How much do 8" Floppies hold?

From: Gary Oliver <go_at_ao.com>
Date: Wed Feb 4 14:20:54 1998

To add further rumor to this data stream...

"Way back when" I first ran into 8 inch floppies, I *heard* the
size chosen by IBM was based upon the need for a single floppy
to be able to replace a "box" of punched cards (choose your
variety - 80 or 96). So the need was to support around 2000
"records" per disk (77 tracks * 26 sectors per track = 2002.) And
a "record" of 128 bytes could hold an entire card image with ease.

Never substantiated this rumor, but it sounded good, anyway.

Gary.

At 02:53 PM 2/4/98 -0500, you wrote:
>PG Manney wrote:
>>
>> I keep an 8" floppy disk in the front of my store to amaze people ("Just
>> fold it twice and stick it in your drive...it holds a lot!")
>>
>> Just how much do (did?) they hold? (I'm sure there were different data
>> densities...just a range is all I want!)
>
>If I recall, when IBM first invented the things, they held right about
>128k, single sided, single density. By the time I first dealt with them
>in the TRS-80 Model 2, they were packing 512k on a single-sided disk.
>Later, the Model 16/6000 Xenix systems were packing 1.25M on a double
>sided disk. Shortly after that, the format died in favor of 5.25HD.
>--
>Ward Griffiths
>Dylan: How many years must some people exist,
> before they're allowed to be free?
>WDG3rd: If they "must" exist until they're "allowed",
> they'll never be free.
>
Received on Wed Feb 04 1998 - 14:20:54 GMT