8 inches of glory

[Sephiroth]

as a collector's item i picked up a few boxes of 8 inch floppies for about $.75 a box. just how much does one hold, also these are unopened noxes of hopefuly good disks. I want to see one in action but i have not seen a 8 inch floppy drive. infact i have never seen one in my life.

also it the same place i got those i saw part from IBM's fourth massive computer. made in the early 50's, i think, this thing was ugly. a main part of it was for sale around $20. this part looked to be some sort of massive adjustment switch. a large wheel is turned and a plate rubs over some metal cylinders. on its base tubes would display didgits. The display part of it was inside a vacume tube and it was like the 8 you see in an LCD of today. this thing had to weight over 500lbs and it went up to my chest. other components of other ancient computers also lay about. this place also has a shit load of old military experiments and hardware.

[Little Faith]

You seem to have a fetish for antiquated electronics.

[kain]

o yah?? mine is 12 inches and 7 inches in dia..... o wait, oops.

[fodders]

The RX01/RX02 Disk Drive was a removable media, 8 inch floppy drive. The RX01 was the first generation drive dating to around 1975. The RX02 was a double capacity version around 1978. The RX02 double density drive stored 256k words or 512k bytes on a disk.

[TheHighestTree]

wait...you mean computers right?

Are those the sort of discs commodores used?

[Sephiroth]

thanks fodders, I though it was an item from the early 80's. however i did not think disks where used in the 70's. strange cause all the boxes, except the one I opened, are in mint condition. these will go to my growning colection of human technology.

I have always been fasinated with electronics and computers and ever sence i was little i was always takeing different things apart. I am glad to be studing electronics.

on a side note i found some items that might make my soviet case better. such as a industrial 80mm fan plate that looks very good ont he case. a few more bulky parts too, hey i am going for a soviet look here. I will post more pics as i add and creat my case art

[Insomniak]

Heh

/me boots up some Bernouli drives.

[AndrewB]

And to think, 24 years later, modern floppies hold 1.38MB. Almost 3 times as much!

[DooMBoy]

I thought it was 1.44 megs.

[AndrewB]

Nope. Put in an empty floopy and check the free space.

[Fredrik]

Well, the space on a 3.5" floppy is actually both 1.44 and 1.39 MB. It's 1.44 if you define one megabyte as 10^6 bytes but only 1.39 MB if you define one megabyte as 2^20. Both are correct but 2^20 is preferable when dealing with computers (you could call it mebibyte if you want to be entirely proper though). Disk manufacturers prefer to define one meg as 10^6 bytes because it makes the products seem able to store more.

[DooMBoy]

AndrewB said:

Nope. Put in an empty floopy and check the free space.

Oh, my bad. Heh.

[Fredrik]

By the way

And to think, 24 years later, modern floppies hold 1.38MB.

They aren't exactly modern, the 3.5" floppy disk was invented over 15 years ago. With modern technology, you can store several gigs of data on a 3.5" disk.

[AndrewB]

NO, both are not correct. 2^20 is the only correct way. Defining a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes is nothing but an inaccuracy caused by 10^3 and 2^10 being close to each other. Even still, no matter how you look at it, it never adds up to 1.44 anything.

It's 1,457,664 bytes.
It's 1,423 KB.
It's 1.39 MB.

It's really illegal false advertising, but considered too petty to be important, and nobody can step up and advertise the REAL 1.39 MB size on their floppies, since they'd then be seen as having inferior disks.

[Fredrik]

Mega means 1,000,000 exactly. When applied to byte, it gets a diffuse meaning and does actually mean either 10^6 or 2^20.

One mebibyte (MiB) is however always exactly 1,048,576 bytes, so you may stick to that definition in the future if you wish to avoid confusion.

[AndrewB]

The point still remains, the 1.44 label is false no matter how you look at it. It could be 1.45, 1.42, or (more accurately) 1.39, but in no conceivable way does does 1.44 come into the picture.

[Ralphis]

This is the most pointless debate ever.

[NoPoet]

This is the most pointless debate ever.

No Poet nods in agreement, and enjoys a few minutes' silent laughter

[fraggle]

AndrewB said:

The point still remains, the 1.44 label is false no matter how you look at it. It could be 1.45, 1.42, or (more accurately) 1.39, but in no conceivable way does does 1.44 come into the picture.

No, its the name thats misleading. "Mega" is usually taken to mean 1,000,000 but has been distorted in its use in computers. This is why some people are advocating using "kibi","mibi", "gibi" instead, which is more distinct and clearer in its meaning.

[DooMBoy]

[Butthead voice]Uh.....OK.[/Butthead voice]

[fraggle]

DooMBoy said:

[Butthead voice]Uh.....OK.[/Butthead voice]

To explain: in normal usage "Kilo" means 1,000 of, like a kilogram is 1,000 grams, but in computing it usually means 1,024 (because this is a power of 2 and fits in nicely with binary numbers). In small numbers this is ok (the difference between 1,024 and 1,000 is comparatively small) but in large numbers this error gets multiplied. You can see this in BIOS memory tests: if you have 128 megs of RAM your computer counts up to 131,072 KB (not 128,000 as you would expect if it really was 128 Megabytes)

[TheHighestTree]

stupid fucks who made compys to begin with...kilo = 1000...no other way around it.


BTW, i could picture that Butthead voice so clearly in my mind that it was almost scary...i'm very tired and feel weary from running around all day :p