6 ms·

>Well one time I was installing a minimal base system of Linux on a friends PC, so that we would have all the necessary utlitities to bring over the rest of the

by rntksi 5y ago

>Well one time I was installing a minimal base system of Linux on a friends PC, so that we would have all the necessary utlitities to bring over the rest of the stuff. His 3 1/2 inch disk was dead, so when had to get the 5 1/4 inch version of the boot/root disk. Too bad that version, having to fit in 1.2M instead of 1.44, didn't have tar Heh ... I wonder how many years forward will people stop knowing what a 3 1/2 and a 5 1/4 disk is

CoastalCoder 5y ago
Or to understand the confusion regarding 3.5" disks being floppies rather than hard disks.
pmontra 5y ago
As in "You 3D printed the Save icon!" ? https://logosatwork.com/you-3d-printed-the-save-icon/ https://logosatwork.com/you-3d-printed-the-save-icon/
hulitu 5y ago
Ah, the good old days. Single density, double density ( 720 kB, 1,44 MB). I heard also of 2.88 MB floppies - never saw one in real life. If i remember correctly 2.88 MB was double density double sided and you needed a special floppy drive.
- bityard 5y ago
  Single-sided: 360 KB, double-sided (or double density): 720 KB, high density: 1.44MB. There were 2.88 MB disks and drives but they never gained much traction, because they were expensive and the PC industry kept promising various "floppy killers" like the ZIP drive.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    The superdisk were what I wish had caught on. They could read HD floppies (though not any 2.88MB formats) and at some iteration were able to treat a single HD floppy as a 32MB(!!) tape drive. IOMega seemed to have better marketing though.
    - devilbunny 5y ago
      I wish Sony had made a serious effort to make MiniDisc a data format. They did make data drives, but they were slow, expensive, and barely available. 140 MB data (in 1993!). Nearly infinite rewrites. Nature of the medium is that bit rot is almost impossible without direct physical damage. I enjoyed them in the twilight of their existence, just before MP3 players started to have reasonable storage capacities and prices (mine were/are all used). And the ones I recorded in 2002 still sound just fine if I play them today. It was a great replacement for cassettes; too bad it never caught on in the US.
      - aidenn0 5y ago
        FWIW Zip was only 1 year later with 100MB (and IMO less durable media). I agree that MD was better, but Sony in the 90s didn't seem to want to do anything that they couldn't completely own themselves. My recollection is that Zip media was also way cheaper than blank MDs, but I don't have any sources for that.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  A quirk of accessibility of low-level formatting meant that you could persuade a 1.44MB disk drive to create a 1.72MB disk reliably, and a 1.76MB disk slightly less reliably. IIRC, Microsoft decided to use the 1.72MB quirk for physical distribution of their software, since it made a significant cost savings in those days before cheap optical media, in those days before network distribution of commercial consunmer software.

by rntksi 5y ago

CoastalCoder 5y ago

Or to understand the confusion regarding 3.5" disks being floppies rather than hard disks.

pmontra 5y ago

As in "You 3D printed the Save icon!" ? https://logosatwork.com/you-3d-printed-the-save-icon/ https://logosatwork.com/you-3d-printed-the-save-icon/

hulitu 5y ago

Ah, the good old days. Single density, double density ( 720 kB, 1,44 MB). I heard also of 2.88 MB floppies - never saw one in real life. If i remember correctly 2.88 MB was double density double sided and you needed a special floppy drive.

bityard 5y ago
Single-sided: 360 KB, double-sided (or double density): 720 KB, high density: 1.44MB. There were 2.88 MB disks and drives but they never gained much traction, because they were expensive and the PC industry kept promising various "floppy killers" like the ZIP drive.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  The superdisk were what I wish had caught on. They could read HD floppies (though not any 2.88MB formats) and at some iteration were able to treat a single HD floppy as a 32MB(!!) tape drive. IOMega seemed to have better marketing though.
  - devilbunny 5y ago
    I wish Sony had made a serious effort to make MiniDisc a data format. They did make data drives, but they were slow, expensive, and barely available. 140 MB data (in 1993!). Nearly infinite rewrites. Nature of the medium is that bit rot is almost impossible without direct physical damage. I enjoyed them in the twilight of their existence, just before MP3 players started to have reasonable storage capacities and prices (mine were/are all used). And the ones I recorded in 2002 still sound just fine if I play them today. It was a great replacement for cassettes; too bad it never caught on in the US.
    - aidenn0 5y ago
      FWIW Zip was only 1 year later with 100MB (and IMO less durable media). I agree that MD was better, but Sony in the 90s didn't seem to want to do anything that they couldn't completely own themselves. My recollection is that Zip media was also way cheaper than blank MDs, but I don't have any sources for that.
dsr_ 5y ago
A quirk of accessibility of low-level formatting meant that you could persuade a 1.44MB disk drive to create a 1.72MB disk reliably, and a 1.76MB disk slightly less reliably. IIRC, Microsoft decided to use the 1.72MB quirk for physical distribution of their software, since it made a significant cost savings in those days before cheap optical media, in those days before network distribution of commercial consunmer software.