Anyone Remember 360kb Ss Sd 5 1/4?, Am I that old?

I bought my first persomal computer in 1982. It had an external 5 1/4" floppy drive (when the floppies were really floppy). It stored (if I remember correctly) 360,000 bytes of data in a single-sided single-density format.

I wasn't a geek back in the 8" floppy days.

So I went to the local computer store to buy a floppy disk to start storing some of my early programs and games. I was told that they only came in packs of 10. I argued that since I'd never actually have more that 360kb of data why in the world would I need to buy 10 disks? One would be plenty sufficient for me. But he told me either buy a pack of 10 or buy nothing, so I bought a box of disks.

They came in interesting brand names, like Elephant and Gorilla and Banana. I wonder where those companies are today?

Today I found this article. It's kind of geeky and techie, but the summary of the article is:

"Optware Corp., the developer of Collinear Holographic* Data Storage System, announced today that it had achieved successfully world's first recording and play back of digital movies on a holographic recording disc with a reflective layer using Optware's revolutionary Collinear Holography. This is a major milestone for commercializing holographic data storage system."

"The disc diameter of 12 centimeters is equivalent to those of CD and DVD."

"Holographic recording technology records data on discs in the form of laser interference fringes, enabling existing discs the same size as today's DVDs to store as much as one terabyte of data (200 times the capacity of a single layer DVD), with a transfer speed of one gigabyte per second (40 times the speed of DVD). This approach is rapidly gaining attention as a high-capacity, high-speed data storage technology for the age of broadband."

http://www.optware.co.jp/english/what_040823.htm

Geez.

Will you HAVE to buy them in the ten packs?

WOW! I want it! Do they come in RW? 1 TB removable media SWEEEEET! Imagine the fun we could have with that! Full movie with 7.1 at some unreasonable sample rate, a library of extras... And the full soundtrack on one disk And neat to look at too. Just hope it doesn't take 5 years to write to

I wasn't in the PC workd yet when 360 K floppies were hot stuff. Got some around though. I was still using 170K 5.25 floppies up until 1994 when I got properly introduced to 720K and 1.4 MB 3.5", as well as this new thing called CD-ROM. You remember, when they had the extra cartrage you loaded the CD into, and it read at 1x, a whopping 150 KBps?

Floppies are new-fangled stuff. Give me good old paper tape. There's no capacity limits, but reading and writing were a bit slow.

My first computer work was before personal computers on main frames which read Hollerith cards. When the first pre-IBM PCs came along, audio cassettes were the storage medium of choice. At work, we were using paper tape and upgraded to eight inch floppies. As a hobbiest, we upgraded from cassette tape to 5 1/4 inch floppies.

Then there was program turnaround time. As undergraduate students, we got a turnaround of one run of a program a day. You turned in a deck to the computer center. They ran the deck in the middle of the night. You picked up the resulting printout with the deck in the morning.

Times have changed.

My first PC was a Commodore VIC-20. It didn't have a floppy drive available at the time. Instead, it used a cassette recorder to load and store programs. I had a Pac-Man clone which took about 4 minutes to load, if I remember correctly.

The best use I ever made of this computer was in about 1982. I was recently divorced, living in an apartment which faced a back alley. I programmed a Christmas tree into it, and left it on until New Year's Day.

HAY, I remember thoughs

My first computer was a COCO.
Had the cassette drive, then "upgraded" to the 5 1/4 disc drive.
I had a freind who had a Commodore, we thought we were so cool calling each other and using our computers to talk to each other. Was whipping along at a whopping 300bps.

My first introduction to the world of computers was COBAL, FORTRAN and punch cards. Although the big computers at the time used recording tape in 12 inch diamters plastic cases. The cheapest computers at the time available for home use used a cassette tape for a couple of years until Sony came out with the 8 inch floppies.

And I thought that 16k worth of memory was alot.

Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?? I remember the first time my daughter saw a typewriter in a store. She tugged on my sleeve, and said "Mommy, what's that?" *collective gasp* It never had occurred to me that she wouldn't know what a typewriter was...

My first computer was a tandy trs80 color computer 2. With the slot in the side for the cartridges and the tapes and a book that was about 10000000000000000 pages full of progs I could type myself. I used to spend forever typing just to get a few dots moving across teh screen.
man..

comparing to you, I am young
the first computer I ever had was 486
120MB is big enough, running win3.1 and dos 6
it was 11 years ago
now floppy is completely obsolete, using SD instead
a whole GB in a stamp sized packet
amazing!

Well I guess you've got me beat here. My first computer was a 286 that ran DOS...eh...5.1, I believe, with the 5 1/4" floppy drive. I was about 12, so I pretty much just used it to play BASIC games and word processing. I actually remember the first time I saw a 3.5" floppy, at school. I didn't understand how a disc could be called a "floppy" and not bend. (But of course, what should they be called? "Hard drive" already refers to something else, and "stiffy" just doesn't sound right.) I thought the school computer was so awesome, with the point and click Windows interface and OMG...MSPaint! I was so excited when we upgraded to a 386 that had Windows 3.1 and I could make ugly 16 bit pictures at home and use a font other than Terminal for school reports.

Been there done that! I also remember punch cards and hours upon hours of programing in long forgotten computerese! The first real home computer that did anything worth while ( after my TRS80 , not 2 ) was my Tandy 1000ex... what a wonderful machine ! My kids still use it for projects and such... it had the first windows interface ( a colabartion between tandy and Microsoft ). Does anyone remember programing in GW Basic?

I also started out with the Commodore Vic-20. Friend had the C-64 and ran a bbs off it. That was a total trip. The days of the 300 bps modem and having to issue commands from a prompt.
I got bored fast with it and never did much until another friend handed me an old 386 NEC notebook that weighed more than my current media center system and had a hard drive that held, if I recall correctly, less than 512 Mb, and even had an old style scsi interface on the back. Actually had this beast around until 6 months ago when I donated it to the local HAZMAT center since I was unable to get a battery for it.

I need to get some hardware for my CBM machines and get them some Internet access