Would it have made any sense if Atari had used 5 1/4" floppies?

[kool kitty89]

I was thinking on this after some comments in another recent thread. I know there's the fundamental reliability/durability advantages of the 3.5" diskette format, and competing with the Mac also would push that further, but there's a lot of other trade-offs.

PCs of the time were pretty much all 5.25" (predominantly 360k DSSD), so any potential cross-compatibility formatting would need to cater to that. For that matter, you had the new AT machines introducing 1.2 MB HD 5.25" disks standard in '84 (with 3.5" optional), long before the PS/2 machines adopted 3.5" HD as standard.

 

On top of that, you had the potential for flippies with a single sided drive, thus avoiding the wasted side of Atari's single sided 3.5" drives... and for that matter, due to the scale of production and common use, 5.25" drives and disks should have been cheaper as well (and the drive controller Atari was using was already designed to support 5.25" drives) and Atari Inc had already been using 5.25" drives, albeit only low/double density ones.

 

However, DD disks were only 180 kB per side, so using both sides would have been similar to the single sided 3.5" disks already used while HD drives (~600 kB per side with IBM formatting) may have been too expensive and there were issues with intercompatibility with DD drives (with specific situations like disks formatted and written on DD 40 track drives and then modified on an HD drive becoming unreadable by DD drives), but there was also the Quad Density format that may have been less problematic in that sense and possibly cheaper to implement as well. (it wouldn't have been very useful for cross-platform storage as it was rarely supported on PCs, but the older DD formattign could be used for those situations)

Like DD 3.5" disks, QD 5.25" disks have 360 kB per side, but could be flipped (if notched properly) for full 720 kB on a single sided drive... HD formatting would have been great if the cost wasn't too much with the ~600 kB per side and probably worth the compatibility hickups so long as reliability was acceptable. (plus the compatibility hickups would only be for cross-compatible stuff, not ST specific disks, and in that sense it could have made for smoother transition with DSHD drives being standardized later on)

[nathanallan]

Kool I am glad you are asking here because I got verbally reamed on another forum by a mean member on that same question. The 5.25" any cap. would have been nice and it would have made sense because it was such a dug-in technology at the time.

 

My idea specifically was to use a Commodore disk drive as the ST drives are more expensive nowadays and C= drives are easier and cheaper to come by.

 

One thing I'd like to see is a cassette interface for the ST's, or a translator box so I can use the midi port or cart slot on an ST. My ST sits unused most of the time because I don't have the expensive hdd's and the network stuff is really hard to implement and keep running.

[+wood_jl]

I think they were on the right track with 3.5", following Apple's lead, and as Amiga and even IBM themselves followed. The entire trouble was the SINGLE SIDED launch mechanism. Typical Tramiel cheapening-out. What a crippling legacy this left on the ST line to support, as even Atari finally gave up the SS disks in the 520STfm - confusing things as there were (are) 520STfms with both SS and DS mechs. 720k was plenty for the time; 360k was laughable, and other computer makers knew better. I know Apple used 400k disks for a while though.

[+evg2000]

There actually was a 5.25" drive made for the ST, just not by Atari:

[Dal_1978]

An interesting question. However, I would wager that Atari already had plans to make an all in one solution so the 3 1/2 inch form factor suited this objective.

 

Putting the frankly criminal SS decision to one side (pun intended!), it was just as well Atari went down the 3 1/2 route. I have memories of triple format cover disks (PC, ST and Amiga), double format cover disks (ST/Amiga Format) that simply would not have existed if Atari had done anything other than adopt the 3 1/2 standard.

 

Finally, I reckon the ST would not have stood a chance had it not used the same media as the Amiga (would have affected decisions by some software producers I suspect).

Edited December 28, 2010 by Dal_1978

[Rybags]

I never had much to do with higher density 5.25s but I imagine the reliability would have dropped off progressively just as it did with the higher densities used on 3.5s.

 

I remember a friend told me once of an Amiga owner who'd swapped to 3.5s, he had some huge collection and supposedly they're more storage space efficient than 3.5s.

 

Despite the lower reliability, 3.5s are much more tolerant to abuse while storing/transporting. You can just not bother to put a sleeve or cover on, throw it in a bag and carry it around, bend it about a bit, and it'll still work good as new.

 

As for the flippy thing - just blame Atari in the first instance for being too tightarsed and not making DS drives the standard to begin with. A mistake almost of the same magnitude as not having blitter on the release machines.

[svenski]

I'm a fan of the 5.25" floppy but I can't see how the 5.25" would have made sense at the time as the platform to go with as far as the Atari ST was concerned. With hindsight there might be a lot more Atari STs out there with working original drives if Atari had used 5.25" drives but that is an ironic side note.

