10 ms·
Put 1.7MB onto 1.44MB Floppies (1999)
- undecisive 8y agoI remember using "superformatted" disks when burning MuLinux to disk, many many moons ago... http://micheleandreoli.org/public/Software/mulinux/ http://micheleandreoli.org/public/Software/mulinux/
- onept88 8y ago1.88 I believe was the best version. It existed about 20 years ago, and it was a DOS program. You just had to add a 11-12kb stub memory wise in either config.sys or autoexec.bat. Or both, but it worked. Any 1.44 disk could hold 1.88 without compression.
- int_19h 8y agoCloser to 30 years, I think, since the underlying hardware in form of 1.44 Mb 3.5" floppies showed up in mid-80s. I remember using this in the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS)
- rzzzt 8y agoNFormat, another custom formatting tool shows up in Adrian Black's video, demonstrating that these also work with floppy emulators: https://youtu.be/Lw0JV4TypSo https://youtu.be/Lw0JV4TypSo http://toastytech.com/files/nformat.html http://toastytech.com/files/nformat.html
- eps 8y agoIt worked for brand-name disks (Maxwell?), but 1.88 on floppies from no-name vendors was inevitably a game of luck. Formatting and writing them was OK, but more often than not reading them back didn't work.
- maxell 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxell
- puzzle 8y agoThe Amiga had 880KB (DD) or 1760KB (HD, with a special drive) floppies, but instead of increasing track count, it had more sectors (11) in each of the 80 tracks.
- jboles 8y agoYou could also make 720k DSDD disks into 1.44M DSHD disks by making a hole in the corner (similar to the write-protect hole but opposite corner). Of course, 720k disks seemed to be made to lower tolerances than 1.44M disks, so it was not a very reliable method, and usable only in a pinch.
- benj111 8y agoYou could often make single sided 5.25 inch disks into double sided with a hole punch also.
- lscotte 8y agoWe called them flippies.
- tom_ 8y agoMaybe worth noting: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15189#p204750 https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15189#p204... ```just a word of warning, copy everything off them quick, as the 'side2' goes backwards to the cotton cloth cleaner inside the 5 1/4" case, so basically all the crap caught in it then end up coming out when playing other flip side :('''
- lscotte 8y agoI am also reminded of a game, I think it was Rescue On Fractalus that was manufactured with an Atari version on one side, and C64 on the other. I thought that was pretty clever.
- grecy 8y agoDad and I made a jig to do this so the hole was always in the right place. I remember doing at least 40 disks in one go, and I think most of them worked fine.
- heelix 8y agoGood times in Jr High. Disks were expensive, but we found we could punch the 5.25" floppies in the school library to store copies of games on the back side. There were quite a few unremarkable software titles that got heavy usage.
- cesarb 8y agoFor context: on the comments for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19569827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19569827 today there was a discussion about the maximum size for a common floppy disk.
- derekp7 8y agoSide note, but "1.44MB" has always been wrong regardless if you are using base 2 or base 10 notation. The actual size is 1.44 * 1000 * 1024 bytes (or 1440 KB). To me this always seemed wrong to divide the actual capacity by 1024 then again by 1000 to get to 1.44 (stick with MiB / KiB, or MB/KB, but don't mix them).
- benj111 8y agoDon't hard drives use MB (to inflated advertised capacity? You decide) as standard. But sectors are 512 bytes to make it easier when dealing with the actual nitty gritty of reading data?
- mjevans 8y agoSectors are 512, 4096, or another power of 2 because of a combination of 8 bit characters (the lowest addressable unit of storage) and powers of 2 being more natural to fully address when working on a binary based processing/addressing model. It isn't completely disingenuous to talk about intra-systems communication in terms of 'million bits' (engineering mega, not binary 'mega', bits) but it is obtuse and full of marketing spin.
- garmaine 8y agoIt's the official SI standard for data measurement. I don't know how using the standard is obtuse marketing spin.
- Dylan16807 8y agoBecause roughly nothing that measures data files uses that standard. Using the wrong standard can easily be misleading.
- garmaine 8y agoI’m not sure the entire storage and network technology industries count as “roughly nothing.”
- Gregordinary 8y agoThis sparked a memory of the LS-240 SuperDisk drives that could format a 1.44 MB floppy to hold 32 MB. Of course only usable on an LS-240 drive, and the entire disk had to be re-written any time a change was made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk#History
- hinkley 8y agoAren't these the ones that lost out to the Zip drive, before we found out about the Click of Death? Sad days.
- markvdb 8y agoFond memories of Charles Steinkuehler's Linux Router Project [0]. Similar floppy disk based project. The author's friendly attitude was one of the things that got me into free and open source software. Thank you Charles! [0] http://lrp2.steinkuehler.net http://lrp2.steinkuehler.net
- techaul 8y agoTrevor Marshall! I had one of his antennas, namely the omnidirectional 15dbi, 1.7m tall. I had an open access point setup for a while. I remember people connecting from so many places and sending me emails to say hello. Fascinating!
