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I have a BBC Model B and a BBC Master, both with 5¼" drives. They were used a lot in British schools, and hung around into the early 1990s -- schools had invest

I have a BBC Model B and a BBC Master, both with 5¼" drives. They were used a lot in British schools, and hung around into the early 1990s -- schools had invested in software for them, but didn't have the budget to replace them. My dad had an IBM 286 clone, which is the oldest computer I can remember using (Captain Comic!). That had both 5¼" and 90mm¹ floppy drives, but we almost always used the latter. All these machines were very expensive at the time, and not very common for home use. Are there any popular old computers (Commodore, Amiga, Mac etc) that used a 5¼" drive? My impression is everything was on cassette, until 90mm drives became cheap enough for home use. (Even the BBC machines sold for home use usually used cassettes; the disk drive was a separate, expensive purchase -- double the cost of the computer itself!²) ¹ Yes, I'm that much of a metric purist. ² http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/BBCBI3.html http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/BBCBI3....

myself248 6y ago
> Are there any popular old computers (Commodore, Amiga, Mac etc) that used a 5¼" drive? My impression is everything was on cassette, until 90mm drives became cheap enough for home use. Your impression is very much mistaken. The Commodore 64 and Apple // were both equipped with 5 1/4" drives quite frequently, as were the Atari 400/800, the Tandy CoCo, etc. The TI 99/4A was usually found with cartridges and tapes, but could be equipped with a peripheral expansion box including a 5 1/4" drive. Anecdotally as a kid growing up in the 80s, 5 1/4"s were everywhere and I didn't see my first 90mm disk until years later.
- ansible 6y ago
  Yes, the 5.25in drives were phasing out by 1990, in part because of the IBM PS/2 series computers. It wasn't uncommon to buy software that had the option of either (or in some cases both) in the early 1990's. What was really rare were the 8in floppy drives. Those were mostly on more expensive business systems (Tandy Model 2 for example) and minicomputers. I don't think I ever got to use a system that had those.
moonbug 6y ago
> 90mm Ah, technical correctness, the best sort of correctness.
rjsw 6y ago
The Apple II usually had 5¼" drives. They were available for 8-bit Atari systems and the Commodore 64 too.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Are there any popular old computers (Commodore, Amiga, Mac etc) that used a 5¼” drive? Yes. Pretty much all PCs prior to the PS/2 era (so, the IBM PC, XT, and AT, and clones thereof, but not the PS/1, which, oddly, was later than the PS/2) came with them as internal drives (except the lower-end model of the PCjr). They were also common accessories to the Apple II/IIe/II+ computers (and I think the IIc, though I never saw either one of those in the wild).
tssva 6y ago
The prevalence of 5 1/4" drives in 80's home computers appears to have been very regional. In Europe they seem to have been very rare and as you stated most home users utilized cassette tape storage. At the time 5 1/4" drives were less expensive in the US and US households had significantly higher median incomes than those in many parts of Europe which led to much wider adoption of floppy drives in the US. In the 80's we had three family computers with 5 1/4" drives. A TRS-80 Model I, IBM PC XT and near the end of the 80's a Gateway 386 system. I believe the 386 system also included a 3 1/2" drive. In addition I had my own Commodore 64 with a 5 1/4" floppy. All of my friends, which was a decent number, who had a C64 also had floppies. If you went into a store there was little to no software available on tape for any systems with the exception of Radio Shacks where they had tape based software for Tandy Coco's which were not particularly popular systems.

myself248 6y ago

> Are there any popular old computers (Commodore, Amiga, Mac etc) that used a 5¼" drive? My impression is everything was on cassette, until 90mm drives became cheap enough for home use. Your impression is very much mistaken. The Commodore 64 and Apple // were both equipped with 5 1/4" drives quite frequently, as were the Atari 400/800, the Tandy CoCo, etc. The TI 99/4A was usually found with cartridges and tapes, but could be equipped with a peripheral expansion box including a 5 1/4" drive. Anecdotally as a kid growing up in the 80s, 5 1/4"s were everywhere and I didn't see my first 90mm disk until years later.

ansible 6y ago
Yes, the 5.25in drives were phasing out by 1990, in part because of the IBM PS/2 series computers. It wasn't uncommon to buy software that had the option of either (or in some cases both) in the early 1990's. What was really rare were the 8in floppy drives. Those were mostly on more expensive business systems (Tandy Model 2 for example) and minicomputers. I don't think I ever got to use a system that had those.

moonbug 6y ago

> 90mm Ah, technical correctness, the best sort of correctness.

rjsw 6y ago

The Apple II usually had 5¼" drives. They were available for 8-bit Atari systems and the Commodore 64 too.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Are there any popular old computers (Commodore, Amiga, Mac etc) that used a 5¼” drive? Yes. Pretty much all PCs prior to the PS/2 era (so, the IBM PC, XT, and AT, and clones thereof, but not the PS/1, which, oddly, was later than the PS/2) came with them as internal drives (except the lower-end model of the PCjr). They were also common accessories to the Apple II/IIe/II+ computers (and I think the IIc, though I never saw either one of those in the wild).

tssva 6y ago

The prevalence of 5 1/4" drives in 80's home computers appears to have been very regional. In Europe they seem to have been very rare and as you stated most home users utilized cassette tape storage. At the time 5 1/4" drives were less expensive in the US and US households had significantly higher median incomes than those in many parts of Europe which led to much wider adoption of floppy drives in the US. In the 80's we had three family computers with 5 1/4" drives. A TRS-80 Model I, IBM PC XT and near the end of the 80's a Gateway 386 system. I believe the 386 system also included a 3 1/2" drive. In addition I had my own Commodore 64 with a 5 1/4" floppy. All of my friends, which was a decent number, who had a C64 also had floppies. If you went into a store there was little to no software available on tape for any systems with the exception of Radio Shacks where they had tape based software for Tandy Coco's which were not particularly popular systems.