World's Largest Floppy Disk Drive

[PRR]

"....disks would continue to hold more data as their size increased up to diameter of 32,767 millimeters but then...

https://deramp.com/swtpc.com/Creative_Computing/Large_Disk.htm

Bonus point if you know the image.

[stallik]

That look more like a ship storage drum for undersea cable.

Ahh, just noticed the publication date

[Mark Hammer]

In 1980, our lab used 8" floppies with our Rockwell AIM-65 micro-computer.  That was when the rationale behind the terms "hard disk" and "floppy disk" was abundantly clear.  As removable media got smaller, the "floppy" descriptor seemed less self-evident.  By the time we got to 3.5" removable media in a plastic shell, we started calling them "diskettes", even though the magnetic media inside the shell was not any different than what was used on the 8" units.

I still have boxes of 5-1/4" disks and single-sided drives to read them.  Hard to imagine the days when we were impressed that we could store up to 80k (!!!  ) on one side.  And when they went *double*-sided, oh baby, WATCH   OUT!

But a technical question.  Is the ability to store ever-increasing amounts of data on magnetic media a function of increasing precision in the read-write heads, increased ability of the magnetic media to store information in very small spaces without loss or bleedthrough, both, or something else (e.g., better firmware differentiation of data and noise)?

[anotherjim]

One of my early jobs was as a test monkey at a place making US Orbis model 74 8" drives under license. My job was to line the head up using a test disc known as a CE (cats eyes) with a scope on the read preamp. Get the lobes of the CE signal on the CRO equal and it was calibrated on track versus the stepper motor that moved the head on a spiral grooved shaft. The adjustment was done by turning the stepper body and fixing with clamping screws. Then step back to track 0 to set up the IR backstop sensor, then step forward to track 38 to set another sensor that switched to low write current (disk tracks are getting shorter and faster toward the centre so the current is reduced to compensate). Really useful to remember all that stuff now isn't it?
And does anyone recall the "Hard Hole" disks? They were so floppy, they didn't always centre on the drive hub well, so a self-adhesive ring called a Hard Hole could be attached on centre to stiffen it.
When I left that business, they were into 8" hard disk drives and struggling. Last I heard, they had found a niche in point-of-sale printers.

[bluebunny]

This anecdote came up in a telly prog the other week:

A millennial, presented with a 3.5" floppy disk, exclaimed: "Look! Someone's 3D-printed a 'save' icon!"