Discussion · bonfire.cafe

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115602153224142336

To further set my replies on fire, "disk" is not short for "diskette" (diskette is a diminutive and means "small disk").

Diskettes first showed up in 8" size, which may not seem particularly small but hard disks at the time were larger, often 14 inches (more than 3× the surface area of 8").

The 5¼" diskettes that followed were introduced as "mini-diskettes", or "small small disks".

3½" diskettes were "micro-diskettes", or "very small small disks".

lemgandi

@lemgandi@mastodon.social replied · 2 days ago

@thomasfuchs When I started it IT, we used RL02 drives. They were the size of a washing machine, and if they got out of balance they could start to walk across the (raised) floor. Some people would take old disk packs apart and use the platters to make wall clocks.

They held an astonishing 10 MB of data.

Adrianna Pińska

@confluency@hachyderm.io replied · 2 days ago

@thomasfuchs In South Africa, 3½" floppies were referred to as "stiffy disks". I did not realise that this was a regionalism until much later, when I called them that in a conversation with a non-South African and they looked at me as if I'd grown a second head.

(We also call traffic lights "robots".)

Thomas 🔭🕹️

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io replied · 2 days ago

And yes, all these sizes were referred to as "diskettes" (small disk), even the 8" one, even by their inventor, IBM.

Even in huge letters on the sleeve.

Thomas 🔭🕹️

@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io replied · 2 days ago

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115604873348659045

Maybe you think all of this is irrelevant now, who gives a fuck about a media format more than 50 years old?

Well, fun fact, the design of SD cards is referencing the design of floppy disks, and were specifically made thin enough to be used in floppy adapters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath).
Yes, they made an adapter to stick your SD card in and read and write it in a standard floppy disk drive; though you would need to install special software to use it (ironically that software probably came on a CD).

Why would they do such a thing? Because there was no (widespread) USB.

Wouter@nukleos

@nukleos@mendeddrum.org replied · 2 days ago

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