Why are they called 3.5 inch drives ?

On 8/28/20 9:09 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/27/2020 1:02 PM, Ant wrote:

DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8 inches
long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1 TB
desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P


I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but I no
longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies away? I
don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

I have a 5.25" floppy drive and a few disks (even one with DOS2.11), but
haven't used it recently.

IIRC, I still have one 8-inch floppy I used in college (although it's
been almost 40 years since I had a way to read it).

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Jesus -- The other white meat!

Wolffan wrote:
[...]

I still have an unopened box of 5.25? and another of 3.5?. I no longer
have a working computer which will handle 5.25?, but my ancient beige G3
will read/write 3.5? floppies. And I still have a USB 3.5? floppy drive
which might work. USB 1.1, I think.

"USB"!? What kind of new-fangled non-sense is *that*!? What's wrong
with good old parallel ports!? Never hurt anybody!


Yep, I've still got two of those (3.5") and a laptop with a parallel
port. One of the drives can also be inserted in a bay in the laptop
(slide out DVD-ROM drive, slide in 3.5" diskette drive). Now if only its
(the laptop's) display and keyboard would work, ...

Big Al wrote:
On 8/28/20 10:09 AM, this is what Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/27/2020 1:02 PM, Ant wrote:

DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8
inches long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1
TB desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P

I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but
I no longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies
away?
I don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

I've got 8mm film reels. Want any?!!! LOL. Why I keep them either
is a question. ALong with the dual cassette tape deck, the
reel-to-reel deck too.

Ah, this is a ****ing contest?

I've 9-track reel-to-real magtape and papertapes!

Next!

On Fri, 28 Aug 2020 12:56:59 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

knuttle wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:

I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but I
no longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies
away? I don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

It is obvious why you don't throw the floppies away! You may need them
SOMEDAY, and the might be valuable.

My aunt is a hoarder. She keeps things because "they might be usable to
somebody else" ... but they aren't usable to *HER*, so the crap keeps
piling up in her trash-cart house.

I had a friend like that. After she died, her niece came in, took a look
around, and said "We're going to need a dumpster."

Frank Slootweg wrote:
Wolffan wrote:
[...]

I still have an unopened box of 5.25? and another of 3.5?. I no longer
have a working computer which will handle 5.25?, but my ancient beige G3
will read/write 3.5? floppies. And I still have a USB 3.5? floppy drive
which might work. USB 1.1, I think.

"USB"!? What kind of new-fangled non-sense is *that*!? What's wrong
with good old parallel ports!? Never hurt anybody!

^L
Yep, I've still got two of those (3.5") and a laptop with a parallel
port. One of the drives can also be inserted in a bay in the laptop
(slide out DVD-ROM drive, slide in 3.5" diskette drive). Now if only its
(the laptop's) display and keyboard would work, ...

Serial too!
--
Life's so loco! ..!.. *isms, sins, hates, (d)evil, illnesses (e.g., COVID-19/2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2), deaths (RIP), interruptions, stresses, heat waves, fires, out(r)ages, dramas, unlucky #4, 2020, greeds, bugs (e.g., crashes & female mosquitoes), etc.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org /
/ /\ /\ \ http://antfarm.ma.cx. Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

Frank Slootweg wrote:

Big Al wrote:
On 8/28/20 10:09 AM, this is what Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/27/2020 1:02 PM, Ant wrote:

DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8
inches long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1
TB desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P

I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but
I no longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies
away?
I don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

I've got 8mm film reels. Want any?!!! LOL. Why I keep them either
is a question. ALong with the dual cassette tape deck, the
reel-to-reel deck too.

Ah, this is a ****ing contest?

I've 9-track reel-to-real magtape and papertapes!

Next!

Never kept the paper tapes from the teletype machine after leaving
college. Remember one time we took the basket that collects the
punchouts to toss as confetti. Didn't realize the puncher uses oil on
the pins, so the punchouts were far more sticky than expected. Had to
use lint rollers on the car upholstery instead of a vacuum.

I still have some punch cards for when I used to submit Fortran programs
to the CSci computer center to then wait for paper printout some hours
later. Get one bit wrong, back to the teletype, submit the tape, wait
hours more, and get back a printout or card deck. Now the old cards are
handy as bookmarks, but not many left.

System memory back then was tiny magnetic donuts with 3 wires running
through them. Never worked on a mainframe with the older 4-wire
magnetic-core memory units.

Although I used an old Osborne, I didn't own one. Damn heavy luggage.
Had an Altair 8080: no tape, cards, disks, nothing, just paddle
switches. Remember getting and fabricating from scratch a "computer"
from Heathkit, but too long to remember the model or CPU. Even had to
mask and etch the PCBs myself. I was sad when Heathkit disappeared. So
much fun building kits.

Getting the HP programmable calculators (think it was the HP-65) that
used magnetic strips was a huge leap forward ... my first mobile
computer. I had several HP calcs before and after that. It was
something of a nerd status symbol to walk around college with the big
fat belt case holding an HP calculator. I even went rogue 1 year and
got a Corvus instead of HP.

Sorry, can't **** as far anymore as I used to, but I can still manage to
spell my full name in the snow.

VanguardLH wrote:
knuttle wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:

I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but I
no longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies
away? I don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

It is obvious why you don't throw the floppies away! You may need them
SOMEDAY, and the might be valuable.

My aunt is a hoarder. She keeps things because "they might be usable to
somebody else" ... but they aren't usable to *HER*, so the crap keeps
piling up in her trash-cart house.

