The Computer Chronicles - Storage Devices (1983)

[@burkezillar]

Anyone know how to adjust the tracking on KZbin?

[@burkezillar]

***** I think this is just a pirate video, like you see on the adverts before watching the VHS.

[@maboroshi1986]

assuming this came from the same source as the rest this is actually a rip from the original tapes, either the tape was damaged (apparently many of the rips aren't good for that reason) or the person who made the rip for archive.org was working with poor equipment.

[@burkezillar]

it's definitely a pirate copy.

[@maboroshi1986]

Michael Burke i checked it on archive.org it has the same problem. that collection is made up of direct copies from original tapes. many have bad audio or skipping problems due to codec and tape issues. it's not a pirate copy. cheifet talks about getting the tapes on archive in the episode of triangulation he was interviewed in.

[@Mi_Fa_Volare]

Wasn't that an aired show? How would that be a pirate copy?

[@justindumlao]

Every time I watch Gary Kildall, I cannot help but appreciate him more. He was forward thinking on levels far beyond his peers.

[@bvanbranden]

he missed the boat on all he said in this program ! :-)

[@matthewbischoff7903]

gary is a freaking legend

[@solidstate0]

I've all the time in the universe for that guy - what an inspiration!!

[@rededwards3479]

And to think this show was on PBS. Wow!

[@fra93ilgrande]

We all miss him here 😢 a true legend of computer industry

[@thomasanderson1416]

Gary: "What about this amazing new solid/optical drive?" Magnetic storage dude be like: "I don't think stone wall inscriptions are going away".

[@kooky216]

1:45 Gary talking about SSDs before most people had hard drives, amazing.

[@LionheartNh]

Gotta love Gary, he is so knowledgeable and forward thinking but so humble at the same time.

[@straightpipediesel]

SSDs had already been invented at that time. 6:45 shows magnetic bubble memory which was supposed to combine the density of magnetic storage with no moving parts. Intel sold these parts commercially.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Dude. There are technologies used these last 30 years as state of the art, which were (conceptually) already designed many, many years earlier. Some examples: Electroluminescense: 1937 Color CRT tube: 1951 Sony Trinitron tube: 1964 Thin-film Transistor LCD (TFT): 1973! Although full color TFT displays were not developed until late 1980's If you're into technology (and its history), it is often not that hard to predict which technologies will become dominant. Just by using common sense and logic. Unless another technology comes along quickly and supersedes the previous one. The bugger is, if you're smart enough to predict, you usually don't live long enough to actually see it become a reality. People like that, like Gary, are called visionaries for this very reason. Had he been alive, it would not have been so special. That said, Gary was a true gem to the team of people who revolutionised the computer industry.

[@RonJohn63]

@SteelRodent this. There can be a very wide chasm between developing fundamental technologies, and mass producing them at a cost which makes them competitive against other technologies. (For example, *flying cars existed in the 1980s,* but no one has been able to figure out how to store enough energy in a car-shaped and *car-sized* vehicle to let it fly 300 miles, much less the practicalities of millions of car flying around and not crashing into each other or crashing in bad weather that terrestrial vehicles barely notice.)

[@samnicholson5051]

@@paulmichaelfreedman8334 touchscreens were invented in the 1960s too. I remember touchscreen computers in the late 90s in a few museums but they definitely weren't mainstream then

[@luxxeon3d]

The CEO of Seagate, in 1983, did not think the 5.25 inch floppy would ever be replaced, ever. I was surprised to hear that from him. It was obviously superceded by the much smaller 3.5 inch floppy by 1990, which actually lasted throughout the decade and into the new millennia.

[@u.v.s.5583]

But after 1995 the world did return back to the 5.25 inch technology as the more conventional and more robust way to store data. We still store youtube videos in 5.25" floppies! The unlimited storage capacity is simply unbeatable!

[@daillengineer]

dude did NOT look happy lol. seemed like he wanted to be stuck in his ways. terrible quality for a tech CEO.

[@davidwang7489]

Dude seemed to have no imagination whatsoever, which is not a quality I find in modern CEOs. He seemed down-to-earth and focused on the current things that work, which is also not a quality I find in modern CEOs, and honestly is refreshing. I’m not surprised he rose out of an engineering background. His company seemed to do well under his leadership despite the myopic things he said in this interview.

[@mathiastwp]

And now here we all are, loading heaps onto 1TB+ solid state drives; even potentially onto a microSD little thing the size of a thumbnail.

