
Put 1.7MB onto 1.44MB Floppies (1999) - wglb
http://www.trevormarshall.com/byte_articles/byte19.htm
======
derekp7
Side note, but "1.44MB" has always been wrong regardless if you are using base
2 or base 10 notation. The actual size is 1.44 * 1000 * 1024 bytes (or 1440
KB). To me this always seemed wrong to divide the actual capacity by 1024 then
again by 1000 to get to 1.44 (stick with MiB / KiB, or MB/KB, but don't mix
them).

~~~
benj111
Don't hard drives use MB (to inflated advertised capacity? You decide) as
standard.

But sectors are 512 bytes to make it easier when dealing with the actual nitty
gritty of reading data?

~~~
deathanatos
> _Don 't hard drives use MB (to inflated advertised capacity? You decide) as
> standard._

They do, but that's not what diskettes did. Hard drives use KB = 1000 B, MB =
1000 KB, etc. as units. This makes the number on the side of the packaging
larger, so it's good for marketing. They used to use 512 B sectors internally.
(Today, HDDs have moved to 4 * 1024 B sectors, or 4 KiB, I believe.[4])

([1]) 3½" diskettes were 1474560 B (1440 KiB). If we use the programmer's
"KiB", where 1 KiB = 1024 B, 1 MiB = 1024 KiB, we get 1.40 MiB. If we use the
marketer's 1 KB = 1000 B, 1 MB = 1000 KB, we get 1.47 MB. The only way to get
that 1.44 number is to mix the two: 1474560 B / (1024 B / KiB) / (1000 KB /
MB). This is of course utter nonsense. But I guess it got to a point where it
would be weird, I guess, to not label your packaging as "1.44 MB", and so it
was, until the USB drive killed diskettes[2]. (This mix happened because the
size was "1440 KB", and from there, someone moved a decimal point without
understanding why that didn't make sense.)

[1]: I'm going to use the binary SI unit prefixes
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix))
for clarity, but back when diskettes where popular, 1024 B was notated as 1
"KB", and it was up to context to determine if the author meant 1024 B or 1000
B. The binary prefixes didn't exist until '98, let alone were they adopted,
and diskettes would die a quick death soon after that.

[2]: Or CDs, if you had a burner. Or Zip drivers or Jazz drives if you did
that.

[3]: The "1.44 MB" storage device was rigid. It wasn't floppy in the least. It
was a _diskette_. The 5¼", _that_ was floppy.

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format)

~~~
dragonwriter
> The "1.44 MB" storage device was rigid. It wasn't floppy

The storage media was floppy; all “floppy disks” were fairly rigid (though the
3.5” moreso than the larger ones.)

> The 5¼", that was floppy.

The case? Not really. Neither was the 8”, though they were less rigid than the
3.5”. The actual media was on all of them, and is what the term referred to.

~~~
oriolid
Is this a cultural thing? In Finnish 5" 1/4 used to be known as "lerppu"
(floppy) and 3.5" as "korppu" (twice baked bread) but I've never heard that
English would have specific words for these.

~~~
taejo
In South Africa the 3.5" were "stiffies" but I don't think that word was used
with that meaning anywhere else in the English-speaking world (and even in
South Africa it triggered plenty of smirks and giggles in middle-school
computing classes).

------
segfaultbuserr
Repost my comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19501145)

One feature of floppy disks is that the recording technology and the format is
independent from the physical medium, the limitations are mostly imposed by
the disk drive, the encoding and the file system, not the medium itself.

Well, this "feature" creates significant compatibility issues as all the
vendors created their own proprietary formats, sometimes with patents. As a
result, together with the economics of scale, often, the standard format is
not the best design, a simpler design that serves as the lowest common
denominator.

On the other hand, due to this feature, it was already possible to store 1,760
KB of data on a 3-1/2 inch HD floppy on a 1986 Amiga. And in 2000, it was
possible to store 32 MiB of data on a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk, by using a
SuperDisk LS-240 drive (although random write is sacrificed, the entire floppy
must be rewritten if a change is needed, like CD-RWs).

I believe the advancements in magnetic recording technology in the past 20
years allows one to achieve even higher capacity on a standard floppy, and it
can be as cheap as early floppy drives if mass produced, only that it doesn't
make sense to do so.

