When was the floppy drive invented

Because the drive could fit inside a PC case, it revolutionized personal data storage. The Minnow was a read-only drive that loaded factory-written microcode into mainframe computers. It was the predecessor of a family of low-cost "floppy" drives which become indispensible for word processors and PCs. How to preserve the data when the power goes off? That was the conundrum confronting IBM engineers. But without power, its microcode disappeared and had to be reloaded. Al Shugart left IBM to make floppy disk drives for small computers.

Competition soon stimulated smaller sizes and higher capacities, and floppy disks played a critical role in the rapid growth of PCs. The 5. With two drives, disks could be easily copied. Although the IBM PC could be used with an audiocassette recorder instead of a floppy disk drive, few were sold without a floppy. Various companies made proprietary higher-capacity disks with packages similar to — but incompatible with — the 3. We used floppy disks and cassettes mostly as paper tape replacements, but we also appreciated and exploited the random access nature of disks.

Our operating system had a set of logical devices source input, listing output, error output, binary output, etc. The rest of the operating system was basically a command monitor. The commands had mainly to do with file manipulation. The entire operating system and all of the application programs were in HP series assembly language.

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Inventions Expert. Mary Bellis covered inventions and inventors for ThoughtCo for 18 years. She is known for her independent films and documentaries, including one about Alexander Graham Bell. Updated January 31, Featured Video.

Cite this Article Format. Bellis, Mary. History of the Floppy Disk.