[@paintpaintpaintco.6039]

Pretty sure the our nuclear weapons need a password that’s on a 5” floppy to this day

[@neilmotiska9696]

So glad I found this video, such a joy to see and hear my mentor the great Frank Sordello. I was good friends with Frank and his family. He consulted for me at HMT in Fremont in the 90's. Frank could always break down complex subjects to make them understandable like his "bent nail" analogy. I worked with his sons Mike, Chris, and Mark ... great family. Frank was such an inspiration and a great inventor. A magnetic recording guru... He is surely missed .

[@raven4k998]

oh how the floppy disk came and went fast shame how quickly it died out to the compact disc

[@tarstarkusz]

@@raven4k998 It took close to 10 years.

[@raven4k998]

@@tarstarkusz yeah that's not that long you have been alive more then ten years proof in and of itself of my point

[@tarstarkusz]

@@raven4k998 It's a long time in computing years.

[@Wizardofgosz]

Wow. Shugart certainly was not a futurist. He missed the boat on so many technologies.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

@@cpm86 Word has it he runs windows 10 from floppies. In 2020.

[@psu2dcu]

Agreed. He at least in this interview was incredibly conservative for working in leading-edge technology for its time.

[@flexairz]

@@cpm86 No, he was wrong on so many levels. He just did not want his own 'tech' to go down.. heels in the sand.. a pitty.

[@moracomole8090]

@@flexairz no for the time he was right on the consumer side, Seagate has been a leader in HDD technology it was just too early

[@zantetsu8674]

@@flexairz I disagree. Almost everything he said was accurate for reasonable time scales. His predictions were valid for at least 20 years which is essentially a lifetime in computer tech development. You're looking at it from the perspective of someone 35 years later and do not understand the scope of the developments or their time scales.

[@ian_b]

For several decades, storage was measured in Britannicas. As disk space grew, we moved from Brits to Kilobrits and Megabrits etc.

[@ens8502]

To "porns" actually

[@ruthlessluder]

back in the days an encyclopedia was a unit of measure of how good a particular storage was.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

Imagine using that as a measurement today: "My new USB stick can hold 400 wikipedia's !" :P

[@harveyblackwood3563]

@Take the red pill as in the whole library? 😮

[@ObiWanBillKenobi]

@@harveyblackwood3563 Affirmative.

[@ens8502]

And now? :My new usb stock can hold hundreds of porn in 4k" :/

[@y11971alex]

"I don't see the 5" 1/4 floppy being replaced..." :3

[@akiriki97]

Yeah. In the mid-80s, 5" 1/4 floppies are pretty obsolete at that point not just from the Macintosh but also from other PCs after it :)

[@erraticdesigns9038]

I've got the same idea these people need to google this stuff before they put it on live tv LOL :X

[@Shinetop]

y11971alex "optical Devices are still a laboratory curiosity"

[@farben_]

15.36TB SSD that cost $10000

[@akiriki97]

Paul Mulcahy Yeah, I just realized that when looking at games for the Commodore 64 ^~^

[@AcidDaBomb]

I love when he said "CD Technology won't ever work"

[@drguillotine7485]

"It is so unreliable" what he fails to mention is the error correcting systems built into CD

[@RonJohn63]

9:22 "I don't think so *YET."* Which means he did not say what you think he said.

[@RonJohn63]

And at 10:22 he said that optical drives had a place as archival media (guess what we used CD-R for??), and that -- in 1983 -- rewritable optical media was still a laboratory curiosity. Which it was.

[@ens8502]

He was right. It was blind way

[@u.v.s.5583]

You will see. CD technology is popular only for a short time, the 5.25 inch floppy will return because unlimited storage is unbeatable. Out of memory? Just take one more floppy.

[@oldtwins]

My guess is that Shugart was trying to defend his product line by ensuring the viewers that buying Winchester's weren't a waste of money. Sordello was more of an R&D type of guy. Hence why Shugart says solid state and optical discs were ridiculous to consider for future memory storage, as his company had nothing to gain if he said otherwise.

[@Trusteft]

Seagate made optical drives? First time I hear this.

[@tomsmall1244]

So he lied to protect his profits or was he just that ignorant of development?

[@MichaelTavel]

The CEO of Seagate described floppy disks as 'infinite capacity' since you could spread your data across multiple floppies. The poor reliability of floppies made this an absolute nightmare.... get to disk 15 of your file copy and get an unrecoverable read error. PERFECT!

