Origins of the 3.5in Floppy Disk

[@LGR]

Phenomenal work on this one, Shelby! Props for following all the rabbits down their various rabbit holes and then seeking out that rare hardware to get to the bottom of the story. I love seeing commonly accepted tech history being expanded upon and corrected like this, especially with something as iconic as the 3.5" disk.

[@TechTangents]

Thanks! This one had a *ton* of rabbit holes I even cut for the video! Like technically the "Computer Devices DOT" was the first PC compatible-ish computer with 3.5in drives! But it was fascinating to put all the pieces in place for this one and finally understand how it all played out. And I cannot believe the right-place-right-time with the Jonos to actually get one and am really looking forward to shedding more light soon!

[@ReggieArford]

@@TechTangents And then there's this: The Apple LISA (!) used 3.5" floppies, just like its successor the Macintosh did.

[@peti7788]

@LGR The first 3,5 disk was developed by Marcell Jánosi at the Budapest Rádiótechnikai Gyár (BRG) in 1973. The disk and the associated BRG MCD-1 type drive received domestic patent protection in 1974. The BRG factory negotiated with Sony for a long time, but in the end Sony did not wait and meanwhile developed its own version. But Sony took over the basic idea from BRG.

[@greggv8]

@@ReggieArford Lisa used 5.25" "Twiggy" drives that use disks the same size as Shugart 5.25" drives but they're not compatible. Since Lisa was a sales flop, Apple revamped the computer as the Macintosh XL with 3.5" drives and the Macintosh System ported to it.

[@ReggieArford]

@@greggv8 Really? The two Lisas I own both have OEM 3.5" drives. The documentation I've got shows 3.5" drives. The documentation I've seen shows 3.5" drives. KZbin videos I've seen all have 3.5' drives. Please cite your source(s).

[@ssalient]

The 3.5” disk will probably never be forgotten as it’s the universal save-icon in almost all programs.

[@AntonioBarba_TheKaneB]

smartphone and web apps don't have save icons anymore, they save automatically, so I'm not sure about that!

[@the_kombinator]

And they fly well when thrown ;)

[@itsagundamFAN6969]

Smart phones auto save and don’t use the Icon, sorry bud your a boomer

[@the_kombinator]

@@itsagundamFAN6969 And what if he is? You're implying that it has some negative connotations like a sex offender or some Marxist.

[@JaredConnell]

​@@the_kombinatorwow that took a strange turn.

[@dv_vid]

When I was a teenager in 1995, I was given a Compaq SLT/286. I took it apart and messed up the floppy drive which was a Citizen customized for that laptop. I bought a standard 34 pin TEAC drive to replace it but the cable had 20 pins. I spent the summer of 1995 going to the library to research the signals and bought a logic probe from RadioShack to reverse engineer the pins. Then I took the 20 pin ribbon cable and mapped it into a 34 pin receptacle.

[@PrinceAlhorian]

Here in South Africa we called the 8 inch and 5.25 inch disks "Floppy" disks, because they were so flexible. The 3.5 inch we called "Stiffies" because of the hardend plastic chassis.

[@eddiehimself]

I do think it's funny how it was developed by Sony, who originally defined it in metric as being 90 mm wide but we then called it 3.5" to fit in with the convention of 8" and 5.25" floppy drives lol.

[@JamesTK]

Yeah, an actual 3.5" floppy wouldn't even be compatible... 🤣

[@2dfx]

Americans gonna American I guess...

[@thisnthat3530]

On all the boxes of 3.5" floppies I saw where there was french text it was labelled as an 89mm floppy. 89mm is closer to 3.5" than 90mm so maybe it was actually designed as 3.5" to begin with?

[@AGFuzzyPancake]

I am always floored when I give people measurements in millimeters or centimeters in the US and get replies like "what's that in inches? I don't know metric". These are generally people over 40. I worked at a printing company once, and we would measure things down to 16ths of inches. The spite Americans have for metric measurement knows no limits.

[@quayzar1]

@@AGFuzzyPancake Unfortunately when Ronald Reagan killed our plans to fully switch to metric a lot of people dug in their heels. I'm 35 and was taught metric primarily in school but once I became an adult there was little sold here with metric measurements. Even tape measurers are not usually printed with metric and sae which is ridiculous. On the other hand I drive a Ford and every bolt on it is in metric.

[@IcyEyeG]

The most fascinating thing to me about your research is the relatively short window of time in which everything transpired. I got my first PC in 1993, and as a kid I thought 3.5in floppies were a recent innovation.