 

As wood_jl already mentioned, Atari already had caused mass confusion with the SS and DS mechs when they started switching with the 520STFM - the generic Atari documentation reads like "we have no idea what drive is actually fitted inside your new Atari - please do X,Y,Z to find out". A 5.25" format would have only added to the confusion and the hassle imposed on games producers to support minimum spec machines.

[majere]

I have one external floppy 5 1/4:

 

 

 

Used whith supercharger to run ms-dos software in my atari

[wildoliver]

I think it was a very good decision that Atari didn't go with the 5 1/4" floppy system.

 

It was dated, low capacity, fragile but far worse it was big, think about the practicalities of trying to fit that big drive in to the ST case, it would have meant either a bigger case which would have made a bulky ugly machine, or external drive which would have made a messy ugly system. The St showed such success due to it's neatness of packaging.

 

I like the quirkiness of the larger disk system but it's archaic, it's a novelty now nothing more. Even at the ST launch time it was dated and people with foresight could see it's days were numbered.

 

And they were right.

[nathanallan]

As much as I hate to disagree I must, Oliver. Getting a working 3.5" drive in an ST is a hard thing to do and there are plenty of working 5.25 various cap. drives still out there in working condition. Yes, the 5.25" disk was on its way out but it stayed that way for a long time, and was still in use when the first CD-roms started being used.

 

If Atari had used the 5.25" disks there would be a lot more working drives out there still (like in most of my vintage machines here, they all have working 5.25" drives while their 3,5" drives bit the dust long ago).

 

All in retrospect.

[Dal_1978]

Er - Atari had no way of knowing that at the time, they were not interested in the Atari scene as we know it now, they purely wanted to capture a market that was available at the time and leverage profit from it whilst remaining competitive with the likes of Apple and Commodore.

 

Your argument is almost the same as the vinyl vs CD/digital downloadable music - in retrospect, vinyl is still proven to be the best quality (frequency range, completely lossless), however companies need to move with whatever technology is considered to become the next standard. It is always a lottery and some companies don't get it right (VCD anyone?). I still maintain that Atari made the right decision in line with the key players of the time including Apple, Commodore and IBM. Trouble was Atari was so keen on cutting manufacturing costs that we ended up with an architecture that isn't inherently compatible with the majority of floppy drives without modification to the ST or the drives. This is the reason people have a headache trying to make floppy drives work first time.

 

Technology has moved on again - the final floppy disks will be rolling off the production lines and that will be the end of that. Products like the HxC floppy emulator are a realistic replacement for floppy drives (your floppy disk collection is replaced by a mass storage device full of floppy disk images).

 

My STE setup currently has a HxC emulator to act as my floppy drive, an UltraSatan acting as a hard drive and a NetUSBee to get files off my STE and onto my network via the FTP services hosted on my NAS drive.

 

No floppy disks and pretty future-proof for the foreseeable future...

 

My opinion is that the Atari ST would have failed miserably if Atari had taken the decision to use older 5.25" technology over the up and coming 3.5" technology at the time of release...

 

Oh and I have trouble finding enough space for my ST as it is without it being another 2.5" or so deeper!

 

 

:-)

Edited December 28, 2010 by Dal_1978

[+save2600]

My immediate thought to a slick 16-bit, mouse driven, next-gen computer system utilizing 5-1/4" disks would be a resounding NO! But come to think of it, a higher density/double-sided 5-1/4" might have made more sense then the external abomination that is the SF-354.

 

 

[nathanallan]

According to that logic we(consumers) should ditch all CD based anything and go with bluray-- which we won't be, because just like the 5.25" disk at the time, it was a dug in and accepted technology. Agreed, Atari screwed up their 3.5" drives, BUT there were plenty of existing drives out there already, ready to be used.

 

Disagreed again, use what is hot, not a watered down version of what might be hot. Turns out the 3.5" was pretty darn successful, as successful as the 5.25" was. It was a mistake to not even attempt a 5.25" drive. Plenty of manufacturers had them to be adapted over as it was dug-in accepted tech at the time.

 

majere, I want your drive

[+save2600]

According to that logic we(consumers) should ditch all CD based anything and go with bluray-- which we won't be, because just like the 5.25" disk at the time, it was a dug in and accepted technology.

Ummmm, yeah! Hello?!? CD based technology should not have been allowed to thrive as it has. Especially for music. It's weird really. Other industries have gone out of their way to kill off great products, yet, here we are - still stuck with CD. Most consumers make horrible spending decisions, dare I say retarded ones and that's why I don't hold sales figures of crappy technology or music for that matter, in such high esteem. If it sells like hotcakes and is wildly popular - there's usually something awfully wrong or backwards about it. Yay for the least common denominator!

 

BTW: CD's from a computing storage standpoint are even more worthless now than ever. Hell, even DVD's today hardly make any sense. I'll take a 50GB+ recordable medium anyday. If you don't fully trust these chinsey solid state devices that is.