[@finnschu]

Imagine travelling back in time and take a group selfie with your 512GB smartphone and put the phone beside the unbeatable 5 1/4 floppy

[@u.v.s.5583]

The floppy has unlimited storage capacity. Unlimited easily beats 512GB all the time! You will see, the data storage format in 2123 will be the 5.25 inch floppy!

[@KeithDavey2014]

This guy should be a case study in 'entrenched thinking' If it is not a product that his company makes "It will never work".

[@ArumesYT]

Doesn't mean he actually thinks that way, ofcourse he's going to defend/protect his own products on TV no matter what he really thinks.

[@zzKirus]

Yeah, the dude is the CEO of Seagate what do you expect him to say about floppy drives....

[@ian_b]

@Sensible Talk You may be thinking of Steve Ballmer of MIcrosoft.

[@ian_b]

@Sensible Talk His view was that it was no use for business because it didn't have a keyboard. :D

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

it's a prime example of corporate conditioning :)

[@johnbrown92]

Damn I can't find the tracking control in my browser ;-)

[@jangelelcangry]

Lol!

[@NaviciaAbbot]

Tell me about it.

[@paulaxford6754]

As others have mentioned, Frank Sordello of Memorex really knew the fundamental science and yet amazingly the legendary Al Shugart seemed to not. And, of course, it's always great to hear what Gary Kildall had to say. I'll bet if you popped in from the future and showed them an M.2 SSD the first question would be "why would anyone need that much storage?"

[@doalwa]

Well, porn obviously...and lots of it! :-)

[@jesuszamora6949]

+Paul Axford Storage is kind of like ammunition or money. You can never really have enough.

[@jeffwads]

A legendary fool.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Listening to Sordello was immensely one of the most pleasurable things I've heard. His intellect and presenting it to the audience was soothing and futuristic, but not in a sci-fi way, just a real way that it all played out in reality over the decades to come. 40 years later we now have essentially disposable sd-card's in the hundreds of gigabytes size. Just incredible how everything progressed over time. I am only sad to see that only Stewart remains around to have seen this all unfold.

[@DavePoo2]

I think Shugart knew the science, he just seems more practical and interested in what is good to do in the moment. The tech that Frank was showing off was going to be the future, it was just going to take a while for that stuff he showed to be truly mainstream. Shugart was right that we were always going to need some kind of removable writable storage (we still use usb sticks today sometimes), but the floppy wasn't always going to be the only kind of removable writable storage.

[@scsirob]

Some of Al Shugart's technology is here to stay. Many storage devices today use a derivative of the SCSI bus or SCSI command set. For example, SAS disks are Serial Attached SCSI. The spec started out as SASI, or Shugart Associate System Interface. SASI was later renamed SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) because standard names were not allowed to contain company names.

[@SkuldChan42]

I like how Shugart gives his solid predictions and Gary and the Memorex guy show off samples that defy all that.

[@u.v.s.5583]

But it is true. Nobody will ever rewrite the programs from 5.25 inch disks to something else. It just isn't done, it's totally wasted effort. 5.25''floppies will live forever!

[@ajkulac9895]

6:49 guy living in 1983 predicts SSD drives will eventually take over

[@NickKont]

so does the guy around 1:50

[@ens8502]

Prophet!

[@johnsimon8457]

Just casually downloading several years and a few gigs of Computer Chronicles to my phone wirelessly while lying in bed and having it complete in a few minutes like a freaking maniac

[@daillengineer]

witch!

[@musicman1685]

OMG.. Gary Kildal was waaay ahead in his thinking.. his respectful disagreement was all over his face when Shugart was promoting large Floppies. How ironic Seagate sent Shugart his termination letter on a CD with Stephen Luczo’s picture on the cover.

[@doalwa]

Blows my mind that they've already been talking about perpendicular recording in '83...if I'm not mistaken we've only just seen this in modern hard disks like 4 or 5 years ago. Anyway, what a great show this was...and Gary Kildall sure knew how to wear a suit :-)

[@sergheiadrian]

I was just thinking about that. I knew the perpendicular recording was implemented commercially in 2005.

[@randywatson8347]

The memorex guy is legend, he's talking gigabytes, he sees no limitations on increasing density and he believes in opticals when they are eraseable. Today we use harddisks in gigabytes and burn rewritable cd's. But you can't blame the floppyguy, his floppies are interesting for home consumers in that time.

[@ens8502]

Lol, you burn rewritable cds? What the heck for?