[@Staren01]

I got my first computer around the same time 93/94. I knew that 3.5in drives weren't that new, but I didn't think they were that old either. I was 11 and the 5.5in floppy was still very common in the older school computers. 3.5in discs were the undisputed standard that you knew any current system would be able to read. Where I went to school a lot of classrooms were just starting to replace the Apple IIs with IBM compatibles that had 3.5in drives.

[@dfirth224]

1980s office computers used 8" floppy disks. Looked identical to 5.25" only larger. And they WERE floppy if you waved them like a sheet of paper.

[@paulgray1699]

@@dfirth224 Hard sectored

[@cericat]

@@Staren01 My school got their first Apple IIs (I believe the IIe specifically) in 1989 yes very late to the party but public schools, my first home computer had both 5.25" and 3.5" which was a trend for me throughout the past 30 years I still like to try to have working disk drives since there's still a lot of old media out there that needs backing up, pity newer boards often ditch the FDC so I need to look into alternatives since PCIe slots are such a dang premium still.

[@IrishCarney]

The computer industry moved so fast in the late 70s and 80s. Compared to then, it's been very stable for a long time now.

[@FooneTuring]

I'm frankly disappointed this video isn't just a biography of me! But I all seriousness, awesome research!

[@TechTangents]

At least you got a cameo! And thanks! It was a lot of work to make sure I really nailed the research on this one.

[@NJRoadfan]

Awaiting the Jonos video. Never heard of them before! One rabbit hole I went down was to figure out the origin of the modern "half height" 3.5" floppy drive with integrated face plate.... aka the "standard" drives we all use today. Best I could pin it down, it was made by TEAC first in 1987. I think Epson was another contender here as well. Chinon came close, they were shipping the slightly taller drives with the Amiga 2000 in 1987. Keep in mind that IBM never originally sold drives in that style. The PS/2 had separate face plates (including the official 3.5" drives for the PC AT). Same goes with the early Amigas and the Atari ST. Apple had the fancy motorized eject drives and they never used face plates either, always preferring a molded slot in the computer's case.

[@nickwallette6201]

Woah woah... what do you know about official 3.5" drives for the AT? I've been trying to figure out if one ever existed, or if it's just a slew of aftermarket products trying to fill the void?

[@NJRoadfan]

@@nickwallette6201 Official IBM product. They used the 720k drives that were shipped in the PC Convertible with an adapter board. They offered kits for both the 5170 AT and earlier PC XT with matching face plates and fit a 5.25" half height drive bay.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@NJRoadfan Huh! Man I would love to see that. All I've ever seen is retrofits with the typical 3.5-to-5.25" conversion plate.

[@dereinzigeweg]

Boot up floopy seek on a 3.5" is still one of my favorite childhood sounds. Thank you Sony, thank you TT.

[@MeriaDuck]

And the dreaded seeking from 0 to 80 / head slamming on a bad disk still haunts me 😂. Or the slight incompatibility between mine and my friends, so it was🤞 to see if the shared documents survived the trip between us.

[@herrbonk3635]

While the 5 inch diskette drive seek sound is a favorite from my youth (not childhood).

[@SobieRobie]

Dig deeper about this Jonos company. There is a big chance to meet people which were working for the company. I love the stories from S100 era. It's like learning about first pioneers ;)

[@parkerlreed]

Holy crap, that hardware reveal is gorgeous.

[@dimbulb23]

I must admit the 3741 at 1:09 was snazzy. I worked for IBM from '68 to '98... always in the field with the machines in our customer's businesses. I don't get very worked up when it comes to old iron. When you deal with all those generations of technology it is better not to linger on the past. It's better to embrace the changes and hold onto your hat. When I think back over those 30 years, I remember the people I worked with, the bugs I never fixed (usually software bugs) and the tough bugs I fixed that others couldn't. It wasn't about the hardware or software that was pretty but about trying to fix what was wrong with it.

[@St0rmcrash]

Awesome history video! I've read that the Amstrad CPC ended up using the 3 inch drives because they basically picked them up at a bargain after the Sony 3.5in disk won. Really hope the next video is about the Jonos!

[@imranahmad2733]

I remember the Amstrad PCW 8256 and the Sinclair Spectrum +3 had them aswell, the disks where pretty durable too compared to the 3.5" disks.

[@synthnerd4539]

I think Casio used them on a thing or two in the mid 80s as well in their foray into semi pro music gear. Although I always knew them as 2.8" QuikDisks?

[@k0mori_yt]

The Sega SC-3000 computer, released in 1983, also used 3-inch disks via the SF-7000 expansion device.