- nightcracker 8y ago> Yet the elegance of booting from a floppy is indisputable -- your OS can't be hacked, the floppy is write protected What percentage of floppy disk readers actually implement the write protection in hardware?
- inscionent 8y ago> Write-protection is typically enforced by the hardware. In the case of computer devices, attempting to violate it will return an error to the operating system while some tape recorders physically lock the record button when a write-protected cassette is present. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_protection
- lucasverra 8y agotested GET on 5 links : - 4/5 do not work anymore - 1/5 is this marvel of 90's design : https://www.grsoftware.net https://www.grsoftware.net Enjoy :)
- benj111 8y ago"GRBackPro is a Professional designed to easily back up your important...." Hmm, professional indeed.
- cmpolis 8y agoSeems more usable than most "modern" websites. Content loads quickly, no modals or notifications that I need to click out of, important information is visually easy to find...
- toyg 8y agoUpdated for Windows 10 and with an e-payment form that looks operational. Somebody is still making some money with this.
- souprock 8y agoIf the drive had all the technology of a modern hard disk, I wonder how much we could fit. That would include shingled recording, large sectors, modern error correction, etc. One could even do a single-sector disk, spiraling it around to avoid sector gap overhead.
- rasz 8y ago32MB on ordinary 1.44 floppy media by just switching from stepper to voice coil head servomotor https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/23/32mb_on_a_humble_floppy/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/23/32mb_on_a_humble_fl...
- HelloNurse 8y agoModern hard disks achieve higher density through less challenging mechanical requirements: they are sealed, in some cases filled with helium, platters can be very thick and very stiff, heads can be fixed instead of being lowered towards the disk when it is inserted, and for these and other reasons heads can get much closer to the platters and achieve miniaturization levels that are not possible with removable media.
- segfaultbuserr 8y agoRepost my comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501145 One feature of floppy disks is that the recording technology and the format is independent from the physical medium, the limitations are mostly imposed by the disk drive, the encoding and the file system, not the medium itself. Well, this "feature" creates significant compatibility issues as all the vendors created their own proprietary formats, sometimes with patents. As a result, together with the economics of scale, often, the standard format is not the best design, a simpler design that serves as the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, due to this feature, it was already possible to store 1,760 KB of data on a 3-1/2 inch HD floppy on a 1986 Amiga. And in 2000, it was possible to store 32 MiB of data on a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk, by using a SuperDisk LS-240 drive (although random write is sacrificed, the entire floppy must be rewritten if a change is needed, like CD-RWs). I believe the advancements in magnetic recording technology in the past 20 years allows one to achieve even higher capacity on a standard floppy, and it can be as cheap as early floppy drives if mass produced, only that it doesn't make sense to do so.
- roywiggins 8y agozip drives pushed the magnetic disk format really far, the biggest ones got up to 750 MB and then got immediately eaten by CD-RWs and then flash memory
- u801e 8y agoThe early models also had the "click of death" issue where the drive would literally eat the edges of the disk.
- rasz 8y ago>it was already possible to store 1,760 KB of data on a 3-1/2 inch HD floppy on a 1986 Amiga Can you name the 1986 Amiga model capable of such a feat? Because Commodore never made HD floppy controller, and the only HD capable Amiga (4000, 1992) had modified drive spinning at _half_ speed.
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- gattilorenz 8y agoAh the memories... WinImage, rawrite and other floppy tools are an integral part of my youth. I learned so much by not having an internet connection and trying to squeeze different version of Windows (2 and 3) or Linux into bootable disks, just for fun. DMF formatting was one of the best tricks (together with ramdrives where to extract compressed files). I hate floppy disks with a passion (ugh, installing OS/2 was a pain), but I also miss them.
- vasili111 8y agoI remember 5.25 Floppy Disks and when I got 1.44 I thought it had so much space :)
- Bluecobra 8y agoI wish I knew about this back then. I had a PC with no Internet connection as well (paranoid parents). My school had a T1 for Internet in the late 90’s and I remember schlepping back and forth piles of disks and using file splitting programs to save a large file across multiple floppies.
- berbec 8y agoThe way to show you Big D*ck Energy back in the day was the best boot disk. Fitting the most useful programs you could cram onto a single floppy. When we figured out 1.7MB formats, every tech had to go back to the drawing board.
- tracker1 8y agoI remember once rigging a system to boot from floppy, enough to load a zip drive, and had the rest of the OS etc on that zip drive. Had to jump through some hoops to get it all working. Also recall installing AutoCAD 12 on 22 lab PCs from floppy... that was the opposite of fun.