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On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:36:50 +0000, choro <> wrote:

>Well, he then admitted, I think I put it in my pocket together with some
>of those brown strip magnets that they use on notice boards, he said.
>But those are quite weak magnets, he innocently added!!!
>
>It sure takes all sorts!

Are data stored magnetically on flash drives?



--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 11/17/11 6:47 PM, choro wrote:
> On 18/11/2011 00:46, Char Jackson wrote:
>> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:34:02 +0000, choro<> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
>>> were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
>>> those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
>>> floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
>>> wondering why they had called them floppies.
>>
>> I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
>> was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
>> the less floppy 3.5" type.
>
> Sorry but this is the first time I hear of the 8" diskettes.
>
> When I bought my first laptop, it used 3.5" floppies and I remember
> wondering why they had named them floppies as they were not particularly
> flooppy. It was later that I bought an old IBM PC which used 5.25"
> floppies that I realized how floppy those floppies were.
>
> As for the 8" floppies those must have been before my time. My time on
> computers, that is!
>

http://oldcomputers.net/trs80ii.html

http://oldcomputers.net/floppydisks.html


--
"If they can make you believe absurdities they can make you commit
atrocities."
by Voltaire

On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:48:03 -0500, SC Tom wrote:

>> svchost is a piece of the operating system that runs many different
>> services for the OS, so if you want to get rid of that, *don't*!
>>
>
> Aw, c'mon, Gene. Let him have some fun :-)

NO! Let ME have some fun!

Bah and humbug, I say...

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:46:53 -0600, Char Jackson <> wrote:

>On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:34:02 +0000, choro <> wrote:
>
>>Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
>>were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
>>those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
>>floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
>>wondering why they had called them floppies.
>
>I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
>was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
>the less floppy 3.5" type.

The 8" ones were called floppy disks, the 5.25" ones were mini-floppy disks,
and the 3,5" ones were called micro-floppy disks, though we called them
stiffies, or stiffy disks.


--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:23:22 +0000, choro wrote:

> I am not going to argue with you but I know that you can mess up even a
> hard drive with a magnet.

*Even* a hard drive?

Hard drives are *magnetic* storage devices.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:48:34 -0700, GreyCloud wrote:

> On 11/17/11 6:47 PM, choro wrote:
>> On 18/11/2011 00:46, Char Jackson wrote:
>>> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:34:02 +0000, choro<> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
>>>> were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
>>>> those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
>>>> floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
>>>> wondering why they had called them floppies.
>>>
>>> I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
>>> was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
>>> the less floppy 3.5" type.
>>
>> Sorry but this is the first time I hear of the 8" diskettes.
>>
>> When I bought my first laptop, it used 3.5" floppies and I remember
>> wondering why they had named them floppies as they were not particularly
>> flooppy. It was later that I bought an old IBM PC which used 5.25"
>> floppies that I realized how floppy those floppies were.
>>
>> As for the 8" floppies those must have been before my time. My time on
>> computers, that is!
>>
>
> http://oldcomputers.net/trs80ii.html
>
> http://oldcomputers.net/floppydisks.html

OMG! The price of the Trash-80!

I had not remembered that...

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:47:12 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:36:50 +0000, choro <> wrote:
>
>>Well, he then admitted, I think I put it in my pocket together with some
>>of those brown strip magnets that they use on notice boards, he said.
>>But those are quite weak magnets, he innocently added!!!
>>
>>It sure takes all sorts!
>
> Are data stored magnetically on flash drives?

:-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:06:19 +0200, Steve Hayes wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:46:53 -0600, Char Jackson <> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:34:02 +0000, choro <> wrote:
>>
>>>Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
>>>were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
>>>those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
>>>floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
>>>wondering why they had called them floppies.
>>
>>I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
>>was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
>>the less floppy 3.5" type.
>
> The 8" ones were called floppy disks, the 5.25" ones were mini-floppy disks,
> and the 3,5" ones were called micro-floppy disks, though we called them
> stiffies, or stiffy disks.

I always called them floppies (never heard of stiffies), but I do
remember a secretary who kept calling them hard disks. I finally took
one apart and showed her why they're called floppies :-)

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:06:36 -0800, "Gene E. Bloch"
<not-> wrote:

>On Fri, 18 Nov 2011 01:23:22 +0000, choro wrote:
>
>> I am not going to argue with you but I know that you can mess up even a
>> hard drive with a magnet.
>
>*Even* a hard drive?
>
>Hard drives are *magnetic* storage devices.