[@TheWeepingCorpse]

@@imranahmad2733 i was writting a speccy +3 game and discovered that disks formatted on an amstrad pcw 8256 would read and write much faster on the speccy than those formatted on a speccy, i never discovered why, the project was cancelled.

[@EgoShredder]

Yep and also in the other Amstrad owned model the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K +3. I wonder if TT will do an episode about those 3" disks?

[@tomahzo]

I thought this was well-documented history. Fascinating how stuff like this can become as exciting as some kind of crime drama ;D. It's like "WHO DUNNIT!? WHO MARKETED THE FIRST 3.5" FLOPPY DRIVE!?" . Crazy! Excellent video!

[@vwestlife]

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".

[@damouze]

Very interesting video! I remember my dad getting our first PC. It came originally shipped with two 5.25" floppy drives, but one of them was soon replaced with a DSDD 3.5" drive and later on with even a DSHD floppy drive. Anyway, that PC was ultimately replaced by a new PC, a 486SX if I'm not mistaken and the PC was handed over to me. It continued to serve me well for a couple of years, until I replaced it with an AT from the same brand. By that time it not only had two floppy drives, but it had an "external" MFM/RLL (can't remember which) 20MB hard disk made by Olivetti, that would have fitted perfectly in one of the floppy drive slots, were it not for the fact that it had a tendency to get very hot. You could say that this was my very first adventure in PC modding ;-). I still use 3.5" floppy drives on a regular basis. But it's not really on a PC (although I have a PC with an LS-120 drive for data transfer purposes). Instead it's on an MSX. That MSX is so maxed out that it has more RAM and more storage than my original PC ever did...

[@edwardhasted3849]

Fascinating and thank you for all your sleuthing. We started selling ACT Apricot Pcs in September 1983 which had single or double floppies in the base (non-HD) models. From memory they were Sony units and the smaller height versions. Clearly ACT had been talking to Sony for some time...

[@thereallantesh]

Great video. You really went in depth with your research. I really enjoyed this one.

[@brentboswell1294]

In the 1980's, a hard drive more than doubled the price of a PC. It was common for computers to have dual disk drives, one for booting the computer up, and later holding the disk for the program being run, and the second one for holding your saved data. In the transition phase from 5.25" to 3.5", it was common to replace the B: drive with a 3.5" model, often with an adapter kit, that bridged the gap to allow it to fit in a half height 5.25" drive bay. When they started going into PC's, the drives had a Shugart data interface, but with a row of pins instead of the edge connectors that 5.25" and 8" drives used (there were, of course, adapters for this problem...). The IBM PC/XT/AT BIOS didn't really have a 3.5" option, which is another reason why the 3.5" drive was usually the B: drive (the only thing that you needed the BIOS for was booting the system-once it was booted, the operating system could bridge the gap once again). There was third-party software that you could run to tell the operating system the proper parameters for the B: drive to work properly and use the full capacity of the drive. Many IBM PC clones had 3.5" disk options in their BIOS, and shipped with a floppy controller that natively understood the 3.5" drives. The IBM PS/2 systems were the first IBM desktop systems designed for the 3.5" floppy.

[@IrishCarney]

Even the floppy disk drives hugely increased the price of a computer. That's why, especially in the early to mid 80s, going by cassette was a major option. The original IBM PC even had that as a starter option but it was basically never used; I think only a single diagnostic app ever came out on cassette.

[@jimmywubs7381]

Great job, guy. I was honestly expecting this to be some half-assed KZbin documentary and I am glad I watched it to the end. Kudos to you on a job well done!

[@blehblah9942]

Very interesting and informative, you should rename it to "Origins of the Save Game Icon" though, it would give you a quadrillion views from all those youngsters that never held one of these :P

[@MeriaDuck]

If you show one to such youngster, they ask if it is a 3d printed save icon 😂

[@mattnordsell9760]

It's always interesting how so many things have been innovated by Sony that we don't tend to think about. As you mentioned, they were the ones who developed the 3.5" floppy, they also worked with Philips to develop the CD, they developed the Beta tape that lost to the VHS tape, they were even the ones that created the Blu-ray. These are just a few that come to mind that we don't often associate with them.

[@Biomancer81]

Most of the time Sony likes to have their products end to end proprietary, and completely under their control, and so certain formats that they created, even if superior failed. This isnt always the case, as in this product or blu-ray, but you rarely think about Betamax, MemoryStick, or Minidisc.

[@juanignacioaschura9437]

If only Sony wasn't so inclined into making things proprietary, they would have been even far more influential

[@RebeccaTurner-ny1xx]

@@Biomancer81 And the Elcaset!

