Know the Old 5 1/4 inch Floppy Disk Drives. New Original Sealed Box and a Little History about this Media!

Old 5 1/4 inch Floppy Disk. Unboxing Opening a NEW Original Sealed Box. Rarity. What were the first Digital Disk Storage Media like? Check out this Vintage Classic here! ESIJMJG EXCLUSIVITY!

    Before checking out a little history about Floppy Disks, watch this classic video. We did a sealed unboxing of a 5 1/54-inch floppy disk, one of the most used media in computers during the 70s/80s.

We did this to use these disks in our old computers (486/MSX), so don't worry, we didn't open the box for nothing! Of course, if it was closed, it would have more value for collecting, but what's the point of a closed box if we can't use it in our 5 1/4 units! kkkkk Practice speaks louder.

Check out this detailed unboxing of a sealed box of brand new 5 1/4 disks. ESIJMJG Computer Museum! (portuguese audio Only)

    It is not the first time that humanity feels the need to store information digitally. The first magnetic storage units were Magnetic Reel Tapes. After the invention of the Cassette Tape (K7) many devices were already being manufactured and became cheaper and easier to adapt to computers!

Thus during the 70s/80s cassette tape storage units (K7) became popular in personal computers such as the TRS-Color/TK/ MSX/ Apple II/ CP /XT/ AT/PC.

    But the tapes took a long time to store and even longer to find the information (you had to constantly rewind or fast forward)since the data was stored in a linear and sequential way!

    To solve this, engineers designed the Magnetic Floppy Disk (Floppy Disk) drives. The first Floppy Disk from the 1971s was 8 inches, huge/giant and could only store a maximum of 80Kb! That's right 80 Kilobytes! But this unit was too large to be embedded in personal computers.

    Later they reduced the size to 5 1/4 inches and the floppy disk had 160 Kb of storage, in addition to being able to be built into the cases of personal computers!

    Now that was a tremendous revolution!

    On a floppy disk, data is stored in a sectorial manner, in tracks, which can be quickly accessed by a mobile reader head, unlike traditional K7 tapes. This represented faster access and easier storage, which made floppy disks the most desired magnetic storage unit of the 70s/80s. But their price was very high! Few could have these units in their computers, and the K7 tape was still used in most computers.

    However, over time, floppy disks became popular and their price dropped so much that the use of K7 tapes was discontinued from computers and only floppy disk drives were being used in the late 80s and early 90s.

A Little History, 1970 until 1990!

    Nowadays, some text files in the Office suite take up more than 5 Mb, so it is not possible to store current text on these old floppy disks. However, in the 70s/80s, using DOS systems, a text file could be much less than 360 Kb, so there is enough space to fit text on these disks.

    But not only text, these disks were already used on a large scale for computers from the MSX/TRS/TK/CP line from Prológica and even the famous IBM-PC! At that time, personal computers did not have Hard Drives (Winchesters) because they were very expensive and used only in large company computers (replacing K7 Tape Recorders). Therefore, a 5 1/4 Drive was the only best option for storing files on personal computers from the 70s/80s, compared to K7 audio tape recorders!

    

The D.O.S (Disk Operating System) system was the most famous in the 70s/80s and long before Windows graphical systems became popular, "DOS" was the standard at the time, a system operated entirely by text, via command line (Prompt).

    At that time, computer users had to understand the system more technically, since there was no GUI graphical interface to help! For this reason, these systems were considered difficult to use and not all users liked using computers.

    Among the various DOS systems, the most famous and popular is MS-DOS (Microsoft) which came "bundled" with many standard AT-X86 computers.

    

    The most famous was the AT-286, simply called 286, which was soon evolved into the 386 and finally the 486 which was the most advanced 32-bit processor at the time. Even after the famous Pentium 1 (successor to the 486), 5 1/4-inch floppy disks were used in computers, but they were soon replaced by 3 1/2-inch disks and the 5 1/4-inch bay was soon occupied by the modern CD-ROMs that were part of the Sound Blaster Multimedia Kits!

    The First 8 inch Floppy Disk model, could store up 80 Kb Kilobytes! That's it! 80 Kilobytes! 

    The first 5 1/4-inch floppy disk models could store up to 160 Kb of information, using a Single-sided model. That's less than a text file in .TXT format today! But back then, that was everything!

    As floppy disk readers and, of course, the media itself evolved, high-density models emerged, in this case reaching the maximum that a 5 1/4 floppy disk can store.