[@zerocal76]

​@@ens8502 yo his comment is 9 yrs old lol

[@zerocal76]

Time flies!! 9 yrs ago CDs were still common. I bought a new laptop at the time and was so satisfied that I could play CDs n video discs. Later I replaced it w Blu-ray drive and was ecstatic 😅

[@DavePoo2]

Well either way. Optical media did eventually become writable, but unfortunately it was unreliable and super slow compared to just about any HDD. So it never replaced the HDD, it only served as a backup or archival media at best.

[@turbinegraphics16]

cdrw became popular in about 1997 and flash storage was becoming popular around 2005 so the Memorex guy predicted 15 to 20 years and the viewers at the time had no idea how it could happen.

[@okaro6595]

CD-RW was introduced in 1997. It did not became popular then. It was much later.

[@theedrstrangelove]

Shugart may have been wrong about the future of floppy disk drives, but then again, he invented them. He also founded Seagate.

[@KaseyWynne]

This might be the best episode of the computer chronicles. We're still dealing with magnetic disk drives, as nothing's really come along that can match their price per gig. It's interesting that he talks about magnetic disks having 200 million bits per square inch, and now we have 100 billion bits per square inch. Just a fascinating episode.

[@AcidDaBomb]

Wow Shugart guy was wrong on so many points...

[@joojoojeejee6058]

It's the end of 2019, and solid state drives have still not completely replaced the magnetic disc drives... So in that sense the man was right, magnetic drive technology still had a lot of life left from the 1984 perspective. :) But he was dramatically wrong how the 5,25" floppy drives would "never" be replaced by smaller floppies... It only took a couple of years!

[@jeffm2787]

He was simply downplaying all other technologies that could compete somehow with his. Still lots of incorrect statements designs to deflect away from the products mentioned.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

@@cpm86 My point was that magnetic spinning media is still alive and well in 2019. Which is kind of surprising. Tape drives also as a backup solution.

[@GoldSrc_]

@@joojoojeejee6058 He was talking about hard drives, the Seagate guy was defending floppy disks lol. The Seagate guy didn't thought that hard drives or optical discs would replace floppies. Now, the Memorex guy, now he was talking facts and saw future in optical discs.

[@ian_b]

@@joojoojeejee6058 It's still most economical to use an SSD for boot and a disk for data,

[@lwnf360]

Alan Shugart is a perfect example of how it isn't always the best idea to allow the founder of a company to remain CEO for as long as he wants. He ran Seagate until 1998. Based on this comically bad lack of foresight and strategic vision I cannot imagine how many dramatically wrong decisions he made during that time. In retrospect, the Board would have done well to fire him based solely on this interview. Seagate succeed in SPITE of him. This bad interview is actually really uncommon on Computer Chronicles. Most guests from industry were 100% on point about the future 5-10-15-20 years out.

[@eddiespaghetti54321]

Is that why Seagate drives suck so bad?

[@jonathanstein6056]

Shugart also ran his DOG for Congress. In California. And LOST. ‘nough said.

[@daillengineer]

@@eddiespaghetti54321 lol what??? you're joking?

[@ImpliedVolatility704]

@@jonathanstein6056 That's cool though. Politics deserves to be mocked. He also backed an initiative to have "none of the above" on the ballot in Cali. Props to him.

[@TheComputerArchive]

The interview with mister Shugart was disappointing. Basically he said that everything's going to be the same as it was in 1983. He couldn't be more off: * Semiconductor storage has replaced floppies when it came in removable devices like floppy disks. That was only a matter of time. * That argument about 3.5" disks is rediculous. Did Shugart really think that the software from 1983 would never be updated? And what obstacle would there be with writing it on different media anyway?

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Well possibly, but keep in mind he died as a multi-billionaire. So who cares he made some wrong predictions. He was an engineer and business leader, not a psychic.

[@okaro6595]

@@oldtwinsna8347 One does not need to be a psychic to make predictions. The advances of the 3.5 inch floppy was obvious so it should have been clear it will replace 5.25". With semiconductor memory I understand him more but one should really never use the word "never" as that will make you look fool.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

@@okaro6595 what rubbish. Easy to say all this in retrospect.