[@TassieLorenzo]

VHS is somehow derived from Sony's U-Matic tape system, isn't it? At least that's what Sony claimed on their advertising at the time. The slogan was something along the lines of "Betamax: We created the competition and now we've bettered it". Please correct me if I'm wrong or the slogan is just a sign of Sony hubris! There certainly seems to be nothing Sony likes more than to create a proprietary format!

[@IrishCarney]

Sony & Philips also co-developed the standard audio cassette. When it came time to develop a digital successor to that small enclosed portable analog format (like digital CDs replacing analog records) Sony & Philips disagreed on strategy. Philips, fearing format churn would alienate customers, wanted back compatibility with analog tapes, hence Digital Compact Cassette. Sony, fearing long fast-forward/rewind would alienate customers used to CDs, wanted instant access to any track; hence MiniDisc. The format war likely killed both.

[@paulalmquist5683]

Well done. Having lived through several decades of computer history I find it quite interesting to learn details that I had not heard about when it happened.

[@joemelnick]

Thank you for the video. I purchased an Atari 520ST in 1985 with a 3.5" floppy drive, Definitely a step up from the 5.25" of the Apple II and the Cassette Tape Drive of the TI-99/4A.

[@TastyBusiness]

Fascinating, and well researched! I dig this format, and I totally want to see more of that Jonos Courier. Nicely done!

[@LukeRichardson1981]

Great video. It's funny to me that the one that wasn't even floppy became the best known of all of the 'floppy' formats, so much so that it's still the default icon for 'Save' on computers 40 years after its introduction.

[@Raguleader]

The disk itself is still floppy, as you can see at a few points in the video. It's the protective cassette that isn't floppy. In contrast, a Hard Disk uses non-flexible platters instead of floppy media.

[@Papierzeit]

Nice video, well put together and then there were the 3-inch floppy disks I had used to these others in my childhood as well.

[@meatpockets]

Interestingly disk drives for the Apple II weren’t an option until 1978 and early adopters had to use a cassette. 1:31

[@helldog3105]

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.

[@stevekristoff4365]

Very well researched. From someone who lived through all those years and used cassette, 8", 5.25", 3.5" (as well as 'enterprise' 3420, 3480/3490, and many others) I do not believe I ever even heard of Jonos which was/is interesting. Their market must have been targeted differently than the two 'worlds' I straddled (data centers/ large business and home / soho). So thanks for the bringing that small piece of history to my attention. :)

[@DarkFiber23]

Good historical research work, Shelby! This was a wonderful watch.

[@GeoffreySwales]

This is a great video. All the additional research has definitely paid off. Well done!

[@static-san]

The very earliest IBM PC JX computers (only sold in Australia, NZ and Japan) had 40 track 3.5" floppies. But that was because the controller didn't know how to half-step the disk head! The disks were actually 720k disks.

[@DeetexSeraphine]

Why am I not surprised to learn that, this now industry standard format was originally conceived by Sony, because they wanted their own product for a Full Stack... Fascinating video, regardless!

[@tomschmidt381]

Having used all three formats over the years thanks for the trip down memory lane.

[@TJDunaway]

I don't know how youtube kept this from me this long. You always talk about cool stuff Shelby!

[@Thomill]

Thanks!

[@DanielMReck]

Looking forward to that Jonos video. Thanks for your super deep dive on this!

[@davechisholm9670]

Fun fact for the unwary - the early 3.5" floppy media were designed and manufactured with a round-ended pill capsule shaped window in the metal shutter for the moving R/W heads to operate through to contact the magnetic surface, which was soon altered to the normal rectangular window most people would be familiar with. You can see both types of shutter window in your video. The trap for the unwary, is that the head clearance in later 3.5" drives expects a rectangular window in the shutter, so if an old disk with the round-ended window is inserted in a later drive, the shutter will likely foul the heads and upon eject, damage them or even rip them out of the drive!

[@saifal-badri]

Amazing work, thanks for documenting all of this, enjoyed every second

[@Vinpupx1]

Happy to see all those floppy disks you bought finally being shown off. Great video!

[@neildusting4114]

Having spent most of the 80's & early 90's manufacturing diskettes of all sizes this was a nice blast from the past.

[@Petertronic]

Brilliant research! I've enjoyed seeing you work on the Jonos computer on the livestreams, can't wait for a video on it.

[@waynesharp1690]

I've got an old sharp word processor that uses a belt driven 3.5" floppy drive that uses 720k disks. The drive didn't work when I got it but I put a new belt on and it's working now.

[@laurentitolledo1838]

love the sound of those floppy drives when reading from/writing data to the disk...

[@__drew9576]

This is a really cool video. I think it would be cool to see a video going over every storage medium sony created as it feels like they have made a bunch.

