I still have some 8" IBM floppy disks on my shelf. One even auto-plays a
golf game if inserted into a 3741/3742.
While the original question was on 12" disks, the information provided
in the replies about 8" disks has been 'very poor'.
The university where I got my training used first 80 column cards for
student programming tasks, then I was involved as an advanced MIS
student in a pilot program to used diskettes. They gave us 3742s, but
did not give us instructions on how to use them. We actually took the
big maintenance books out of the back of machine figured out how to use
them. The next semester all the MIS students used them and the card
punch was retired. Some of my floppies contain class work from then.
The System-3 shop, where I had my first job at, converted all data input
from 96 column cards to 8" floppy just prior to my starting. They used a
3540 reader attached to the System-3. We also transferred data from the
System-3 to a System-32 (and back) using the diskettes because the
System-32 also had an 8" floppy.
For the System-32, some data was retained from one month to the next
using 8" floppies. One month, the previous months data was lost. I
personally discovered that the person in that department used a magnet
to hold the diskette to the side of a metal filing cabinet so she would
not loose the diskette. (Yep, personal true story.)
When we moved to a 4331 and DOS/VS, we used the built-in diskette reader
as data input. (You could remove the IML disk after the IML finished and
it was then a data reader until you needed to IML again.) It's only been
a few releases since z/VSE removed the 3540. Support was dropped in
z/VSE 4.1 in 2006.
That was 'data use'. There was of course, a lot of places where IBM used
the 8" floppy for IML, such as all the 43xx series and the 3274
controllers. (Went to smaller disks with the 3174s.)
Tony Thigpen
Radoslaw Skorupka wrote on 7/13/24 8:35 AM:
Gentlemen,
Let me explain again.
It wasn't a joke, I had really read about 12-inch floppies. It was a
book, not just someone's junk post to some forum.
The book is dated 2006
Title: Introduction to Computers
Editor: Rajmohan Joshi
ISBN: 81-8205-379-X
page 79
In fact I did not believe the information from the book, so I wanted to
verify it.
Since many of notable IBM-MAIN members denied it, I'm pretty sure the
book is simply wrong.
THANK YOU ALL.
BTW: Privately I am floppy disk entomologist. As well as other storage
media, like tapes, etc.
I have a lot of pictures, data sheets, etc. And even my own 55-page
booklet. :-)
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
W dniu 13.07.2024 o 00:03, Michael Oujesky pisze:
What book? Have the ISBN for it?
Michael
At 11:00 AM 7/11/2024, Radoslaw Skorupka wrote:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
I just found information in some book that IBM mainframes used 12
inch floppy diskettes. Late 70's.
Anybody heard about such diskettes?
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
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