[@andrewryder3075]

Alan Shugart may have been a great drive designer - (the first floppy disk I ever owned was a Shugart drive that I had hooked up to my TRS-80) - but I wouldn't exactly call him "a visionary". Q: "Some people say that..."[disc type devices]"...are gonna be replaced by semiconductor? What are your feelings about that, Al?" A: "Well, I don't think it'll happen." Q: Here's a 3½" micro floppy. Do you see this size as replacing the 5¼" format?" A: "No I don't. I think there's a marketplace for the smaller size..."[but]"...I don't see that they'll ever replace the 5¼" mini floppy." Still love the man, but not a great predictor of the future!

[@medes5597]

Shugart thought that the magnetic storage used for floppys would keep improving and eventually store more and more in a smaller space. He was definitely wrong but he figured that the size would be the standard and it would allow backward compatability with all programs. An interesting idea, but a wrong one.

[@realBaronFletcher]

Gary was so ahead of his time. Its amazing.

[@xebek]

Ah, good old VHS vertical jumping. Thankfully my Android has a tracking adjustment knob right next to rewind button.

[@gocsa]

Holy moly, Frank Sordello died of colon cancer at 62 in 1999. He was only 46 here but definitely a rough 46 especially compared to today's standards...

[@JetScreamer_YT]

I haven't yelled tracking in so many years.

[@vitajazz]

It's not tracking, this is a 3/4" tape with edge damage, or maybe capstan climb causing tape ripples during recording.There's no way around it except possibly ironing the tape, which has been done to recover damaged historically important video.

[@TechWizMaster]

6:46 that ''bubble memory board'' or wathever he calls it has 1MB of storage and is basicaly the first ever SSD...look how big this is...1MB...crazy it's almost the size of a microATX motherboard!

[@maboroshi1986]

Mbit. it was 1/8th the size, so it was actually 128K. bubble memory isn't a marketing term, it was a different type of memory to regular RAM and is probably analogous to modern flash memory, but much slower which was its downfall.

[@okaro6595]

@@maboroshi1986 Bubble memory was magnetic.

[@tetragrammaton111]

Wow, it's truly a wonder that Seagate survived at all with this guy in charge. He was shown the precursors to the hallmark storage technologies of the 'Information Age' and smugly pronounced them all dead ends in the span of 2 minutes.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

He was right though. That CED disk was analogue and never used to store binary data. CD-ROM's were still in development and wouldn't really become a replacement for floppy's until the introduction of affordable CD-recorders in the late 1990s more then 15 years later(Before that premade CD-ROMs were much more like the old ROMs on 8bit computers and the cartridges in consoles). That bubble memory failed completely and the form of solid state memory we use today is based on eeprom technology which is completely different in how it works, and that didn't become available until 2000 (very expensive) and didn't become mainstream for 5 years. And 5,25 floppies were still in use in the 1990s because they were cheaper then 3.5 ones. (I used to have an external 5,25 for my Amiga because the price difference was so big)

[@hansc8433]

6:47 “I don’t think it will happen..” - This way of thinking is analogous to the current discussions about EVs versus ICEs. It takes people who can or dare to think outside existing paradigms. Gary clearly could do that.

[@videosuperhighway7655]

I remember the huge bubble memory hype and it went nowhere.

[@akompsupport]

What a gem of a historical feature. Such a shame that the flicker can't be adjusted for. :/

[@mvl71]

While, on the whole, the Seagate guy was wrong on several (almost all) points, I have to admit I have many 25 year old 5.25" floppies that are still in perfect working condition, unlike many CDs I recorded...

[@Big_Tex]

This is awesome -- bubble memory, laser discs, Shugart explaining that solid state drives will never be price-competitive (of course, he was right specifically with respect to bubble memory )...

[@TheMushtyroo]

Frank from Memorex looks more like a Texas Oil Baron! :) Sure knows his stuff though.

[@randywatson8347]

The way he explained makes it very easy to understand for both advanced and common viewers. It's still the same 3.25 inch harddrive technology we use today, only the density is increased alot over time.

[@JohnnnyJohn]

Shugart was truly a man of his day.

[@DataWaveTaGo]

Alan Shugart sez: I love where floppys are today! Let's just keep it that way!!!

[@RottenRroses]

The PC would be a hell of a gym with the disc swapping necessary to play more recent larger games like the 100GB GTA5 off of floppy discs with their "unlimited" storage capacity.

[@ecstazyrm]

Hahahaha epic . Thanks

[@lindaoffenbach]

These episode are a very interesting documentation of early micro computing, that is the rapid momentum and super fast acceleration it caught in the 80s due to rapid leaps in miniaturisation and effective imagination and capitalisation for making it happen.

[@fordxbgtfalcon]

I’d love to go back in time and walk into that room with them and toss down a 1tb micro sd card.

