![]() It was protected from dust by a sliding metal plate. And the recordable disk area wasn�t exposed. Housed in a hard plastic case, it couldn�t be inadvertently folded. Today we�d call it a luggable, but among its many features was a slot for a three-and-a-half inch floppy disk.Īctually, the new disk wasn�t that floppy. Unzipping it, he reached in and pulled out the first portable computer I�d ever seen: an Apple Macintosh. A friend arrived with an oddly shaped duffle bag and excitedly sat down next to me. I first encountered the gripping new disk technology in the graduate student lounge. Manufacturers experimented with other formats, but the ubiquity of five-and-a-quarter inch disks made them difficult to supplant. In spite of their limitations, five-and-a-quarter inch floppies became the de-facto standard for personal computers. Nothing destroys a disk drive faster than a screaming particle of dust crashing into a sensitive read/write head. They also left part of the recordable disk area exposed to dust. Housed in a thin plastic casing, they were easy to damage by folding. But large and small, both formats shared a flaw. Eight inches was just too big for the emerging personal computer market. The five-and-a-quarter inch format was actually an advance over earlier versions that were a full eight inches on a side.
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