vwestlife
Veteran Member
On my video about the genius design of the 3.5" floppy disk, one guy is insisting that he used 12-inch floppy disks with an IBM 360 mainframe:
"The first floppies I used were the 12 inch floppy disc with IBM programs on them. They were buggers to keep safe and usable."
I asked if he meant 8-inch floppy disks, and he replied, "nope I mean 12 inch floppy. Came with the hardware and were prerecorded with some of the software for the 360 systems." He then elaborated:
Here's another thread asking about these alleged IBM 12-inch floppy disks, but no one could dig up any proof of them existing:
So what's the deal? Did such a thing actually exist? The Museum of Obsolete Media has documented virtually every kind of floppy disk known to exist, but there's no mention of anything larger than 8 inches:
"The first floppies I used were the 12 inch floppy disc with IBM programs on them. They were buggers to keep safe and usable."
I asked if he meant 8-inch floppy disks, and he replied, "nope I mean 12 inch floppy. Came with the hardware and were prerecorded with some of the software for the 360 systems." He then elaborated:
Back in the early 1980s I worked for a company that did 3rd party computer maintenance on mainframe gear from the 1960s and 1970s, most of it was IBM systems. There were a bunch of tape systems and 12 inch disk packs used for customer data and daily uses - those disk packs were originally 100 Mb and later grew bigger. However, I was also given a case of pre-recorded 12 inch floppy discs to keep locked up unless authorised by the manager for issue to the senior techs as they contained some hard to get machine code to set-up the system again after a major problem. I'm pretty sure they were for the IBM 360 systems as that was what we mostly looked after. Without those disc and the fancy machine they put it in and hooked up to the system it was a VERY expensive job and time consuming to get the IBM techs to do the job, and if we needed the top IBM techs that meant waiting while they flew across the Pacific Ocean.
At that time I was in charge of the logistics operation and all I did with the huge suckers was to keep them safe and secure in a fireproof safe along with the case holding the machine they were used in.
The secured discs were bigger than 8 inch floppies as I had them on the shelf for general issue and use by the techs so I know they were bigger and they looked the same size as a LP or the disc packs.
Here's another thread asking about these alleged IBM 12-inch floppy disks, but no one could dig up any proof of them existing:
What was the diameter of the largest floppy disk? Someone here at the bar is insisting it was 12 inches and used on large IBMs?
Answer (1 of 8): See the following article: Floppy disk variants - Wikipedia Therein they say: A number of companies, including IBM and Burroughs, experimented with using large numbers of unenclosed disks to create massive amounts of storage. The Burroughs system uses a stack of 256 12-inch di...
www.quora.com
So what's the deal? Did such a thing actually exist? The Museum of Obsolete Media has documented virtually every kind of floppy disk known to exist, but there's no mention of anything larger than 8 inches:
Disks / Discs for Data | Museum of Obsolete Media
Optical and magnetic-optical discs, hard disk cartridges, hard disks, disk packs and more. Some current, most long obsolete. Floppy disks can be found on the Floppy Disk page. The size relates to the…
obsoletemedia.org