


Back then, having two floppy drives made a huge difference because one of them could hold the operating system while the other drive loaded a program, such as Lotus 1-2-3 (Opens in a new window).

The drives required a controller card on the motherboard and were connected with ribbon cables. Each floppy diskette could hold 160 kilobytes on one side, or 320KB if you could use both (not all disks were double-sided). The original IBM PC 5150 that debuted in August 1981 offered the option of one or two internal 5.25-inch floppy drives. Soon, Commodore, Tandy, and Atari adopted the same format. Steve Wozniak designed the first external Apple II disk drive in 1978 it used a 5.25-inch floppy disk. The eight-inch size didn't stick around for very long. The round disk inside was in a permanent flexible (floppy) jacket to keep fingers off. Floppy disks originally came in a size of 203.2mm, which is close enough to 8 inches for that to be the moniker used. IBM created the floppy drive as a means of read-only magnetic storage in 1972. 2022: Has Technology Really Become More Affordable?Ī 5.25-inch floppy drive from an original IBM PC Inside Computer Stores of the 1970s and 1980s.A History of PCMag, and the Tech Industry, in 6 Objects.From Floppies to Solid State: The Evolution of PC Storage Media.Read the Charter Issue of PC Magazine From 1982.Bill Gates on the Next 40 Years in Technology.40 Years of PCMag: An Illustrated Guide.An Ode to PCMag: A Personal Computing Legacy.The 20 Biggest Software Flops of All Time.Spec Showdown: The Original IBM 5150 vs.In 2001, Were We Right About the Future of Technology?.25 of the Weirdest Things We've Reviewed.The 20 Most Influential PCs of the Past 40 Years.Love in the Time of AI: A Kurt Vonnegut Short Story.