[@AaronOfMpls]

Oh yah. Including audiovisual media too: U-matic videocassette, Betamax videocassette, Elcaset audio tape, Compact Disc (with Philips), 3½" floppy diskette, Betacam videocassette,* Video 8 (and later Hi-8) videocassette, Digital Audio Tape, MiniDisc, NT microcassette, PlayStation memory card, DV videocassette (with Panasonic and others), DVD (with multiple other companies), Memory Stick flash memory card, MicroMV videocassette... Let me know if I missed any! * smallest-size tapes are identical to Betamax, but the signal recorded on them is completely different

[@1RandomToaster]

What I think is most impressive is that Sony can lay claim to the save icon, one of the few things to keep Keith Richards amused (alongside Twinkies and Cockroaches) after the end of days.

[@IraQNid]

Quite a bit more history to the origins than I realized. I grew up with the 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies. Everyone I knew called the 3.5 inch version the hard floppy disk. In school we used the 5.25 inch floppies to save our work. When I went to college they were still using the 5.25 inch floppy drives. By then I was using the 3.5 inch disks. So it made it possible to bring in my older 5.25 inch disks to backup the data to the newer standard. The iconic symbol for saving data to this day is still the 3.5 inch hard floppy disk.

[@electrolyticmaster8396]

I have a boatload of 3.5" disks from days gone by. I have a USB external floppy drive as well as an internal drive on another PC. I also have a PC with two 3.5's that I used for duplicating copy protected disks. It has a Copy II PC hardware board. Surprisingly, disks that have been in cold storage for 20+ years still work. Just for giggles, I installed a late 90's copy of Quattro Pro Spreadsheet software from four 3.5's. It runs perfectly!

[@richardthunderbay8364]

A very interesting presentation. Thanks for posting.

[@semuhphor]

Hi Shelby. I just found your channel, and I'm very impressed. Watch much of the first disk imaging video and .. well .. wow. Cool! I've been doing computer stuff since 1971 and it's a joy to discover a place that is just a treasure trove of information. Thanks.

[@dancingwiththedogsdj]

Omg .. I forgot I would see "cassette" printed on the box or media quite frequently... Along with diskette... The drive mechanism in my Tandy 1000HX with a single 3 1/2" drive was so solid and satisfying. Not to mention, totally reliable over all the years. Just, clunk, read, done. Great video, just started watching... 🍻🌎❤️🎶🕺🏻💾🖥️

[@KenjiUmino]

Many manuals for NES, SNES etc... console games call the cartridge a cassette as well ... at least in the german translation

[@88porpoise]

They were "disc cassettes" with a hard plastic enclosure for a fragile storage medium, much like a tape cassette.

[@mylittleparody2277]

Very interesting and well researched video! Thank you!

[@BRBTechTalk]

Great research on this dead format. I knew Sony was a leader but never even heard of Jonos before this video. I have been buying, working on & fixing computers since the late '80s. I have seen formats come and go, however I do still have 3.5" floppies and CDs in my collection.

[@jackrubin]

Thanks!

[@leotide1990]

My feed offered me a true crime doc I was interested in, and one of your videos. Immediately clicked on you without hesitation. Always fascinating to learn computer history from the rabbit trails you seem to find yourself on, haha. Excellent research done, can’t wait to see the Jonos!

[@pdelong42]

First time here - those credits were amazing. I haven't heard that noise since I pulled an all-nighter in high-school to finish a report. I don't miss that printer one bit.

[@ReinaldoRauch]

That's a great one Shelby! Thanks to helping preserve computer history o/

[@carlosbragatto]

What an AWESOME video, thanks for that, thanks for correcting the "common knowledge" of the HP being the first to use it. Now if we could get hold of someone from Jonos for an interview...

[@mymessylab]

What a great video! It has spread out a bright light onto a common device used by billions of people, without knowing it. The background history is fantastic. Thanks for sharing this.

[@insanelydigitalvids]

Superb research and a riveting presentation! Thanks 🙂

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

I'm just that age where I entered work as the 5/14 inch floppy was phasing out and the 3 1/2 inch was coming in, to tell the difference between the two, the larger one was still a "floppy" and the smaller one because of its plastic case was a "stiffy". I was also involved in shuttiong down some sites and dealt with 8 inch discs and one site even still had a card index system.

[@roysigurdkarlsbakk3842]

Nice! The oldest 8" floppy drive I ever saw, had a cartridge in which you could lay the floppy, that is, without the hard plastic, and close the lid and insert it. I haven't seen that again even on youtube.

