Arduino™ Sketches by James A. Langbridge

Author:James A. Langbridge [Langbridge, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118919699
Published: 2014-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Introduction

The hunger for storage has increased exponentially. Early computers did not have hard drives; the operating system and applications were stored on a floppy disk. The first commercially available floppy disk was an 8-inch disk, which became available in 1971. It could store an enormous 175 kB of data. In 1976, the standard became 5 ¼ inch (ironically known as the minifloppy). The original model could store 87.5 kB, but newer models could store more than 1 megabyte. The large slots on your desktop computer that house a DVD drive or Blu-ray drive are that size because of floppy disks; the size of the minifloppy disk drive became standard.

As technology advanced, so did the storage capacity of disks, and 5 ¼-inch disks were considered too big; the computer industry turned to 3 ½-inch floppies, known as micro-floppies. Early models could store 360 KB, but later models could either be single density (720 KB) or double density (1.44 MB). Those are the disks that powered the computer industry, storing and exchanging data. Operating systems were sold on floppies, and the first thing that users were told to do was to copy this floppy and keep the original safe. A single floppy disk was more than enough to hold an operating system and a few programs. Figure 12.1 shows examples of three different types of early floppy disks.

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