As an aside, the most powerful magnets that I've personally seen can
be found inside hard drives. I accidentally let two of them get too
close together and had to separate them with two pairs of pliers.

--

Char Jackson

Hi, Char.

Those 5.25" floppies were "mini-floppies" to distinguish them from the 8"
floppies. I don't recall that the 3 1/2" floppies had a distinctive name.
Internally they all used the same thin film disks cut like doughnuts from
(floppy!) Mylar plastic sheets.

My first computer was the original TRS-80 (before they called it the Model
I) in December 1977. Soon after that, the Model II appeared, but I never
had one of those; it was a big "business" machine with two 8" floppy disk
drives built in. But my computer had no disk drives at all until the next
Summer. We had to load all our programs and data from a music cassette
recorder. Tapes were sequential and SLOW; it took about 5 minutes to load
the 12 KB (yes, K!) tax estimating program that I wrote in Level I (tiny 4
KB) BASIC in January 1978, then re-wrote in Level II BASIC when it arrived
(in a new EEPROM that the Radio Shack store installed for me) in February
1978.

In July 1978, mini-floppy disk drives were introduced, along with TRSDOS.
Our first diskettes held only 87.5 KB (35 tracks of ten 256-byte sectors),
including the space used by the directory and other overhead. And since
TRSDOS and Disk BASIC also had to be loaded from the floppy, we could use
only about 50 KB per diskette to store apps and data. When we got a second
FDD, our horizon more than doubled; we could keep the OS and app in one and
store data on the other. And when we finally got a third one, we were
thrilled: we could now copy files between the second and third drives,
while keeping the OS/apps in the first drive. No more copying stuff from
diskette to memory, then swapping out the source diskette and putting in the
destination and copying from memory to the destination. It was wonderful!

When I shopped for diskettes for the first time in 1978, the computer store
owner asked if I wanted soft-sector or hard-sector diskettes. I didn't
know. I learned later that hard-sector diskettes had 10 holes punched
around the center; a light inside the drive would shine through the holes,
and sensors on the other side of the diskette could tell which sector was
then being read by the read/write head. The TRS-80 used soft-sector
diskettes, with only a single sensing hole; TRSDOS could use timing of the
spin speed to determine positions of the 10 sectors. These diskettes were
all single-sided, of course; double-sided diskettes arrived a year or two
later. As technology improved, we eventually got 5.25" diskettes that could
hold over 1 MB each. A few manufacturers figured out how to double that.
My final TRS-80 Model 4 in the early 1980's had 4 floppy drives, 2 built in
and 2 more connected via external cable, and I had a full MEGABYTE online!
WOW! The new 3.5" diskettes arrived in the early '80s with capacities
starting about where the 5.25s topped out. And then we got hard disk drives
that started at about 5 MB - for thousands of dollars each. Quicken reminds
me that I bought a 40 MB Seagate on 2/26/87 for $557 after prices had come
down some; my previous HDs had been pre-installed in computers I bought.

The thin Mylar film in 5.25" diskettes were encased in stiff black paper,
just like the larger 8" floppies. (I still have the one that I cut open to
inspect.) This made the diskettes easier to handle and harder to damage,
but they still were somewhat floppy. Each one had a squarish notch cut in
one corner; a sensor inside the drive could detect this and tell if we had
inserted the diskette upside down. That was critical for single-sided
diskettes, of course, and it also was important for double-sided diskettes.
At first, our drives had only a single read/write head; we had to turn it
over to record on or read from the other side. We learned how to physically
punch holes and the squarish notch in the right positions so that we could
use the second side. Later drives had dual sets of heads and could
read/write on both sides without turning the diskettes over.

I still have stacks of 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes - which I can no longer
read. The motherboard I bought early this year doesn't even have an FDD
connector, so I can't hook up my combination floppy disk drive, which has
slots - and heads - for both sizes of diskettes; I bought it for $37.89 in
1996.

Ah! Memories. Good times - and bad. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Char Jackson" wrote in message
news:...

On Thu, 17 Nov 2011 23:34:02 +0000, choro <> wrote:

>Oh, those 5.25" floppies! They were what gave the name to floppies. They
>were really floppy, weren't they? It wasn't until *after* I handled
>those that I realized why floppies were called floppies. The first
>floppies I used were the stiffer (much stiffer!) 3.5" ones and I was
>wondering why they had called them floppies.

I thought the 'floppy' name was first given to the 8" diskettes. It
was later that the 5.25" floppies came along, followed of course by
the less floppy 3.5" type.

--

Char Jackson