[@KenjiUmino]

The way you describe it, I imagine it being very similar to the CD caddy that some old CD-ROM drives used. I have an external apple scsi CD-ROM drive that loads a caddy instead of the slide out tray that was common on PC drives. I have some questions tho: Did these early 8" disks come "naked" without the wobbly plastic shell ? or did the 8" always have that shell and you needed to get the disk out for THIS specific caddy loading drive? And once you got the wobbly disk out of its soft plastic shell - which I imagine would damage that shell for good - how do you store it after use ? In a jewel case ?

[@the123king]

I have a machine that takes manual shutter disks. The RCA MS2000, which i believe dates from late 1982, or early 1983.

[@tarstarkusz]

Were these other Sony 3.5 disks also variable speed like the Mac? I don't know about the earliest mac drives, but later 800k Mac drives were variable speed.

[@AlejandroRodolfoMendez]

I never expected a video about this topic but it was really interesting.

[@WelcomeToMarkintosh]

Wow-that was fascinating and very interesting-thank you!!

[@kirkthejerk7258]

Great job on the thorough research.

[@Capt.Marco-Hawk-L.L.A.P]

Fantastic video well researched and put together, I didn't know about the Jonos system and very much looking forward to that video.

[@simonweel7971]

In 1984, we had them HP 150 with that dual 3.5 inch drive. And another HP 150 with a 10 or 15 MB harddrive. The next pc was to be a HP Vectra. No added type - just Vectra. It was a 'true' PC compatible machine. And as such, it had a 5¼ inch drive. And then we had a problem. Since there was no network, how to exchange data between those machines? As far as I know, there where no off-the-shelf 3.5 inch drives for pc's at that time. So we bought an external HP 3.5 inch drive. With a weird interface. Can't remember what is was called, but it used a very thin twin-wire, like you find on them beige ear pieces that came with the pocket transistor radio. Don't know how it was connected to the Vectra either, but anyway, that was the way to exchange data. And that external drive was sloooooooooooow. Did some searching, but can't find anything about that external drive?

[@mp-zf4ur]

Great rundown, thanks!

[@deepsleep7822]

I miss Byte magazine. Ending credits: the sweet sound of the dot-matrix impact printer. Good job on the vid. I lived through the 3.5” era. Used 8” disks at work (we had IBM equipment).

[@AB-Prince]

I always wondered why 3½" bays had space for 2 when there was only one slot. I never knew the original drive was twice as tall. though as to why it remained this way all the way to the death of floppies flaws me though.

[@LynxSnowCat]

I vaguely recall that while laptop (19 then 12mm tall?) drives were a common format, cheaper PC drives only had a taller face plate to fill the gap. I was slightly annoyed that they never made double-drives that fit in a 'normal' 3.5" drive bay so that I could use the other one for another hard disc.

[@nickwallette6201]

Do you mean to say that you would look inside a case, see an external 3.5" drive faceplate, and then there was more room below that in the drive cage? That wasn't for a double-height / full-height 3.5" drive. That additional space was meant for a hard drive. Hard drive mounting was a bit of a mixed bag. Most cases had space for a HDD right there below the 3.5" drive. For some, that was the only HDD bay. Others had an additional bay somewhere else. For example, I have an AT case with a Cyrix 6x86 (Pentium-era) system installed in it. There's a hard drive sled that slides in right under the power supply, allowing you to install two hard drives (the other being under the floppy drive.) But with some motherboards, that bay can foul with the CPU fan, so you have to remove the tray and use the space under the floppy drive instead. An old Gateway full tower had room above the optical drive bays, under the PSU in a 3-drive enclosure, and under the floppy drive. AFAIK, there was never a PC case that was designed to fit those tall Sony drives. The first time anyone ever saw a 3.5" disk on a PC was in the PS/2 line, shown at 4:02. And I don't think I've ever seen a non-PS/2 case that those drives would fit in. (Particularly because they require a separate faceplate, unlike the standard half-height drives everyone used shortly after.)

[@LynxSnowCat]

@@nickwallette6201 (edit) -No. Behind and below are different words for a rason.- From 2005 onwards I often encountered various makes of 3.5" _desktop_ drives for desktops that were roughly half the height of previous 3.5 drives which were mechanically interchangeable with the 3.5 _laptop_ drives used by Compaq, and others, with the exception of the cosmetic plastic face/bezel. (because these shared the mounting pattern) these had a void space above the drive, behind the 'normal' 3.5" drive sized face. Also; My father was an early adopter. We had an XT/AT suitcase-chassis that could have mounted two of the the 'original' sized 3.5" size drives one over the other.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@LynxSnowCat In communication, nuance is certainly a thing. But so is tact. 😒 Not everyone here has a flawless grasp on the language, so, in deciphering what someone is trying to say, it’s not always productive to take their word choices too literally. Sometimes the word they used is merely the word they know. Sorry to have wasted your time. EDIT: Actually, I wasn’t even replying to you. I was asking the OP. (Just noticed this - on mobile.)

