Phenomenal work on this one, Shelby! Props for following all the rabbits down their various rabbit holes and then seeking out that rare hardware to get to the bottom of the story. I love seeing commonly accepted tech history being expanded upon and corrected like this, especially with something as iconic as the 3.5" disk.

The 3.5” disk will probably never be forgotten as it’s the universal save-icon in almost all programs.

I do think it's funny how it was developed by Sony, who originally defined it in metric as being 90 mm wide but we then called it 3.5" to fit in with the convention of 8" and 5.25" floppy drives lol.

I'm frankly disappointed this video isn't just a biography of me! But I all seriousness, awesome research!

Here in South Africa we called the 8 inch and 5.25 inch disks "Floppy" disks, because they were so flexible. The 3.5 inch we called "Stiffies" because of the hardend plastic chassis.

Boot up floopy seek on a 3.5" is still one of my favorite childhood sounds. Thank you Sony, thank you TT.

The most fascinating thing to me about your research is the relatively short window of time in which everything transpired. I got my first PC in 1993, and as a kid I thought 3.5in floppies were a recent innovation.

Holy crap, that hardware reveal is gorgeous.

Awaiting the Jonos video. Never heard of them before! One rabbit hole I went down was to figure out the origin of the modern "half height" 3.5" floppy drive with integrated face plate.... aka the "standard" drives we all use today. Best I could pin it down, it was made by TEAC first in 1987. I think Epson was another contender here as well. Chinon came close, they were shipping the slightly taller drives with the Amiga 2000 in 1987. Keep in mind that IBM never originally sold drives in that style. The PS/2 had separate face plates (including the official 3.5" drives for the PC AT). Same goes with the early Amigas and the Atari ST. Apple had the fancy motorized eject drives and they never used face plates either, always preferring a molded slot in the computer's case.

When I was a teenager in 1995, I was given a Compaq SLT/286. I took it apart and messed up the floppy drive which was a Citizen customized for that laptop. I bought a standard 34 pin TEAC drive to replace it but the cable had 20 pins. I spent the summer of 1995 going to the library to research the signals and bought a logic probe from RadioShack to reverse engineer the pins. Then I took the 20 pin ribbon cable and mapped it into a 34 pin receptacle.

In the 1980's, a hard drive more than doubled the price of a PC. It was common for computers to have dual disk drives, one for booting the computer up, and later holding the disk for the program being run, and the second one for holding your saved data. In the transition phase from 5.25" to 3.5", it was common to replace the B: drive with a 3.5" model, often with an adapter kit, that bridged the gap to allow it to fit in a half height 5.25" drive bay. When they started going into PC's, the drives had a Shugart data interface, but with a row of pins instead of the edge connectors that 5.25" and 8" drives used (there were, of course, adapters for this problem...). The IBM PC/XT/AT BIOS didn't really have a 3.5" option, which is another reason why the 3.5" drive was usually the B: drive (the only thing that you needed the BIOS for was booting the system-once it was booted, the operating system could bridge the gap once again). There was third-party software that you could run to tell the operating system the proper parameters for the B: drive to work properly and use the full capacity of the drive. Many IBM PC clones had 3.5" disk options in their BIOS, and shipped with a floppy controller that natively understood the 3.5" drives. The IBM PS/2 systems were the first IBM desktop systems designed for the 3.5" floppy.

Awesome history video! I've read that the Amstrad CPC ended up using the 3 inch drives because they basically picked them up at a bargain after the Sony 3.5in disk won. Really hope the next video is about the Jonos!