[@NickKont]

it would be useless without the proper hardware/software to read/write it, and having all that would rise more questions to the point forgetting the media itself altogether!!!!

[@DanielWesleyKCK]

KZbin needs to add a feature to allow me to fix the tracking on this video.

[@mikakorhonen5715]

This happens only when NSA is recording at the same time.

[@Sb99992]

Alan Shugart = Billy Murray's brother, the one who talks to the groundhog in Groundhog Day

[@SquintyGears]

No wonder seagate got sold out to Toshiba. This guy had terrible vision for how things could evolve. He's convinced nothing would change in the 80s when everything is moving insanely fast

[@danstar455]

Gary thinks so far in the future. He probably knew flash drives would come along.

[@cbnewham5633]

Who is watching this in 2020 and laughing about the comments about 3.5" floppies, yet crying that storage really hasn't increased as much as it should have and we still reply so heavily on mechanical storage. Oh - and we still don't have flying cars.

[@keithd2284]

I've been pissed off about the lack of flying cars for the better part of a decade.

Gary Kildall was so aware of the way of the future. The guest didn't have a clue.

[@AndreVandal]

Amazing how Al Shugart was so wrong in so many ways in this single episode. The reason why most people today are more cautious when taking of the impact of a future technology

[@meropealcyone]

I have a longer comment to post but first I need to insert floppy disc #595 of Battlefield V.

[@earthwolf82]

Ha, the tracking brings back memories..... Makes this video even more awesome...

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@20:00 Wonder if that problem was ever solved. It was never used in floppies but don't know if that technology got used in magnetic backup tape systems.

[@StephenBlower]

07:35 This guy had zero idea about the future. How to get everything wrong just here. LOL. Alan Shugart founder of Seagate. Bless.

[@AbdiPianoChannel]

The mechanical hdd are still in use in 2020. Solid state drives are still expensive.

[@randywatson8347]

SSD apparently have less lifespan. So bit more frequent to be replaced.

[@B1G_Dave]

I keep hitting the top of my monitor to sort out the tracking XD

[@GoldSrc_]

I wonder if that Seagate guy ever ate his words xD, imagine you go back in time and show him a 1TB SSD. The Memorex guy was on point.

[@JaredConnell]

He said 5 ¼" disks would never be replaced 🤣 as the had infinite storage capacity because you could just use more diskettes and that the cost per bit would never be less than floppies and finally there was just too much data in the world on 5¼" disks to be replaced! 😄 🤣 wow how short sighted. My cell phone probably have more storage in my pocket at all times than every floppy disk ever made in 1983 lol

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Considering he steered Seagate into one of the top storage companies through his retirement in 1997, I'd say yes he did move to where the market swung. Don't underestimate Shugart - he is one of the most successful tech industry leaders of all time. When he eventually died, his net worth was in the billions.

[@joshanderson3716]

LOL, the 5.25" flopperiey drive wont't be replaced by anything else useful.

[@jesuszamora6949]

+Josh Anderson Which is hilarious since 3.5" went on to do just that, then we have CD-R(W), and now flash (thumb drives, SD and the like.)

[@Trusteft]

CDRW never replaced floppy disks, floppy disks remained useful at the same time. If nothing else, they pretty much have both disappeared at about the same time. Flash sticks killed them both, but I would still rather have backups on either of them than a flash drive. I have rarely had a flash drive survive more than a year top. SD cards etc are better. As soon as SSD technology reaches the point where the data is safe in the long run, they will get smaller and replace everything else. Perhaps 15 years from now, tops.

[@jesuszamora6949]

Trusteft To an extent. CD-R(W) was and is more for permanent archival, though the format had a short term for trading larger files before the advent of the thumbdrive. Nowadays, if you want to permanently archive something, you burn it to a DVD-R(W) or, if you have exceptionally large files or an absolute TON of them, a BD-R, while you trade on thumbdrives and SD cards. You are right, as soon as SSD tech reaches archival quality for the price of current SD cards and thumb drives, there's going to be very little use for optical media.

[@okaro6595]

@@Trusteft For me they replaced. I basically stopped using floppies when I got my CD writer. Sure CDs were soon replaced by DVDs. Then I switched to hard disks for backup. SD cards are fir cameras and phones, a different use. USB memories are needed only for data transfer from computer to computer.