Lots of people do that.
--
Life's so loco! ..!.. *isms, sins, hates, (d)evil, illnesses (e.g., COVID-19/2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2), deaths (RIP), interruptions, stresses, heat waves, fires, out(r)ages, dramas, unlucky #4, 2020, greeds, bugs (e.g., crashes & female mosquitoes), etc.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org /
/ /\ /\ \ http://antfarm.ma.cx. Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

knuttle wrote:
On 8/28/2020 12:55 PM, DerekF wrote:
On 27/08/2020 21:02, Ant wrote:
DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8 inches
long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1 TB
desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P

So do I and I also have a 1980's desktop that I have not turned on in a
while with Win 3.5
Derek
I still have my TI-99 4a. Some day I may need it and I am sure that it
is a valuable antique

Need it for?
--
Life's so loco! ..!.. *isms, sins, hates, (d)evil, illnesses (e.g., COVID-19/2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2), deaths (RIP), interruptions, stresses, heat waves, fires, out(r)ages, dramas, unlucky #4, 2020, greeds, bugs (e.g., crashes & female mosquitoes), etc.
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org /
/ /\ /\ \ http://antfarm.ma.cx. Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
| |o o| |
\ _ /
( )

On 28/08/2020 11:25 pm, VanguardLH wrote:
I still have some punch cards for when I used to submit Fortran programs
to the CSci computer center to then wait for paper printout some hours
later. Get one bit wrong, back to the teletype, submit the tape, wait
hours more, and get back a printout or card deck. Now the old cards are
handy as bookmarks, but not many left.

Cut up, they make good roaches!


--

Chris Elvidge, England

On 8/28/2020 9:55 AM, DerekF wrote:

On 27/08/2020 21:02, Ant wrote:
DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8 inches
long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1 TB
desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P

So do I and I also have a 1980's desktop that I have not turned on in a
while with Win 3.5



There was never a Windows 3.5. Do you perhaps mean Windows 3.1? Or
Windows NT 3.5?

If you mean Windows NT 3.5, note that it wasn't released until 1995, so
your 1980s era computer didn't start out with it installed.


--
Ken

On 8/28/2020 3:25 PM, VanguardLH wrote:

I still have some punch cards for when I used to submit Fortran programs
to the CSci computer center to then wait for paper printout some hours
later.


For many years, I kept a bunch of blank 80-column cards. I kept then to
use as bookmarks.

They're all gone now. I can't remember what happened to them.

--
Ken

On 8/28/2020 11:56 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 8/28/20 9:09 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/27/2020 1:02 PM, Ant wrote:

DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8 inches
long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1 TB
desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P


I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but I no
longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies away? I
don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

I have a 5.25" floppy drive and a few disks (even one with DOS2.11), but
haven't used it recently.

IIRC, I still have one 8-inch floppy I used in college (although it's
been almost 40 years since I had a way to read it).


I remember 8" floppies from when they were used to load microcode on IBM
mainframes, and when they were used as the only discs on on a IBM System
23 (which is what we had at my company).

I never had any way to read them at home. If there was an 8" floppy
drive available for any of my PCs, I never saw one.

Nor did I ever want one. They were physically large, but small in terms
of capacity.

--
Ken

Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/28/2020 11:56 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 8/28/20 9:09 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/27/2020 1:02 PM, Ant wrote:

DerekF wrote:
When 3.5 inch drives measure approximately 4 inches wide, 5.8
inches long and 0.8 inches thick, based on the dimensions of a 1 TB
desktop-class drive.
Derek

I still have my 3.5" floppy disk(ette)s and their drives. :P


I still have a few 3.5" floppies and even fewer 5.25" floppies, but I
no longer have drives for either. Why don't I throw the floppies
away? I don't know. I probably will, one of these days.

I have a 5.25" floppy drive and a few disks (even one with DOS2.11), but
haven't used it recently.

IIRC, I still have one 8-inch floppy I used in college (although it's
been almost 40 years since I had a way to read it).


I remember 8" floppies from when they were used to load microcode on IBM
mainframes, and when they were used as the only discs on on a IBM System
23 (which is what we had at my company).

I never had any way to read them at home. If there was an 8" floppy
drive available for any of my PCs, I never saw one.

Nor did I ever want one. They were physically large, but small in terms
of capacity.


We used the 8" floppy drives (with the 110V AC powered motors)
in computers at work. The "lucky" people got two drives, and
that made floppy-to-floppy backups practical.

We had one model of computer, with a half-height 8" floppy
drive, and that drive was DC powered. But the 8" floppy
era was officially over then - the half-height drive was
still used to "boot the OS off a floppy" during data
recovery attempts on the hard drive. Rather like trying
to resuscitate Windows 10 on occasion :-)

Paul

On 8/29/20 9:43 AM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

I remember 8" floppies from when they were used to load microcode on IBM
mainframes, and when they were used as the only discs on on a IBM System
23 (which is what we had at my company).

I never had any way to read them at home. If there was an 8" floppy
drive available for any of my PCs, I never saw one.

Nor did I ever want one. They were physically large, but small in terms
of capacity.

I remember seeing one at a computer store about 1985. It required a
special cable since the 8-inch drives had slightly different connections
than the smaller drives.

The disk I mentioned earlier wasn't for the PC but an older Z80
processor system that used an OS like CP/M.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the
way of women's emancipation." -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought
Magazine, 1896