5 ms·

I'm pretty sure I had one of Sierra's King Quest games on a series of 12 disks (though they might have been 5.25" 512kb floppies). You'd walk from one screen to

by macksd 5y ago

I'm pretty sure I had one of Sierra's King Quest games on a series of 12 disks (though they might have been 5.25" 512kb floppies). You'd walk from one screen to another and be met with "Please insert disk 8 of 12".

walrus01 5y ago
Most of the games I remember from that time would only run from an installed folder on a HDD, and came with an install script to unpack a multi-disk-spanned compressed set of files from the floppies. This was presuming that you had something like a 40 to 60MB hard drive in your PC, or larger, and wanted to dedicate 10MB of it to the new expensive game you just purchased.
- coding123 5y ago
  Yep, remember that time. It is completely nuts to me that those same games that were 13 "the hard floppies" that took hours to install can now run within a few seconds of visiting a web page, let alone RUN in said web page.
coding123 5y ago
I could be totally off my rocker, but weren't the 5.25 1.2 MB?
- walrus01 5y ago
  The original IBM PC standard for a double sided 5.25 disk had a formatted (FAT12???) capacity of 360KB. By around 1987 this was replaced by the 1.2MB standard, and by 1992 or so the 3.5" floppy was the preferred format. For a long time any reasonably specced x86 clone desktop PC would come with both a 5.25 1.2MB and 3.5 1.44MB drive mounted in it.
  - gattilorenz 5y ago
    > 1992 or so the 3.5" floppy was the preferred format 3.5" disks/drives could also be 720KB, I have an 8086 from Olivetti with a 360KB and a 720 KB drive. I know 2880 kbyte disks and drives existed too (they used to be mentioned in every BIOS) , but I never saw a computer with one.
    - geocrasher 5y ago
      As I recall the 2.88mb drives (and disks) were prohibitively expensive. And around that time, the CD-ROM came out and pretty much ruined things for the 2.88mb disks.
      - cout 5y ago
        But you couldn't write to CD-ROM, so they weren't a full replacement. What killed the 2.88 MB disk IMO was Iomega's Zip disk. By the time I was in high school, they were commonplace and moving to replace the floppy disk for carrying files around in your pocket. For larger files we did get CD-R and later CD-RW, but they were never convenient for e.g. saving your spreadsheets and word processing files. Eventually USB came along, and soon after that thumb drives, and that was the final nail in the coffin for both Zip disks and floppies.
        bzzzt 5y ago
        CD-ROM was a fine replacement for software distribution though. There was a 3,5" floppy compatible "SuperDisk" standard which could store up to 120Mb per disk. But the Zip disk already had a big market share then. I remember using QIC-80 tapes for "software sharing" - since those drives were reasonably cheap and could be wired to an existing floppy disk controller.
        gattilorenz 5y ago
        > QIC-80 120 Mb at floppy drive speeds? That must have been painfully slow...
    - canada_dry 5y ago

by macksd 5y ago

walrus01 5y ago

Most of the games I remember from that time would only run from an installed folder on a HDD, and came with an install script to unpack a multi-disk-spanned compressed set of files from the floppies. This was presuming that you had something like a 40 to 60MB hard drive in your PC, or larger, and wanted to dedicate 10MB of it to the new expensive game you just purchased.

coding123 5y ago
Yep, remember that time. It is completely nuts to me that those same games that were 13 "the hard floppies" that took hours to install can now run within a few seconds of visiting a web page, let alone RUN in said web page.

coding123 5y ago

I could be totally off my rocker, but weren't the 5.25 1.2 MB?

walrus01 5y ago
The original IBM PC standard for a double sided 5.25 disk had a formatted (FAT12???) capacity of 360KB. By around 1987 this was replaced by the 1.2MB standard, and by 1992 or so the 3.5" floppy was the preferred format. For a long time any reasonably specced x86 clone desktop PC would come with both a 5.25 1.2MB and 3.5 1.44MB drive mounted in it.
- gattilorenz 5y ago
  > 1992 or so the 3.5" floppy was the preferred format 3.5" disks/drives could also be 720KB, I have an 8086 from Olivetti with a 360KB and a 720 KB drive. I know 2880 kbyte disks and drives existed too (they used to be mentioned in every BIOS) , but I never saw a computer with one.
  - geocrasher 5y ago
    As I recall the 2.88mb drives (and disks) were prohibitively expensive. And around that time, the CD-ROM came out and pretty much ruined things for the 2.88mb disks.
    - cout 5y ago
      But you couldn't write to CD-ROM, so they weren't a full replacement. What killed the 2.88 MB disk IMO was Iomega's Zip disk. By the time I was in high school, they were commonplace and moving to replace the floppy disk for carrying files around in your pocket. For larger files we did get CD-R and later CD-RW, but they were never convenient for e.g. saving your spreadsheets and word processing files. Eventually USB came along, and soon after that thumb drives, and that was the final nail in the coffin for both Zip disks and floppies.
      - bzzzt 5y ago
        CD-ROM was a fine replacement for software distribution though. There was a 3,5" floppy compatible "SuperDisk" standard which could store up to 120Mb per disk. But the Zip disk already had a big market share then. I remember using QIC-80 tapes for "software sharing" - since those drives were reasonably cheap and could be wired to an existing floppy disk controller.
        gattilorenz 5y ago
        > QIC-80 120 Mb at floppy drive speeds? That must have been painfully slow...
  - canada_dry 5y ago