Did any one ever use keypunch to tape or 8' floppy?
On Wed, 19 Jul 2017, Mike Stein via cctalk wrote:
Those 8' floppies were a PITA to handle and store, but
they sure held a lot of data...
;-P
That is why they switched from 8 foot to 5.25 foot floppies.
Punchcard size is reputed to have been chosen for use of readily available
currency bins (was the dollar bill reduced in size as a reflection of its
declining value :-?
8 inch floppies (1971 23FD) were intended to be stored like 8.5x11 paper.
I'd like to find more info about the decision of 5.25 inch.
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/5.25_3.5_Floppy_Drive/5.25_and_3.5_Floppy_Panel.oral_history.2005.102657925.pdf
is one of the only sources.
In it,
Don Massaro, of Shugart Associates, says that they chose 5.25" as the
smallest that they could make a diskette that COULD NOT be put in a shirt
pocket, deliberately avoiding that particular method of damaging a
diskette.
They all agree that Wang was the impetus. That Steve Jobs was pestering
them for a cheap drive, but due to the holes in his jeans and personal
hygiene?, they never took him seriously.
George Sollman said that the drive size was shosen to match tape drives.
(also mentioned in a sidebar in Byte 35? years ago:)
However Jimmy Adkisson of Shugart Associates claims that they were in a
bar with Dr. Wang and his people, and when they asked Wang what size it
should be, he picked up a bar napkin. Adkisson took the napkin back to
the office and measured it. I want to find out what bar, and whether
that bar has personalized napkins!
(I'd also like to get novelty napkins printed up with a picture of a
diskette and a copy of that story printed on the back!)
Later, there was the "battle of the shirt-pocket disks" between 3"
(Amstrad), 3.25" (Dysan) and 3.5" (Sony). Dysan, who did not want to
retool to make hard-shell 3" or 3.5", designed a 3.25" floppy floppy.
They made the seemingly sensible assumption that the size conflict would
be won by whichever had software available, and they bet the company on a
3.25" software publishing venture. Almost all MAJOR programs were
available on 3.25" diskettes, even though the Seequia Chameleon 325 was
the only computer that ever made it to market with a 3.25" drive.
3.9", 2.9", 2.8", and several others, never caught on.
HP and Apple went with Sony 3.5", and when IBM also went 3.5" (abandoning
their announced 3.9"), that sealed it.
The earliest 3.5" disks (I have a few "Shugart" ones) had no shutter.
Then there was a sliding spring loaded shutter, with a place on the disk
to labelled "PINCH" (with an arrow) to release the shutter.
When full automatic shutters came out, the word "PINCH" was dropped, but
the arrow was left on as a reminder of which direction the disk went into
the drive, even though it only went in one way (unlike 8" and 5.25" disks
that would fit into the drive 8 ways)
It is also amusing about the distortions in memory perceptions.
I have a [slightly crashed] RAMAC? 24" 100K? platter. I would show it to
my students. Whenever it was mentioned later, the students would recall
it as being "three or four feet diameter!"
Similarly, we often waste time in futile attempts to track down "ten inch"
and "twelve inch" floppy stories that were simply misremembrances of 8".
(If you don't believe that, FIND ONE)
http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/shirt-pocket-diskette
is an UNCREDITED direct copy of a post that I made in this group.
Lack of attribution isn't very bad. But adding "RICM notes that" on the
beginning of one of my paragraphs turns that into theft. (3 of less than
10 words changed)
Is the rest of "their" content also similarly plagiarized?
Are the pictures of THEIR collection, or unauthorized copies of other
people's pictures?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com
