Comment by zabzonk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zabzonk | Hacker News Reader

I seriously got into computing in 1979, working for the Microbiology Department at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, using Research Machines 380Zs, equipped with both 8 and 5.25 inch floppy drives. Here are a few of my observations on the beasts:

- They required quite a lot of strength to open and particularly to close - some of our students were scared they were going to break them (and the cost a lot back then) because of the force needed.

- One student did the classic "remove disk from envelope" thing where they took the actual mylar disc out of the floppy container. He may have been taking the piss, but if so he lost out, as we made students pay for the disks.

- Somewhat unrelated - when I was working in the Netherlands in the 90s, I noticed that supermarkets in Utrecht, a big university town, had floppy disk dispensers in supermarkets - students put in a guilder or whatever, and got a 3.5 inch floppy they could submit their coursework on.

- They were incredibly noisy - the servos were banging away like mad, particularly if you were doing anything database-like, which I mostly was.

- They were horribly unreliable - we used to have to keep sending ours back to RML in Oxford to get them recalibrated or replaced every few months.

Still, all in all they were a million times better than my own personal computer at the time - a Dragon32 with a cassette deck for storage!

> They were incredibly noisy - the servos were banging away like mad, particularly if you were doing anything database-like, which I mostly was.

heck, even my 5.25" c64 drive was so noisy from knocking its head that I kept the cover unscrewed to realign it on a regular basis. especially after trying to use "copy protected" disks that causes even more knocking.

I was also confused when 3.5" floppies came out and were stiff, and people started talking more about "hard disks".

My Dad had a floppy on his C64 and it was terribly unreliable, but (once again) less unreliable than the cassette deck that I was stuck with. He loved gadgets, but really only used it to play "Hunchback" and similar games. I often thought "Shall I hit him over the head with a hammer and steal it, so I can create some truly brilliant software?", but I never did.

I wonder about these posts citing c64 and Amiga floppy reliability issues.

Was around both for 10 to 15 years, in computer clubs, ran a punter bbs, worked repairing/selling amigas for years, reliability was awesome, unless one had the rare a bad drive.

Were you lot running 1541s, 71s? Were you living under power lines, beside a power station, and your mom loved fridge magnets? :P

mine was a 1541, but most everyone I knew who had one had the same problems. my amiga floppy (and the external clone drive I bought) was super reliable.

My Mum detested fridge magnets for some not clear reasons. And no overhead power lines. There was a nearby power transformer though, which on one memorable day burst into flames.

But I remember Dad frequently complaining about reliability, and the drives keep on having to be taken down to a computer shop (back when such things existed) in down-town Lincoln (UK) to be fixed. The problems were entirely mechanical, not electronic.

Hmm.

I wonder why the dichotomy. Where I was, it seems the inverse.

Data points re: 1541 reliability:

* all were early adopters, but moved to the Amiga within a year of A500 release. So there is an end-time bracket here.

* I had a VIC20, was an early C64 adopter, and most people I knew were too. So, a start time bracket.

* all drives were bought in Canada

I'm thinking, maybe source plant for drives, PLUS, maybe earlier bought drives were more robust/more expensively made. Fewer cost saving measures?

So hard to tell now. :/

I found that 1.2MB 5.25" floppies were faster (they spun at 360 rpm vs the 300 rpm of 3.5" drives) and more reliable than 3.5" floppies in my experience. I had so many problems with 720KB (880KB on my Amiga) floppies, even with expensive media back then.

Ha, I pretty much got into computing around then as a kid when my dad would bring one of those very same QEC 380Zs home for the summer vacation. Or a Commodore PET, with the built-in tape drive.

Loved the mad clicking between the floppy drives when copying files around with pip.

Memories...

Would that have been Hushank (sp?) Balyuzi? I remember him well.

Yup

Oh well, if he still around (I'm nearly not - heart) please remember me to him (he may well not remember - we didn't work very closely together) - I'm Neil Butterworth, used to work with Dr. Mick Bazin.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com