On Thursday 31 July 2008 03:03:39 am Mike Miller wrote: > On Wed, 30 Jul 2008, Chuck Cole wrote: > >> What personal computer predated the 8" floppy? > > > > Altair 8800, MITS, Cromemco, Sol-20, Apple, Kim, TRS-80, Commodore, ... > > > > .. many! Some were based upon the 8080, others the 6502. > > > > My first, c1971, was based on the 8008, a predecessor of the 8080. > > Your source says that chip came out in November 1972. > > Here's a list of some disks and when they were introduced: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Disk_formats > > I'm surprised to see how early some of these came out. I remember a > friend telling me that he used to pay $10 for one 360K 5¼" floppy, but by > then (1988?) we were getting HD 5¼" disks (1155 KB) for $1. > > Mike It seems 8008 based "personal computers" weren't available until 1973 according to your link. An 8" read/write floppy was available in 1972. (read only versions a year prior to that) The TRS-80 wasn't introduced until 1977, The KIM in 1975, the Apple I in 1976, the altair 8800 in 1974, the SOL-20 (which I have to admit I never saw in actual use in their heyday) seems to have started design in 1975 but seems to have gone on sale in 1977, the Cromenco Z-1 in 1976....all years after the 8" floppy. I'm old enough to remember the "crazy person down the street who had a computer in his house" and this was 1978. What I also remember is that if you could afford a computer you generally could afford a (relatively expensive) floppy drive. I wasn't old enough to know much about economics, and given that personal computer sales figures were in the tens of thousands per year in the 70's I didn't know that many people with computers, but they almost all had floppy drives, and the ones that didn't weren't happy about saving to cassette tape. -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5A8C 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 195 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20080731/7478f43a/attachment.pgp