The objective was a read only device costing less than $200 and medium costing less than $5. IBM's decision in the late 1960s to use semiconductor memory as the writeable control store for future systems and control units created a requirement for an inexpensive and reliable read only device and associated medium to store and ship the control store's microprogram and at system power on to load the microprogram into the control store. After 2000, floppy disks were increasingly rare and used primarily with older hardware and especially with legacy industrial computer equipment.ĭrawings from IBM Floppy Disk Drive Patents The introduction of high speed computer networking and formats based on the new NAND flash technique (like USB flash drives and memory cards) led to the eventual disappearance of the floppy disk as a standard feature of microcomputers, with a notable point in this conversion being the introduction of the floppy-less iMac in 1998. A number of other variant sizes were introduced over time, with limited market success.įloppy disks remained a popular medium for nearly 40 years, but their use was declining by the mid- to late 1990s. There was a significant period where both were popular.

This format was more slowly replaced by the 3½-inch format, first introduced in 1982. The more conveniently sized 5¼-inch disks were introduced in 1976, and became almost universal on dedicated word processing systems and personal computers. It was introduced into the market in an 8-inch (20 cm) format in 1971.

In 1967, at an IBM facility in San Jose, California, work began on a drive that led to the world's first floppy disk and disk drive. Floppy disks were an almost universal data format from the 1970s into the 1990s, used for primary data storage as well as for backup and data transfers between computers. It is read and written using a floppy disk drive (FDD).

8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disksĪ floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a rectangular plastic carrier.

Ibm format floppy disk