The History of the Floppy Disk 204
Esther Schindler writes "Ready for a nostalgic trip into the wayback? We had floppy disks long before we had CDs, DVDs, or USB thumb-drives. Here's the evolution of the portable media that changed everything about personal computing. 'The 8-inch drive began to show up in 1971. Since they enabled developers and users to stop using the dreaded paper tape (which were easy to fold, spindle, and mutilate, not to mention to pirate) and the loathed IBM 5081 punch card. Everyone who had ever twisted a some tape or—the horror!—dropped a deck of Hollerith cards was happy to adopt 8-inch drives. Besides, the early single-sided 8-inch floppy could hold the data of up to 3,000 punch cards, or 80K to you.'"
Read Error (Score:5, Funny)
Differentiating the 5.25" and the 3.5" disks (Score:3, Funny)
We would call the big ones "floppies" and the small ones "stiffies" (for obvious reaons) to keep them apart. And we would do it with a straight face.
This seems to have been a local thing in South Africa, however, since I have only heard it there.
Re:Floppy disk drives are not history... (Score:5, Funny)
That, and if you don't teach people about them they won't know which icon to click to save their work.
Re:Ahhh memories! (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, those urban legends that didn't happen to you either, but everybody says they experienced them first person. :-)
Yeah, those didn't happen to me either, but I've heard them many times.