Floppy

The retail floppy disk version of Windows 95 came on 13 DMF formatted floppy disks, while OSR 2.1 doubled the floppy count to 26. Both versions exclude additional software that the CD-ROM version might have featured.

Along with the built-in floppy drive, the Apple III could also handle up to three additional external Disk III floppy disk drives.

Apple introduced the iMac in 1998 with a CD-ROM drive but no floppy drive; this made USB-connected floppy drives popular accessories, as the iMac came without any writable removable media device.

Because of the operation of Commodore floppy drives, one write protection scheme would cause the floppy drive head to bang against the end of its rail, which could cause the drive head to become misaligned.

Both the CoCo and earlier TRS-80s share the WD17xx series floppy-disk controllers and 35- (later 40-) track industry-standard floppy drives.

But these needed the infamous TRS-80 expansion interface, which was very expensive, and had a very unreliable floppy disk controller because it used the WD1771 floppy disc controller chip without an external "data separator".

Floppy disk controller The floppy controller is unusually flexible.

Floppy disk drive and media manufacturers specify the unformatted capacity (for example, 2 MB for a standard 3½-inch HD floppy).

Floppy disk drives Radio Shack introduced floppy drives in July 1978, slightly more than six months after the Model I initially went on sale.

Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD).

However, adoption of the floppy- and monitor-less configuration was low; few (if any) IBM PCs left the factory without a floppy disk drive installed.

Originally ARMD caused the devices to appear as a sort of very large floppy drive, either the primary floppy drive device 00h or the secondary device 01h.

Some of the earliest CRT-based machines used cassette tapes for removable-memory storage until floppy diskettes became available for this purpose - first the 8-inch floppy, then the 5¼-inch (drives by Shugart Associates and diskettes by Dysan ).

Some operating systems required code changes to support floppy disks with capacities far larger than any standard floppy disk drive.

So they decided to also develop their own alternative in the form of an improved floppy disk controller and printer interface that could be built right into a floppy disk enclosure.

The abundance of old floppy drives has enabled forensics investigators to repurpose older computers as "front-ends" for forensic access to old floppy disks that have only recently been unearthed from some crime scenes.

The Disk II single-sided floppy drive used 5.25-inch floppy disks ; double-sided disks could be used, one side at a time, by turning them over and notching a hole for the write protect sensor.

The drives and disks were commonly referred to by capacity, such as "160KB floppy disk" or "360KB floppy drive".

The magneto-optical drive was replaced with a 2.88 MB floppy drive to offer users a way to use their floppy disks.

Therefore, CD-ROM drives boot as emulated floppy disk drives; the bootable virtual floppy disk can contain software that provides access to the optical medium in its native format.