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Article has inaccuracies. The HD floppy is to formatted 1.44MB, not 1.2MB, and unformatted capacity was 2.0MB. People did not program word processors themselv
by SillyUsername 3y ago
Article has inaccuracies.
The HD floppy is to formatted 1.44MB, not 1.2MB, and unformatted capacity was 2.0MB.
People did not program word processors themselves as they didn't exist, typewriters did.
Later, pre disk, magazines type-ins and software on (magnetic) tapes were common means of software distribution.
How to tell me your under 30 without telling me you're under 30 :D
- bazza97 3y ago5.25“ HD floppies were 1.2MB. 3.5" HD floppies were 1.44MB.
- lpfnrobin 3y ago>People did not program word processors themselves as they didn't exist, typewriters did. That's funny. I had to laugh that off. Now the type in magazines at the time were amazing - especially with error checking "co-routines" to make sure you did it right. But there were bugs in printed material that a month or two later you could fix from the errors section. Best use case of a subscription model assuming you didn't want to fix it yourself or redo it all etc... Also as a side to that there was a barcode scanner for the code for a few publications. Fun times.
- NikolaNovak 3y agoI believe floppy 5.25" diskettes with 1.2mb predated the harder but eventually more common 3.5" 1.44mb ones. 5.25 were my first diskettes on a 286 at with 16mhz TURBO whee :-)
- true_religion 3y agoFunny enough the 5.25s were actually floppy. The 3.5s weren’t and I’m not sure why we didn’t call them mini hard disks.
- dsr_ 3y agoInside the 3.5" hard shell, there is a floppy disc. Inside a hard disc drive, there are aluminum or glass discs.
- Someone 3y ago> Funny enough the 5.25s were actually floppy. Everything is relative. Relative to 8 inch floppies, 5.25 inch ones aren’t very floppy. 8 inch ones visually bend under their own weight.
- RetroTechie 3y agoIf you ever come across a damaged 3,5" floppy disk, rip it apart & see, will you? (plz. don't do this with still-good ones). In the meanwhile, I'll have your geek card. Thx!
- jasomill 3y agoPedantically, the PC DOS 3 1/2" HD format is 1440 * 1024 bytes[1], so either 1.47456 MB (SI) or 1.40625 MiB (IEC), though "1.44 MB" was the official IBM designation for the format. [1] 2 sides / disk * 18 tracks / side * 80 sectors / track * 512 bytes / sector = 1,474,560 bytes = 1440 * 1024 bytes
- u801e 3y agoI remember the free space on a 1.44 MB freshly formatted floppy disc under DOS 5.0 was 1,457,664 bytes. I guess the file system metadata used up 16,896 bytes.
- snvzz 3y ago>The HD floppy is to formatted 1.44MB, not 1.2MB, and unformatted capacity was 2.0MB. The unformatted capacity isn't measured in MB. A floppy is analog media. The controller deals with an analog signal from/to the floppy drive, which in turn is translated with the floppy's surface itself through the drive's header. There's a variety of physical formats by which to coerce data into tracks.