IBM
Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk
Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk
#Origins #3.5in #Floppy #Disk
“Tech Tangents”
I got sucked into researching the origins of the 3.5in floppy disk after looking into one of my recent HP drives. That sent me on a long quest to better understand the format and finding out some very interesting things I didn’t even know existed!
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:43 Precursor…
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The 3.5” was never really all that floppy..
Great job on the thorough research.
is it just me or does the audio cut out at the 4:30 minute mark?
Interestingly disk drives for the Apple II weren’t an option until 1978 and early adopters had to use a cassette. 1:31
Great video. ( I watched it without ads using FreeTube.). I grew up in this era and this was a well done, well researched, well presented video. Good for you, amigo. Top drawer.
The rigid floppy was invented in Hungary in 1973, patented there in 1974 and Sony have stolen the idea. Google for BRG MCD-1.
Great hat
The ACT Apricot PC/Xi. a British make of business computer (built in Scotland near where the IBM-PS/2 was later built), was an early adopter of the Sony 3.5" microfloppy in 1983. Later, they had to go back and adopt the 5.25", after they went fully IBM-compatible, just for compatibility with the majority software! A backwards step. The 1983 portable computer was available from about £2,5k, probably about US$4k at the time. It used the unusual IBM-System-34-DD format, similar to the US-built "Sirius 1/ Victor 9000" (I believe) which ACT had imported a year earlier in 1982.
Cool hat! – from the IBM Logo Store.
Nerdy.
And young people these days seem to think that Sony formats all failed.
When I was a youngster growing up and first getting into computers in the late 80s, I always used to call 3.5-inch disks "hard disks" lol. Kinda makes sense, ya know, because the 5.25-inch ones would literally flop around when you held them…and the computers I used back then usually did not have an actual hard drive.
3:14 $9000 in 1981???? Ouch, you could get a pretty nice car for that much back then, I'm sure.
Over $30,000 today, accounting for inflation!
Fantastic video well researched and put together, I didn't know about the Jonos system and very much looking forward to that video.
Looking forward to that Jonos video. Thanks for your super deep dive on this!
Bravo!
For a closer look at the 3.5 inch diskette's many innovative design features, see my video "The genius engineering of the 3½ inch floppy disk".
Man… Hindsight really plays a big part in this. Sony was a goo company back then! They are not IP chasing companies to try and sat afloat. You would thing a corp who is more mainstream compatible to move with he times… The recent HD-DVD vs Bluray constant would have been this linchpin. My first day in the "computer world" was 3.5 disk drive systems. They missed out on a lot…
Heh heh, 90cm.
A little more on the Apple connection: According to a story by Andy Hertzfeld, the Mac was originally supposed to use Apple's proprietary "Twiggy" 5.25" drives because traditional 5.25" disks couldn't hold the system software. (If you look at the metal frame inside a Mac 128k, 512k, or Plus, its front hole is big enough for a 5.25" disk and latching mechanism. In fact, at least two prototype Macs with Twiggy drives have surfaced over the years.) However, production yields of working drives were very low, so low they threatened the Lisa's launch date. George Crow, an engineer Apple hired from HP, was all-in on the Sony drives and showed one to Steve Jobs. Jobs loved the concept, but wanted Apple to develop their own 3.5" microfloppy drives. In less than a year. The Mac and disk drive teams started work on their own drive, but secretly kept working with Sony. (One time when a Sony engineer was visiting Apple, they had to hide in a closet while Jobs made a surprise visit.) Eventually the disk drive team had to admit it would take too long to make their own drive, and they had to come clean with the deception. Every retail Mac launched with a 400k, single sided Sony drive.
This is really fascinating. I find it interesting that even in early episodes of The Computer Chronicles they talk about the ongoing transition from 5.25 disks to 3.5 disks. Since the show started in 1981, it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's interesting nonetheless. Cool history piece. I am curious to hear more about this Jonos Computers some time. I think I will start doing some digging of my own into them to see what I can see.
The CPT Phoenix Jr. word processor (that I've got some videos on), released at some point in the early '80s, uses one of those "double height" floppy drives, but it has a standard Shugart interface and is made by NEC. It's wild to see how fast things change. The unit I had my hands on was dated from around 1985, but as you know it's hard to nail down a launch date for these things, lol.
A gem of a show 😀