8" Floppy Disk from IBM

[markopolo]

Anyone here remember the 8" Floppy Disks from IBM? I had a computer with a 5 1/4" floppy drive but not the 8".





It held 1,024 bytes or 1 KB of data.

By comparison, the DVD-R in the photo holds 4,700,000,000 bytes or 4,589,844 KB.

We've come a long way in a relatively short period of time. For portable storage, Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) may become the high capacity standard. I think they're up to 300GB now but may one day hold 3.9 terabytes (TB) on a single optical disc.

[renrut]

I use to work on a station that had punch cards that were finally put into a PC back in 1994. This station also used 2500ft real-to-real tapes. It had a floppy drive though. The diskes were probably 18 inches in diameter and held 2Meg. When we had to align the heads on the drive, we would wreck a disk from time to time. We use to put the disk on our heads and it looked like a large halo.

[Mike]

Vaguely. I've only really seen them used in console cluster controllers like 3174/3274 units. As alternate boot sources. I see they were used in System 36 units as well.

Ah, the memories......

[jerrygaylor]

I remember them also. I started in computers in 1960, I have seen it all, first computer I worked on was an IBM 704 tube job at Edwards AFB>

[Mike]

1960? I doff my cap to you. I got involved in 1974.
My first machines were S360 models 158 and 168.
Haven't changed much, have they?