The genius engineering of the 3½ inch floppy disk

A look at the brilliant physical design and engineering of the 3.5" diskette.

Contains clips from:

Datamaster Ease of Use: A Documentation Case Study (1982)

Create Macintosh Plus disks from downloaded disk images

HP-150 touchscreen computer with Bob Vila 1985

#floppy #diskette #retro

[albear]

Nice! I loved the examples of ruining those crap 5 1/4 inch floppies! I always hated those things even seeing them for the first time as a kid in the mid 80's 😁 And just last week while decluttering a bit I found a never opened 40 pack of Staples brand neon 3.5" and a 10 pack of plain black floppies. Holy crap! I must have bought those around 1995 or so.

[Mnogojazyk]

I used 3 1/2-inch diskettes for over two decades and I didn’t know how great they were. Thanks!

[juanignacioaschura]

The 3.5" diskette must have been one of the very few technologies released by Sony that was NOT proprietary.

[EannaButler]

Ha! The "This must be a hard disk" - that was me, 1987!!

[vivekgovekar]

HP had a touchscreen PC in ‘83. Respect!

[shannonrhoads]

I had fun with an old 2008 beige minitower case I put a modern gaming system in. One of the things I did was install a 3.5" floppy with a 34-pin to USB adapter. The adapter has a type-a connector, so I also bought a PCIe USB card with an internal Type A port. Still easier than running a ribbon cable to a controller card!

[brantisonfire]

Even back in my sixth grade keyboard typing class in 1999 was using 1.44 disks to store our lessons on. We would write our names on the label and the teacher would collect them at the end of class for us to get back and start back where we left off with the typing program. In 2004 my computer applications class was using Zip disks to save our work onto.

[MatoNupai]

I loved the 3.5 inch floppy. The MFM FORMAT with the Commodore 1581 drive was much better than the GCR FORMAT used on the commodore 1541 and 1571 5.25 floppy.

I even used a 3.5 inch disc when putting around with golf ball and putter. Since the 3.5 was smaller than a hole ona golf course and the rigid outside of the disc had a good sound effect so I could practice putting in the living room or in the yard without needing to go to the golf course

[edgarwalk]

A friend of mine had an LS 120. I thought it would be the "floppy killer" at the time, but it was too late to beat zip disks, and CDR/RW.

I was always amazed at how long the 1.44mb floppy lasted. Not the floppys themselves, but the technology. They even stayed beyond Zip/LS120; and reading the comments, some poople are still using them for useful work! If I remember correctly, the last time I had a computer with a floppy was around 2004, when I got broadband for the first time too.

[joez.]

The coolest thing about the LS120 is it read and wrote to regular floppies *much* faster than a standard drive. Being in IT and constantly working with boot disks, I was a HUGE fan. Had an LS120 drive in my desktop, an external USB drive that was my favorite, and even a Superdisk module (or whatever those were called) for my Dell Precision laptop.

[smoguli]

When I was in College and didn't have a lot of money, I used to buy Single Sided Double Density 3.5" floppies and drill a hole to convert them to Double Sided High Density. Never had any problem with those.

[unfundedopportunities]

I never heard of the 120MB super disk before this video, only Zip disks. Thanks for that!
USB made all of this disks obsolete.
A good video would be how to clean one of these drives. This insides can fill up with dust and hair. I've cleaned several several.

[domlimited]

I know this is off topic on the Bob Vila Show home again They featured that HP-150 touchscreen personal computer with HP 9121 dual drives,

[zacherynuk]

I'd like to add two novel things. 1) 720k disks in the 90's could be converted to HD disks by drilling a hole and would be fine if from a decent brand. As they were all the same, just artificially crippled with no HD hole. 2) 5 1/4 disks often had a longer 'shelf life' as their sectors were further apart meaning that you didn't get magnetic bit creep or external electromagnetic degrading as easily.

[ArmWrestlingOverdose]

amazing video, I just hated seeing all those disks being destroyed, it's my childhood's nightmare that still haunts me to this day :P

[emag]

Still use these almost daily at work, older machines have them for parameter settings..

[rillloudmother]

1:17 they had computers with those at babbage's or egghead in the middle 80s and we thought they were hard disks since our computers at school used 5.25" floppy floppy disks.

[YakobtoshiNakamoto]

Oh shit! So I'm 28 and just old enough to remember using the 3.5" floppy disk. I never realised though that the 5" floppy disks were literally floppy like that 😂😂 3:51

[TuttleCapt]

I had a Nikon digital camera which saved to the 3.5 disk, circa mid- late 90s

[SetoPerrier]

In South Africa, unlike in the USA, the word “stiffy” had no meaning until it was used to describe computer diskettes. It made sense: first came “floppy” discs, and then followed “stiffy” discs. I kid you not. Ask any South African who is old enough to remember diskettes. 😊