Very interesting video! I remember my dad getting our first PC. It came originally shipped with two 5.25" floppy drives, but one of them was soon replaced with a DSDD 3.5" drive and later on with even a DSHD floppy drive. Anyway, that PC was ultimately replaced by a new PC, a 486SX if I'm not mistaken and the PC was handed over to me. It continued to serve me well for a couple of years, until I replaced it with an AT from the same brand. By that time it not only had two floppy drives, but it had an "external" MFM/RLL (can't remember which) 20MB hard disk made by Olivetti, that would have fitted perfectly in one of the floppy drive slots, were it not for the fact that it had a tendency to get very hot. You could say that this was my very first adventure in PC modding ;-). I still use 3.5" floppy drives on a regular basis. But it's not really on a PC (although I have a PC with an LS-120 drive for data transfer purposes). Instead it's on an MSX. That MSX is so maxed out that it has more RAM and more storage than my original PC ever did...

For a closer look at the 3.5 inch diskette's many innovative design features, see my video "The genius engineering of the 3½ inch floppy disk".

Very interesting and informative, you should rename it to "Origins of the Save Game Icon" though, it would give you a quadrillion views from all those youngsters that never held one of these :P

Dig deeper about this Jonos company. There is a big chance to meet people which were working for the company. I love the stories from S100 era. It's like learning about first pioneers ;)

It's always interesting how so many things have been innovated by Sony that we don't tend to think about. As you mentioned, they were the ones who developed the 3.5" floppy, they also worked with Philips to develop the CD, they developed the Beta tape that lost to the VHS tape, they were even the ones that created the Blu-ray. These are just a few that come to mind that we don't often associate with them.

The very earliest IBM PC JX computers (only sold in Australia, NZ and Japan) had 40 track 3.5" floppies. But that was because the controller didn't know how to half-step the disk head! The disks were actually 720k disks.

I thought this was well-documented history. Fascinating how stuff like this can become as exciting as some kind of crime drama ;D. It's like "WHO DUNNIT!? WHO MARKETED THE FIRST 3.5" FLOPPY DRIVE!?" . Crazy! Excellent video!

Fascinating and thank you for all your sleuthing. We started selling ACT Apricot Pcs in September 1983 which had single or double floppies in the base (non-HD) models. From memory they were Sony units and the smaller height versions. Clearly ACT had been talking to Sony for some time...

Very well researched. From someone who lived through all those years and used cassette, 8", 5.25", 3.5" (as well as 'enterprise' 3420, 3480/3490, and many others) I do not believe I ever even heard of Jonos which was/is interesting. Their market must have been targeted differently than the two 'worlds' I straddled (data centers/ large business and home / soho). So thanks for the bringing that small piece of history to my attention. :)

Good historical research work, Shelby! This was a wonderful watch.

This is a great video. All the additional research has definitely paid off. Well done!

Fascinating, and well researched! I dig this format, and I totally want to see more of that Jonos Courier. Nicely done!

Amazing work, thanks for documenting all of this, enjoyed every second

Great video. You really went in depth with your research. I really enjoyed this one.

I have a machine that takes manual shutter disks. The RCA MS2000, which i believe dates from late 1982, or early 1983.

I don't know how youtube kept this from me this long. You always talk about cool stuff Shelby!

Great job, guy. I was honestly expecting this to be some half-assed KZfaq documentary and I am glad I watched it to the end. Kudos to you on a job well done!

What I think is most impressive is that Sony can lay claim to the save icon, one of the few things to keep Keith Richards amused (alongside Twinkies and Cockroaches) after the end of days.

I love it. Both informative and enthusiastic. As always thanks for the content!

Well done. Having lived through several decades of computer history I find it quite interesting to learn details that I had not heard about when it happened.

Quite a bit more history to the origins than I realized. I grew up with the 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies. Everyone I knew called the 3.5 inch version the hard floppy disk. In school we used the 5.25 inch floppies to save our work. When I went to college they were still using the 5.25 inch floppy drives. By then I was using the 3.5 inch disks. So it made it possible to bring in my older 5.25 inch disks to backup the data to the newer standard. The iconic symbol for saving data to this day is still the 3.5 inch hard floppy disk.

Superb research and a riveting presentation! Thanks 🙂

Very interesting and well researched video! Thank you!

