Denys writes:

> How about a blast from the past:  I found the following document, dated
> December 1990 on the web:
>
> "The NeXTcube: Similar to the original NeXT, with three free NuBus
> expansion slots. It can be purchased with a variety of mass storage
> options, including the 2.88MB floppy disk,
[snip]

Interesting.  I thought the original NeXT machine *was* a cube.
IIRC, there was a fair amount of controversy over its lack of
a floppy drive.  (Deja vu all over again, eh? ;)

Also, the laser printer (which I think was 600dpi at a time when everyone
else was using 300dpi) had no status indicators -- print status was viewable
ONLY from the NeXT workstation.

> And then this one from Stanford University, complete with typos:
>
> "In 1980, the 3.5 inch floppy drive and disc was introduced by Sony.
> Three major types of 3.5 inch floppy discs were developed; double density
> with 720K, high density with 1.44MB, and extra-high denisty with 2.88MB.

Why no mention of the 360K disks, I wonder?

Also not mentioned in this history lesson is how the Mac handled it. :)

Mac floppies were formatted such that the information density on all
tracks were the same, so instead of 360K and 720K formatted capacities,
Macs had 400K and 800K capacities.  Unfortunately, I think this is also
what made them so slow, as the rotation speed had to change based on
which track had the requested data.


Back on the 2MB topic ;) I'm pretty sure Jim Seymour (of PC Magazine)
wrote a few columns on this a year or two ago.  I believe he was the
one who mentioned that Microsoft was formatting floppies in a
non-standard way which allowed more than 1.44MB of info, but which
some drives were unable to read.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to find this info on the PC Magazine
web site.

--Glenn

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