    With the HD (High Density) floppy disk, we could achieve up to 1.2 Mb (Megabytes) of storage capacity. In the 70s and 80s, that was enough to store a few games, dozens of text files, and some software, but even by the beginning of the 90s, that capacity was already somewhat limited.

    As a result, it was common for users to have dozens of boxes with these 5 1/4 floppy disks just to store their information. At that time (1985) the Hard Disk was also quite popular and had much more capacity . Enough for MS-DOS systems or even Windows 3.1/3.11.

    But the 5 1/4 floppy disks were losing ground to another 3 1/2 (3.5 inch) floppy disk that was more rigid and allowed the HD version to store up to 1.44 Mb (Megabytes)! With practically the same price as the box, the 3 1/2 inch version was much more widely used and survived until the end of the 90s, when the famous CD began to be adopted in computers, thanks to the famous Sound Blaster Kits!

    And at this point is the End life for the Floppy Disk media and Drives... But here in the ESIJMJG they live forever!

ESIJMJG Computer Museum.

JMJG

Electronic Eng.

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Know the Old 3 1/2 Floppy Disks the old Store Units in Computers 1.44Mb of Space!

The old 3 1/2 Floppy Disk. The Old Storage Units. An Incredible 1.44MB of Space! Meet the grandfather of the flash drive!

Our private collection of floppy disks 3 1/2

    It sounds like a joke, but it's not. 1.44mb (a little less than a simple digital photo, taken with your modern cell phone camera), was the incredible amount of digital space, made available by this storage device, called a "3 1/2-inch floppy disk" or floppy-disk.

    For years, it has reigned as the most secure and reliable medium for storing digital data.

    "Floppy disks" have been used since 1960, initially they were 8 inches and could store only a measly 128kB, less than a typed text! After 1970, the 5 1/4 unit was developed with a capacity of 360kB! Then the famous 3 1/2 format of 720kB.

    With the high cost of hard drives at the time, floppy disks were the cheapest and most practical way for users to store data. Better than the old K7 tape drives (used as data storage for decades)!

    You could store your text files, games, images and even carry them with you in your pocket! Of course, all this because the old floppy disks were much larger than it, and stored much less capacity.

    The 5 1/4 floppy disks (360kb or 1.22mb HD) of space were very large, thin and without protection against dust or handling. These could not be put in a shirt pocket and taken out. In addition, they could easily be damaged, had to be kept in the box, and handled with much more care.

    But it wasn't always like this. The first 3 1/2 floppy disk drives were low density (DD) and stored only 720kb, only in the HD version these wonderful disks began to store 1.44mb (formatted)! In addition to the more compact format, the 3 1/2 inch floppy disks innovated in practicality. A hole on the right side determined whether it was DD (720kb) or HD (1.44mb), while on the left side, there was a safety lock, which could be manually activated to protect the recorded data. The old 5 1/4 floppy disks had to be covered with adhesive tape for this function.

    1.44 MB was a lot of space, enough at the time to store many files, and even an entire operating system (UNIX, MAC, MS-DOS or Windows 1.0)!

    Inside them, there was a magnetic media that was protected by a fabric (removed dust and dirt). On the outside, there was a protective cover, which could also contain labels to write the data content.

    It could be read by appropriate disk-drives (FDD) units. Thousands of computers between 1980 and 2000 had floppy disk drives installed. Pen-drives did not yet exist, which only became more famous after the invention of the CD-Rom.

    Due to the advancement of technology, in 1994 floppy disks were losing space, since they stored very little information, compared to CD-Roms (700mb) or pen drives (1Gb).

    With that, floppy disks were being abolished from everyday use in mid-2010, and many computers no longer had floppy disk drives built into the cases. Many users have been migrating their information to other media, and nowadays it is RARE to find someone who still uses them!

    RARE but not impossible! Even in the 21st century, many users in the world still need to use floppy disk drives. This is due to the limitations of some old programs, which still require running on DOS systems and being handled on floppy disks. For this, today there are floppy disk units that work via USB port.

    Our tribute to this device that is over 55 years old, and that was part of the lives of many, especially ours.

    Stay connected with us, soon many other curiosities and nostalgia.....

JMJG
Eng. Electronic

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The Old Computer Cases 286/386/486 and AT Standard and AT power Supply.

Remember the Old 286/386/486 Cases. Meet the old AT Standard computer power supply. 