Great video. It's funny to me that the one that wasn't even floppy became the best known of all of the 'floppy' formats, so much so that it's still the default icon for 'Save' on computers 40 years after its introduction.

Looking forward to that Jonos video. Thanks for your super deep dive on this!

Nice video, well put together and then there were the 3-inch floppy disks I had used to these others in my childhood as well.

Thank you for the video. I purchased an Atari 520ST in 1985 with a 3.5" floppy drive, Definitely a step up from the 5.25" of the Apple II and the Cassette Tape Drive of the TI-99/4A.

Hi Shelby. I just found your channel, and I'm very impressed. Watch much of the first disk imaging video and .. well .. wow. Cool! I've been doing computer stuff since 1971 and it's a joy to discover a place that is just a treasure trove of information. Thanks.

Brilliant research! I've enjoyed seeing you work on the Jonos computer on the livestreams, can't wait for a video on it.

This is really fascinating. I find it interesting that even in early episodes of The Computer Chronicles they talk about the ongoing transition from 5.25 disks to 3.5 disks. Since the show started in 1981, it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's interesting nonetheless. Cool history piece. I am curious to hear more about this Jonos Computers some time. I think I will start doing some digging of my own into them to see what I can see.

Happy to see all those floppy disks you bought finally being shown off. Great video!

Omg .. I forgot I would see "cassette" printed on the box or media quite frequently... Along with diskette... The drive mechanism in my Tandy 1000HX with a single 3 1/2" drive was so solid and satisfying. Not to mention, totally reliable over all the years. Just, clunk, read, done. Great video, just started watching... 🍻🌎❤️🎶🕺🏻💾🖥️

That's a great one Shelby! Thanks to helping preserve computer history o/

Fantastic video well researched and put together, I didn't know about the Jonos system and very much looking forward to that video.

A very interesting presentation. Thanks for posting.

Having used all three formats over the years thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Phenomenal research and awesome work!

Great job on the thorough research.

love the sound of those floppy drives when reading from/writing data to the disk...

My feed offered me a true crime doc I was interested in, and one of your videos. Immediately clicked on you without hesitation. Always fascinating to learn computer history from the rabbit trails you seem to find yourself on, haha. Excellent research done, can’t wait to see the Jonos!

Great rundown, thanks!

Fantastic video. Great research on an important topic with great delivery.

Why am I not surprised to learn that, this now industry standard format was originally conceived by Sony, because they wanted their own product for a Full Stack... Fascinating video, regardless!

Great documentary! I'm going to rewatch it with my dad. Thank you so much!

I've got an old sharp word processor that uses a belt driven 3.5" floppy drive that uses 720k disks. The drive didn't work when I got it but I put a new belt on and it's working now.

Great video, as always!

Admirable research!

What an AWESOME video, thanks for that, thanks for correcting the "common knowledge" of the HP being the first to use it. Now if we could get hold of someone from Jonos for an interview...

Amazing investigation. Love it !!!!

Great research on this dead format. I knew Sony was a leader but never even heard of Jonos before this video. I have been buying, working on & fixing computers since the late '80s. I have seen formats come and go, however I do still have 3.5" floppies and CDs in my collection.

Fantastic story, great work.

I never expected a video about this topic but it was really interesting.

This is a really cool video. I think it would be cool to see a video going over every storage medium sony created as it feels like they have made a bunch.

Nice educational video! Well done. I enjoyed it

Great video on an obscure topic. Well done!

This video and the amount of information in it IS OUTSTANDING! GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT!!!

Awesome to watch ! Thank you

First time here - those credits were amazing. I haven't heard that noise since I pulled an all-nighter in high-school to finish a report. I don't miss that printer one bit.

What a great video! It has spread out a bright light onto a common device used by billions of people, without knowing it. The background history is fantastic. Thanks for sharing this.

Awesome video sir ... as usual!