[@okaro6595]

@@jesuszamora6949 Before the thumb drives got cheap. In 2005 a 512 MB USB drive was 30 € here. A ten pack of CDs was 5 €. USB memory was nice for what it held but if you needed more you did not g o to buy several of those, you used CDs. A few years later you could pick 2 GB for 20 €. Also a major point was when Windows 98 and NT became obsolete. Those had poor and no support respectively for USB memories.

[@rededwards3479]

I missed these series of Computer Chronicles.

[@matthewbischoff7903]

damn Frank Sordello is a fucking genius. dude was rattling off insane engineer/mathematical knowledge without batting an eye - even Gary was impressed by how insane the guys patent count was.

[@randywatson8347]

Visioning the 3.25 HD as we still know today.

[@jkelectrical]

Wow, that dude was so wrong in so many ways.

[@justandhans]

The guest was near sighted in his predictions

[@tobybartlett8449]

8:08 - was a silly statement even for 1983

[@BrianKapellusch]

Yeah, 3 1/2" floppies went nowhere :)

[@estusflask982]

Seagate Shugart: "Technology will forever remain how it is in 1983. Buy my company's shit right now. You should, but I don't buy or use our shit." Why was he even allowed on the show? He added nothing.

[@Nullbyte1]

Everyone now and then someone on this show gets everything wrong. This guy is one of those people! The memorex guy nailed it though.

[@wohlhabendermanager]

I know that the "Micro focus" guy at the beginning and end says "the story of this continuing evolution". But I always hear it as "the story of discontinuing evolution". :(

[@omegaman1409]

Gary had a premonition of solid state drives.

[@danielcubillos1325]

omg ladies and gents.... the founder of SAGATE !! amazing !!!!!

[@Lurker1979]

To think now we have micro SDs small as our fingernails.

[@bloqk16]

When the subject of the quality of 5 1/4 inch floppy discs was brought up, what came to mind was that Verbatim had a good reputation for quality floppy discs back in the 1980s, as I was working in the high-tech field at the time, with many PCs in the workplace; and I never heard a complaint about the quality of the Verbatim brand that was heavily used in the workplace.

[@vintageaudio135]

Never smaller than a 5,25 floppy disc. 37 years later we have 8TB consumer SSD. Or almost 20TB 3,5 inch HDD.

[@shmehfleh3115]

It's funny to think that PMR hard drives took another 20+ years after this aired to really catch on.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

Not to mention solid state drives, which still do not totally dominate the market in 2019. Spinning magnetic platters still have their uses... Even tape is still being used in high volume backup solutions.

[@mortarmopp3919]

The air date is incorrect. This ep., is from May, 1984

[@thegenxgamerguy6562]

Poor Alan Shugart... he behaved like a dinosaur already in 1983, holding on to the past and trying to downplay the future. I know, he invented the floppy disk, SCSI, the Shugart connector.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Huh? He was the CEO on Seagate until 1997 and steered the company into one of top storage companies and died as a billionaire.

[@StingyGeek]

It would be great to have a program like this today. It's quality journalism through and through. The closest we get is some very well produced technology channels on youtube. Mainstream media have left the field on technology, to unfortunately replace it with inane 'reality TV' crap.

[@fitfogey]

Shugart was off the mark in a lot of areas and almost seemed to be annoyed with just being there.

[@FlyboyHelosim]

An enjoyable episode where the guests were actually allowed to speak and articulate themselves without being cut-off at any given moment by the sometimes obnoxious-seeming presenters.

[@Nebarus]

Nope, I agree that SSDs will never replace floppy discs... Not much vision to be found in Shugart...

[@richardfeynman5560]

They had not much of a clue of what the future would bring 38 years ago. Of course the can't be blamed for that. Today we also have no idea what computer technology will be like in 20,30 or 40 years. We can make educated guesses, not more.

[@vladanlausevic1733]

"They call it the CD" :) epic!

[@thekhakiobserver3128]

Its funny hearing ppl talk about the vulnerability of HDD's in the 80's when desktops literally never got moved, especially back then when you needed a key to open em up. You had to be ballin' to have a $10K laptop w/any utility.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

it was an issue. Just lifting up and moving box to another desk next to it could be deadly if you forgot to park the heads. Auto parking heads solved all that.

[@mindphaserxy]

I'm here for the comments about VCRs and tracking because that's what this video reminds me of.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

CED was an ANALOG video storage format, so I fail to see its relevancy in computing... Well, so was the C-Cassette and it was used as an affortable storage medium in home computers, but it wasn't particularly practical or efficient.

