxc I mean), and with the SDIO specification the sd card could also act like the copywrite dongle that some expensive programs (adobe does this) will refuse to work if not plugged in.

 

[loaba]

I still have a 3.5" floppy drive installed in my box (needed it to install RAID drivers back when I was obsessed with that sort of thing). It's slated for replacement as soon as my 3.5" internal USB card reader gets here. I figure that will be much more useful.

 

[PeteC]

I was in Army administration back in the day when we first used card-punch readers to store frequently used forms...then came the day (around 1980) that we got our first IBM multi-station word processor unit with jen-u-wine 12" "green screen" monitors, an 8" floppy drive, and a hell on wheels daisy wheel printer that created forms and text documents faster than anything that we ever imagined...which would translate into dog-butt slow today...maybe about 1 page of plain text per minute...

Shortly after that, I got my first 5 1/4" floppy drive for my Atari 800 computer...with 48kbytes of ram, and a floppy drive, I was amongst the "power-users" on base...still a couple of years prior to getting my first 20 megabyte hard drive!

I finally divested myself of all floppy disks when i retired my last desktop, and now run everything on my network from notebooks and netbooks...

 

[Lee]

logicearth, you are probably choose to being right the only problem is there are still a large group of people who are on dial-up, so that will slow things down. At the moment the SD card seems the way to go. And, yes I use download as much as possible; it saves me money in the long run, no taxes, no having to drive 100 miles just to pay a piece of software, and instance gratification.

As the CO of a Destroyer in the mid 70s to the early 80s we had a Wang system instead with CRT stations located at key places on board so the different work centers could enter in their daily work completion schedules, and other needed information.

 

[JimLewandowski]

I worked with 8" floppies on British hardware (16-bit mini). 300K of storage IIRC. 1986.

The apple 5 1/4" were 160K (16 sector vs. 13 sector).

 

[Dzomlija]

My first "computer" was a ZX Spectrum 128K +3, which included a 3" floppy drive that could store 180K per side. I moved over to a 386SX 25MHz with a 3.5" and 5.25" floppy and a 40MB hard disk.

Ironically enough, that very same 3.5" floppy drive that came with my 386 has been transplanted from computer to computer over the years as I upgraded. I finally removed the drive from Prometheus a few weeks ago, to make room for a new hard disk...

 

[JimLewandowski]

I still have my ORIGINAL, very first 5 1/4" floppy (Verbatim) from 1978 in HS. I bet you 100% it's still 100% readable. Those things are indestructible. I have all my Apple II floppies...

 

[Dzomlija]

Check this out:

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An original, unopened and still mint condition pack of Precision floppy disks. I still have the drive for them too.

You think maybe in 40 or 50 years they might be worth something as an antique?

 

[Nigsy]

I installed a somy floppy disc reader in my new build. Motherboards still have the connector, still have a hole on the front for the drive, so why not spend £10 on one!!