    In the evolution of computers, the most remembered and acclaimed period in Brazil and perhaps in the world, will be the 80s/90s. The classic XT/AT 286/386/486 really were an unforgettable standard. So striking that some characteristics jump out at you, clearly identifying these computers. "I had an AT 286 at the time of 20Mhz with MS-DOS 4 and Windows 3.11, at that time computing was very technical and put the user in contact with the most intelligent electronic equipment ever manufactured in the century"  (JMJG)

The Video Bellow are in Portuguese Language Only (but in the future will be translated)

After watching the video, let's talk about some additional technical features.

The XT standard case was usually "lying horizontally" exactly like the first one, highlighting a super monitor on top of it, and its huge 5 1/4 units. The AT 286/386/486 standard case, on the other hand, was usually standing up (vertical) and had some striking features on its front panel.

1. The first one was the inclusion of a 3 1/2 disk drive, more modern and with greater capacity.
2. A window with a small LCD numeric display, which indicated the clock speed. At that time, computers needed to highlight their performance through speed. The AT 286 had speeds of 10 MHz to 36 MHz or more, and this was extended to the AT 486 standard, which reached an incredible 100 MHZ! Those who upgraded to the Pentium 1 and took advantage of the case could now change the numbers to 166 MHz or more!
3. It had the famous TURBO button next to the Reset button! This button is unique and only present in the X86 family (Pentium no longer had this function on the button, it was via physical configuration).
4. Some models had a key (with padlock) to protect the keyboard against unauthorized use (yes, at the time, the MS-DOS operating system and others did not have the password feature). This way, the owner of the computer could "lock" the keyboard to prevent strangers from using the computer.

    The Turbo Button was very important at the time for compatibility issues with XT (8088) processors that operated in the 5 Mhz range or less. With the AT 286 standard, processors had speeds ranging from 6 Mhz but the latest models already had 10 Mhz or 20 Mhz! This was a problem, because many Games and Applications of the XT standard were inherited to the AT and could be run normally, the problem is that developers used the processor clock (speed) as the basis for the application speed. So if a game for example ran "normally" on a 5 Mhz processor when it was executed on a 10 Mhz computer for example, it would become completely "unplayable - unplayable" because it would run very fast at twice the speed!

    To solve this in a simple way, the TURBO button manually toggled the processor speed, interfering in the clock base between the full value (Full Speed ​​Turbo) and exactly HALF (Slow Half Speed). Thus the user of an AT with 10 Mhz could run that game (XT 5 Mhz) just by turning off the TURBO, this would change the original clock of the machine to half, exactly 5 Mhz and the game would be fully playable again at normal speed! To alert the user to the speed of the machine, there was an LCD display that indicated the number in Mhz, if the Turbo button was pressed the Full speed in Mhz would be displayed, if it was turned off, the speed would be displayed exactly at half!

    That's what that unique LCD display on standard AT X86 cases was for!

As an option, there could also be an LED indicating TURBO ON/OFF or the LED with the writing HI/LOW, just to confirm the status of the Turbo button! It was a retention button, press to turn on and press again to turn off, it was not a pulse button like it is today in modern cabinets!

The standard AT Power Supplies were actually the first computer switching power supplies that existed, already used in the first PCs of the XT line.  In appearance they are very similar to the current power supplies (popular low performance), kind of square and with a classic fan for cooling.

But the AT power supply has big differences. 

• The On/Off button of the computer is of the retention switch type, press it once to turn it on, press it again to turn it off. It is quite large and has strong terminals, because in fact raw electrical energy flows through it. All this because the AT source must be turned on/off manually, that is, there is no way for it to turn on or off by itself! With this, the main difference from an AT source is that the on/off button on the computer panel is connected directly to the AT source and not to the motherboard as is currently done in the ATX standard!

• 
  The power connectors on the motherboard and the AT power supply are in the two-by-two 6-wire standard, known as P8 and P9. 

They are very similar, the technician can easily get confused and connect them incorrectly, burning the motherboard/power supply, causing huge damage! 

The right way to connect is to always leave the black ones together in the middle!

Therefore, although switching power supplies have greater advantages in size/weight/current than old linear power supplies, they still do not have any interactivity features with the operating system (automatically turn off, ACPI, suspend, hibernate, etc.).

I hope you enjoyed our trip to the past. The classics NEVER die!

See you next time!

JMJG

Electronic Eng

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