It amazes me how many people back then and still today think that disk is a "hard disk" because of the hard case. And today, most people think of that disc as the "save" button.

Fun fact for the unwary - the early 3.5" floppy media were designed and manufactured with a round-ended pill capsule shaped window in the metal shutter for the moving R/W heads to operate through to contact the magnetic surface, which was soon altered to the normal rectangular window most people would be familiar with. You can see both types of shutter window in your video. The trap for the unwary, is that the head clearance in later 3.5" drives expects a rectangular window in the shutter, so if an old disk with the round-ended window is inserted in a later drive, the shutter will likely foul the heads and upon eject, damage them or even rip them out of the drive!

Great video, well done!

Just stellar, thanks for the history lesson ✨

This kind of videos am AWSOME. I LOV LOVE LOVE IT

Thank you! A very inspiring video!

Very good and exceptional.

This is a very interesting video. Thank you so much for thinking of it and making it. 😃 I have 5,25 for my Commodore SX 64 and 3,5 for my IBM ThinkPads. But also the iomega clik! Pocket Zip for the ThinkPads. I enjoy that specific storage medium a lot 😃

I miss Byte magazine. Ending credits: the sweet sound of the dot-matrix impact printer. Good job on the vid. I lived through the 3.5” era. Used 8” disks at work (we had IBM equipment).

VERY interesting well researched video! 🙂

16:15 There were such a synonymous of small files that even to this day the save icon is a 3.5 in floppy

@2:06 I wonder what the capacity of a 90cm disk would have been :)

In Dutch, the name "diskette" stuck for these. And honestly, that makes a whole lot more sense than calling both the hard and the floppy ones floppy disks...

Excellent and enthusiastic history here. Great research and great work!!!😊

Nice! The oldest 8" floppy drive I ever saw, had a cartridge in which you could lay the floppy, that is, without the hard plastic, and close the lid and insert it. I haven't seen that again even on youtube.

I'm barely old enough to have used 8" floppies. At 16 I worked at the local railroad station, and one of the thing they had me do was to take a backup of the ticket machine, which used 8" floppies. At home I was, of course, using 5.25" floppies with my C64 bought in Germany 4 years earlier.

Nice research piece. If only we had a time machine, to go back & research things like this. I think it would offer interesting angles to pursue. :)

ย้อนรอย​ความทรงจําเลย​ครับ​ Floppy​ Disk​ เเผ่นนี้

Thanks for more interesting, great content!

I have a boatload of 3.5" disks from days gone by. I have a USB external floppy drive as well as an internal drive on another PC. I also have a PC with two 3.5's that I used for duplicating copy protected disks. It has a Copy II PC hardware board. Surprisingly, disks that have been in cold storage for 20+ years still work. Just for giggles, I installed a late 90's copy of Quattro Pro Spreadsheet software from four 3.5's. It runs perfectly!

I'd love to hear more about Jonos Ltd. Interesting Video as always.

I mean... Floppy disks are just Cassettes in a Circular, rather than Linear Format...

the research done was so extensive & it shows.

I first got seriously interested in personal computers in 1980, with subscriptions to Creative Computing, Byte and Infoworld. I closely followed the attempts to introduce the 3.5" "floppy." To my mind, it was the Macintosh that really settled the small disc standard. My wife called these "cookies, " and many of my friends who had worked with 8" and 5.25" floppies referred to these as "firmies." Mostly we all settled on the term "diskette." Those 8" floppies were truly floppy. The 5.25" ones were less so. I miss the diskettes. I still have a bunch of Zip disks and drives in the garage. Yeah, USB drives put an end to all of that, and software distributed on CD did as well. I do credit the iMac for first popularizing USB. Also, the Mac made CDs easy.

Were these other Sony 3.5 disks also variable speed like the Mac? I don't know about the earliest mac drives, but later 800k Mac drives were variable speed.

Once again... Great video

Do analog music on the 3.5" next ❤

Well done. 👍