[@LynxSnowCat]

@@nickwallette6201 I apologise for having missed that your reply wasn't specifically directed at me. What you've said is absolutely relevant, correct, and _not a repudiation_ of what I've said. I do recognise that there is no 'perfect' language, and have argued that language belongs to those who use it _more_ than who then try to steal meaning from what is said. -_in person_, I'm constantly being painfully reminded that I need to be absolutely tactless when what I've said is different that what has been interpreted; And the existence of those very short floppy drives (and the interoperability of some laptop and desktop parts) is one of those things that some 'professionals' have repeatedly physically fought me over because [of their public] 'loss of face' and humiliation -- [edits: redaction]- [edit 2: strike-through, distraction] -(but)- [I need to remember] this is online, where I _need not_ be so sensitive to [how my words are interpreted]; Much less concern myself with whom those words are attributed when a _more_ careful reading (( _than I've demonstrated_ )) can prove that far more easily, than getting an audience to recognize when someone else says something . [edits: incomplete redactions, oblique/obtuse result.]

[@MarianoLu]

16:15 There were such a synonymous of small files that even to this day the save icon is a 3.5 in floppy

[@TexasExotic]

Phenomenal research and awesome work!

[@davidp7414]

Fantastic story, great work.

[@GaugePlays1980]

I love it. Both informative and enthusiastic. As always thanks for the content!

[@klaatubob]

It amazes me how many people back then and still today think that disk is a "hard disk" because of the hard case. And today, most people think of that disc as the "save" button.

[@deawpolpichai612]

ย้อนรอย​ความทรงจําเลย​ครับ​ Floppy​ Disk​ เเผ่นนี้

[@esra_erimez]

Great documentary! I'm going to rewatch it with my dad. Thank you so much!

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

You don't think Zip floppy disks were _widely_ accepted? Even that drive from right here in Utah came preinstalled in many computers. I don't have any hard numbers, but I understood that it was also widely accepted.

[@AaronOfMpls]

Zip drives were never as universal as 3½" floppy drives, but yah, the weren't too rare either. They were the most successful of the superfloppy formats ... even if LS-120 SuperDisks were more like what they _should've_ been in some ways. 🙂

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@@AaronOfMpls: But then he didn't specify "as universal as...." 8" drives weren't that way either, and I think he said 5.25s weren't either. But those still counted as "widely accepted," so Zips should've been also, since that's vague terminology anyway. I'm glad Zip floppies beat LS-120s and LS-240s and the others anyway, even though LSs are upwards-compatible, because Zip: 1. made it to 750 MB, and 2. came from a company that had been right here in Utah for a long time.

[@avamnepohui7260]

Speaking of what was widely accepted - 9 track tape, 8, 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy drives and floppy disks were made and used in Europe, in Soviet countries. After the collapse of the USSR, almost every computer here had a CD or DVD drive; now USB drives and SD cards are used. This can be called widely accepted - these drives are literally everywhere, all over the world. Zip disks have never been found on computers here and have never been sold anywhere.

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@@avamnepohui7260: Something doesn't have to be all over the world just to have been considered widely accepted.

[@lmoore3rd]

I would love to know if Sony's original 3.5" drive design included motorized ejection (as an option) or was that something Apple requested of Sony to engineer for the Macintosh specifically. Early Mac Sony floppies also grabbed the disk upon insertion kinda like a VCR, that was later phased out to cut cost in the mid 90's.

[@MarkMalley]

It did not.

[@merijnification]

Nice educational video! Well done. I enjoyed it

[@lorensims4846]

I first got seriously interested in personal computers in 1980, with subscriptions to Creative Computing, Byte and Infoworld. I closely followed the attempts to introduce the 3.5" "floppy." To my mind, it was the Macintosh that really settled the small disc standard. My wife called these "cookies, " and many of my friends who had worked with 8" and 5.25" floppies referred to these as "firmies." Mostly we all settled on the term "diskette." Those 8" floppies were truly floppy. The 5.25" ones were less so. I miss the diskettes. I still have a bunch of Zip disks and drives in the garage. Yeah, USB drives put an end to all of that, and software distributed on CD did as well. I do credit the iMac for first popularizing USB. Also, the Mac made CDs easy.

