alt Hacker News3M Diskette Reference Manual (1983) [pdf]
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Apparently 3M was a serious player back in the day on magnetic tapes and floppy diskettes. But today they are not present in a similar market (digital storage) at all.
I wonder what was it like to go through that timeframe, as the management and the employees, where the floppy disks were becoming obsolete. Did they purposefully took the decision to not pursue CD, flash memory market? Or was it just a shortsightedness of the management where they fell behind and eventually had to exit that market?
Of course 3M still managed to be successful and today it is one of the big market cap companies...
>Refrain from smoking, eating, or drinking when handling a diskette to keep from contaminating the media surface.
At 1,685,278 bytes this almost fits on within the hallowed 1.44 megabytes. Maybe the front and rear covers can be discarded?
It's interesting that the index hole is not on y-axis, if it is actually used to allow operations. I used all my SS 5.25" as DS just by flipping them I think, and they just worked. You weren't supposed to do that, but all the SS diskettes were coated on the other side, so you just fliped it and it would work, but it wouldn't be certified for that use case.
I'd be interested to read about the construction of floppy drive read/write heads.
That’s the first time I’ve ever read the measurement “microinches”
Back when things came with real documentation.
There is a surprising level of technical details on how the diskette works and how it was manufactured. You don't see that nowadays.
For all of computing eternity, the only person I've ever heard refer to it as a "diskette" is icon-lady Susan Kare.
Includes a bit about manufacturing process and disk writing as well. Amazing!
This is pretty cool
such a clean documentation, that's actually inspiring
Just recently I wanted to show my kids the 5.25" floppy disk - I had a small stack somewhere, but could not find it. I have finally found an 3½" floppy and have shown it to my kids (14 y.o. max). Evidently they never used such a thing, but I was genuinely surprised they didn't even know what it was. After a considerable amount of time one of my daughters hesitated but said something like: "Wasn't it like old USB stick thingy?". Given they have no USB stick either that's not bad, I guess. Then I proceeded to explain that a floppy disk is pictured on Save buttons - you just had to see their faces, it was a moment of the big revelation.