[@38911bytefree]

Tapes are analog too ..... Digital is just a convetion. Even USB signals are ANALOG, their voltage are not perfect, they have noise, they overshoot. Digial is just a vote for yes / no on a threshold. Anything carrying analog signal can store data.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

@@38911bytefree Sure, but I doubt that the CED would have been practical as a digital storage medium, any more so than LP-records...

[@jamesslick4790]

@@joojoojeejee6058Actually in the 1970s and early 80s "lp" records WERE used for data! Some computer magazines would have a thin vinyl "flexidisc" inserted that would usually contain programs written in BASIC. CED disks had their own issues, but the DID have a higher "information" density, So it was conceivable in 1983 to use it as archival data storage.

[@joojoojeejee6058]

@@jamesslick4790 I know, but it was just a gimmick and not really a practical way of distributing software. They even used FM-radio to transmit some programs. What a ridiculous idea to transmit data over the airwaves! Oh, wait...

[@wallacelang1374]

I have used various storage devices over the years 8 inch floppy disks, 5.25 inch floppy disks, 3.50 inch disks and built-in hard drives. My favorite disk drive depends on which computer system that I am using at the time.

[@tonijoncevski8607]

Love Mr Kildall, he was a genuine genius and a computer prophet. That other guy was wrong, dead wrong!

[@jordanolson3173]

Gary totally told the Memorex corporation what to do!

[@DataWaveTaGo]

So where is the 5-1/4" hard drive of 5, 10 and 15 megabytes? In 1982 I had incorporated those drives into my system designs. The hard drives were MFM at the time, but I connected them to a Xebec MFM to SCSI controller that made designing in larger and larger drives a snap. My last design used a 512 megabyte HDD with a SCSI interface for an industrial system in 1989.

[@paulfrancis8836]

He was no Nostradamus, that's for sure.

[@Naa-ee7nq]

No wonder Seagate got in trouble. Their CEO was clueless.

[@kiningroseburg9288]

Wow Mnr Seagate CEO was wrong with almost every single "prediction" he made. Thinking solid state storage will never overtake SSD's, 5 1/4 disks will never be replaced with 3 1/2" disks etc.... so wrong

[@RonJohn63]

6:00 I remember the "park" command, which moved the read/write heads off to the side for transport, and then the manufacturers started doing it automatically on power-down.

[@Wizardofgosz]

+RonJohn63 I always parked the heads on the HD in my XT clone back in the day when I turned it off. But since it was used for a 24 hr. BBS, it was rarely off.

[@RonJohn63]

Richard Wielgosz There's a deep philosophical question buried in that comment... :)

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

And then they started doing it as part of the drives power saving feature, wearing down the drives mechanics prematurely (Especially when using the drives in a USB case or NAS device). (S.M.A.R.T. attribute 193 Load/Unload Cycle count)

[@Audfile]

We could have gotten cool, laid back Gary. Instead we got that freaking nerd bag Bill Gates.

[@medes5597]

According to those who worked with him, Gary wasn't all that laid back.

[@rafaeldickens]

7:26 "I don't think you're ever going to beat magnetic disk storage with a semiconductor like devices" 🙄 Seagate CEO at that time

[@criskity]

Talking about gigabytes 30 years ago...cool! The interviewers seem more savvy about the future trends than that stick-in-the-mud guest.

[@fiftymk_fox4914]

yea I would think that most people back then would see that the teck will get more powerful in the future not that guy though

[@AdamsOlympia]

Well, the interviewer should be knowledgeable on this type of thing .. He was one of the very first people to ever come up with a computer programming language and operating system for a personal computer.

[@maboroshi1986]

in one of the episodes in this season the guest host actually said that he was asked how powerful computers would get back in the late 60's. he was...wrong, he said he wouldn't make such uneducated guesses again. i can't remember who it was, i think george morrow. also i don't think gary kildall actually created any personal computer languages for personal computers, that was MS' territory. he DID create the first real PC OS though, CP/M.

[@ibazulic]

maboroshi1986 you would be wrong. Kildall wrote PL/M for Intel 8080 processors, CP/M was written in PL/M. PL/M stands for Programming Language for Microcomputers. MS wrote only Basic and then licensed it for a bunch of computer mabufacturers (such as Altair, for example, or Commodore, or Apple).

[@maboroshi1986]

Ivan Bažulić yeah forgot about that one, i meant DR more i guess because they were mainly the OS company and ms (pre DOS) was primarily a languages company.