~~~
roywiggins
zip drives pushed the magnetic disk format really far, the biggest ones got up
to 750 MB and then got immediately eaten by CD-RWs and then flash memory

~~~
u801e
The early models also had the "click of death" issue where the drive would
literally eat the edges of the disk.

------
gattilorenz
Ah the memories... WinImage, rawrite and other floppy tools are an integral
part of my youth. I learned so much by not having an internet connection and
trying to squeeze different version of Windows (2 and 3) or Linux into
bootable disks, just for fun. DMF formatting was one of the best tricks
(together with ramdrives where to extract compressed files).

I hate floppy disks with a passion (ugh, installing OS/2 was a pain), but I
also miss them.

~~~
Bluecobra
I wish I knew about this back then. I had a PC with no Internet connection as
well (paranoid parents). My school had a T1 for Internet in the late 90’s and
I remember schlepping back and forth piles of disks and using file splitting
programs to save a large file across multiple floppies.

------
Gregordinary
This sparked a memory of the LS-240 SuperDisk drives that could format a 1.44
MB floppy to hold 32 MB. Of course only usable on an LS-240 drive, and the
entire disk had to be re-written any time a change was made.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk#History)

~~~
hinkley
Aren't these the ones that lost out to the Zip drive, before we found out
about the Click of Death? Sad days.

------
techaul
Trevor Marshall! I had one of his antennas, namely the omnidirectional 15dbi,
1.7m tall. I had an open access point setup for a while. I remember people
connecting from so many places and sending me emails to say hello.
Fascinating!

------
jboles
You could also make 720k DSDD disks into 1.44M DSHD disks by making a hole in
the corner (similar to the write-protect hole but opposite corner). Of course,
720k disks seemed to be made to lower tolerances than 1.44M disks, so it was
not a very reliable method, and usable only in a pinch.

~~~
benj111
You could often make single sided 5.25 inch disks into double sided with a
hole punch also.

~~~
tom_
Maybe worth noting:
[https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15189#p204...](https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15189#p204750)

```just a word of warning, copy everything off them quick, as the 'side2' goes
backwards to the cotton cloth cleaner inside the 5 1/4" case, so basically all
the crap caught in it then end up coming out when playing other flip side
:('''

------
onept88
1.88 I believe was the best version. It existed about 20 years ago, and it was
a DOS program. You just had to add a 11-12kb stub memory wise in either
config.sys or autoexec.bat. Or both, but it worked. Any 1.44 disk could hold
1.88 without compression.

~~~
int_19h
Closer to 30 years, I think, since the underlying hardware in form of 1.44 Mb
3.5" floppies showed up in mid-80s. I remember using this in the 90s:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_(DOS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2M_\(DOS\))

~~~
rzzzt
NFormat, another custom formatting tool shows up in Adrian Black's video,
demonstrating that these also work with floppy emulators:

[https://youtu.be/Lw0JV4TypSo](https://youtu.be/Lw0JV4TypSo)

[http://toastytech.com/files/nformat.html](http://toastytech.com/files/nformat.html)

------
souprock
If the drive had all the technology of a modern hard disk, I wonder how much
we could fit. That would include shingled recording, large sectors, modern
error correction, etc.

One could even do a single-sector disk, spiraling it around to avoid sector
gap overhead.

~~~
rasz
32MB on ordinary 1.44 floppy media by just switching from stepper to voice
coil head servomotor
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/23/32mb_on_a_humble_fl...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/23/32mb_on_a_humble_floppy/)

------
lucasverra
tested GET on 5 links :

\- 4/5 do not work anymore

\- 1/5 is this marvel of 90's design :
[https://www.grsoftware.net](https://www.grsoftware.net)

Enjoy :)

~~~
cmpolis
Seems more usable than most "modern" websites. Content loads quickly, no
modals or notifications that I need to click out of, important information is
visually easy to find...

------
nightcracker
> Yet the elegance of booting from a floppy is indisputable -- your OS can't
> be hacked, the floppy is write protected

What percentage of floppy disk readers actually implement the write protection
in hardware?

~~~
inscionent
> Write-protection is typically enforced by the hardware. In the case of
> computer devices, attempting to violate it will return an error to the
> operating system while some tape recorders physically lock the record button
> when a write-protected cassette is present.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_protection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_protection)

------
markvdb
Fond memories of Charles Steinkuehler's Linux Router Project [0]. Similar
floppy disk based project.

The author's friendly attitude was one of the things that got me into free and
open source software. Thank you Charles!

[0] [http://lrp2.steinkuehler.net](http://lrp2.steinkuehler.net)

------
undecisive
I remember using "superformatted" disks when burning MuLinux to disk, many
many moons ago...
[http://micheleandreoli.org/public/Software/mulinux/](http://micheleandreoli.org/public/Software/mulinux/)

------
cesarb
For context: on the comments for
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19569827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19569827)
today there was a discussion about the maximum size for a common floppy disk.