[@michaelhawthorne8696]

I remember back in 1984 (I think) I had a BBC Electron with the Plus 1 add on (Joy stick and ROM interface). Then I bought the Plus 2 add on (3.5" Floppy Disk Drive). It was amazing to see how fast it loaded either games or basic programs I saved to disk (compared to tape). The Plus 1 was £60 The Plus 2 was £199 The BBC Electron was £199 Connecting them all together (3 boxes) was easy and so solid with big bolts to secure everything....not the ridiculous "Blue Tack" offer to secure the ZX81 RAM Pack from Sir Clive Sinclair. When assembled, the machine looked awesome, I would have one today, just to drool over. The disk drive, I think was single sided single density... 180K ?...really not sure now but to watch it defrag using video RAM was quite satisfying.... the screen would fill with what looked like white noise but was pixels representing the individual bits stored on the disk.... I'm 60 now so I was around 21 when I had this..... them were the days. Great research by the way, this took me right back to the good ol' days Ending with what looked like an Epsom FX80 printer....the go to printer of the early eighties. Subbed and liked !

[@davidhayward1426]

I find it interesting that in the various early articles on the 3.5 the reported formatted capacity was all over the place. Some reported capacities were much larger the 400K forMac and 360K for PCs that eventually shipped.

[@minombredepila1580]

Amazing investigation. Love it !!!!

[@erikmerchant567]

Great video on an obscure topic. Well done!

[@user-marco-S]

When i went to school in the begin '80 s, we had one classroom with some computers. One of them used 8" floppy's. I don't remember which system it was, but i think it was a computer with a terminal (the big unit did contain the floppy drive). If we had to do something on that system, we had to start loading binbasic first.

[@bloepje]

It's funny that the first disk I saw was a 3" disk drive. And then came the amiga with 3.5" and the atari too. PC's kept using the 5.25" for a long time. At that time each country had their own history, because the UK was doing the BBC and the spectrum, and NL was doing commodore and a little spectrum. So in NL the 3.5" disks were mostly on home computers, and PC's and "high end" unix servers still had 5.25" (although unix servers usually had 1/4" tapes)

[@MyloWhylo]

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.

[@pfcrow]

I remember when my dad's law office upgraded from cassette-based CPT word processors to one with dual 8" disks. You could buy CP/M for it. It had a very tall black and white screen. He had a daisy wheel printer with it, so you couldn't tell things weren't done on a typewriter.

[@hicknopunk]

Do analog music on the 3.5" next ❤

[@cliftonchurch6039]

Every time I see your shelves, my eyes are drawn to the You Don't Know Jack 5th Dementia box. It's the only YDKJ game not available in Jackbox Games' YDKJ Classic Pack on Steam, and was the only one from the early generation that had online play, which is likely the reason it's not included in the Classic Pack. It's also the only one I properly owned before getting the classic pack on Steam. It's a great version, and its scoring system is what built the framework for the modern YDKJ games in the Party Packs that revitalized the company.

[@danyoutube7491]

@2:06 I wonder what the capacity of a 90cm disk would have been :)

[@bobingabout]

Most people when I was growing up had computers like the Commodore 64, but we had an Amstrad CPC 464. In the UK, these machines used almost exclusively, audio cassette tapes. The first Floppy Disk I encountered was the 3 Inch floppy. It was basically cassette tape sized. And like the cassette tape, you could turn them over and have something else on the other side. Which makes perfect sense for people who'd been previously using audio cassette tapes. Apparently, Alan Sugar, the person responsible for the Amstrad CPC was a bargain hunter, and purchased these 3 inch disk drives, because they were really cheap, because nobody seemed to want them. Every other computer I've seen either used 5 and a quarter inch disks, like the Commodore 64, or Acorn BBC, or went straight to the 3 and a half inch disk, like the Amiga.

[@GameRetro]

This video and the amount of information in it IS OUTSTANDING! GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT!!!

[@Qardo]

"90cm floppy" Me: Damn. That is a big floppy. But why is it so small? And I know he misspoke. But still, technology is amazing to fit something that big in a 9cm format, lol.

[@markryan2475]

Fantastic video. Great research on an important topic with great delivery.

[@mbwoods2001]

And that with the amiga having 880k formatted 3.5" disks as opposed to 720k as used in the pc's and atari st. Amiga could read 720k formatted disks with a special software.

[@jasper265]

In Dutch, the name "diskette" stuck for these. And honestly, that makes a whole lot more sense than calling both the hard and the floppy ones floppy disks...

[@captainkeyboard1007]

The disk console shown in the show was the IBM 3741. The IBM 3742 was the [dual] disk station that had two keyboards and floppy disk drives for two operators to use.