Edited December 28, 2010 by save2600

[oky2000]

Nope 3.5" was the future, remember the ST was around until early 90s and Atari hoped it would last even longer so putting 5.25" drives on would have been a massive mistake. Especially on the ST/STM with huge bulky external drives to attach to your sleek ST/STM.

 

Besides there was no way to emulate A8 stuff so no need to support an old Atari format, and also you can still format PC 5.25" drives if you have an external drive unit connected. The thinking was the ST was the future, 3.5" disks are far superior in every way, and only people wanting to run old DS stuff would want one so I presume they would be the only people to purchase the drives.

[kool kitty89]

Kool I am glad you are asking here because I got verbally reamed on another forum by a mean member on that same question. The 5.25" any cap. would have been nice and it would have made sense because it was such a dug-in technology at the time.

 

My idea specifically was to use a Commodore disk drive as the ST drives are more expensive nowadays and C= drives are easier and cheaper to come by.

 

One thing I'd like to see is a cassette interface for the ST's, or a translator box so I can use the midi port or cart slot on an ST. My ST sits unused most of the time because I don't have the expensive hdd's and the network stuff is really hard to implement and keep running.

 

Well, that's a bit of a different context as I was thinking more in the hypothetical sense back in '84/85 when the ST was being developed/configured for original release (ie have 5.25" as the standard format across the board), but in any case, I don't think the C64 format would have necessarily been that good of an idea and would certainly defeat the purpose of IBM compatible formatting. (and that's assuming the ST was developed at CBM...) Atari Inc (prior to being split up) had been using IBM-like formatting with the 40 track floppies, though the funky extended densities (short of the full 256 byte DD formatting) strayed from that. (the original 90 kB/side format was the 128 byte/sector incarnation of the 256 byte per sector formatting used on the early 40 track PC disks -and Atari's DD 40 track format was almost identical to that) It seems that Atari Inc was pushing predominantly for 5.25" in general up to the split (I think there were some 3.5" projects, but all the major stuff planned and nearing production was 5.25" -some DSDD stuff planned, not sure if there was any QD or HD formatting used)

 

 

 

I think they were on the right track with 3.5", following Apple's lead, and as Amiga and even IBM themselves followed. The entire trouble was the SINGLE SIDED launch mechanism. Typical Tramiel cheapening-out. What a crippling legacy this left on the ST line to support, as even Atari finally gave up the SS disks in the 520STfm - confusing things as there were (are) 520STfms with both SS and DS mechs. 720k was plenty for the time; 360k was laughable, and other computer makers knew better. I know Apple used 400k disks for a while though.

Yes Apple also started off with lower-end models using 400 kB SS drives too... IMB did follow, but not as standard until the PS/2 series and by then it was mainly 1.44 MB HD drives... (except the low-end 8086 models) and they'd standardized 1.2 MB 5.25" disks back in '84 with the AT, and that was largely backwards compatible with the industry standard 360 kB DSDD floppies and thus made sense to proliferate sooner. (and was still in common use into the mid 90s -you still had new, higher-end games being released on 5.25" disks in '93/94)

Actually, NEC in Japan did the same thing: DSDD straight to DSHD drives with their Z80 based PC8801 line and x86 PC9801 series.

 

The 720 kB QD format was occasionally supported on PC drives, but it was uncommon as such. (still may have been a cost-effective option for Atari Corp/TTL in '84/85 single sided or double sided -Single Sided HD formatting could be preferable to DS QD formatting though, especially for good forward compatibility)

 

 

 

 

An interesting question. However, I would wager that Atari already had plans to make an all in one solution so the 3 1/2 inch form factor suited this objective.

Why wouldn't standardizing 5.25" also favor an all-in one solution? (unless you mean the STF models being bulkier -as the Tandy 1000 EX/HX were, though that was only partially due to the 5.25" drive)

 

Putting the frankly criminal SS decision to one side (pun intended!), it was just as well Atari went down the 3 1/2 route. I have memories of triple format cover disks (PC, ST and Amiga), double format cover disks (ST/Amiga Format) that simply would not have existed if Atari had done anything other than adopt the 3 1/2 standard.

 

Finally, I reckon the ST would not have stood a chance had it not used the same media as the Amiga (would have affected decisions by some software producers I suspect).

Yes, bit it would have favored cross compatibility with the PC a hell of a lot more, and that was far more significant than the Amiga ever was in the US... and the Amiga's popularity followed the ST's in Europe, so if anything it would have hurt the Amiga more than the ST in both areas. It took ages for PCs to really switch over to 3.5" (really not until HD became dominant -and why not when HD 5.25" was popular and higher cap than DD 3.5"?) and even then there was a logn period for strong 5.25" support. (into the early/mid 90s -ie well after the ST had already started declining historically)

 

 

 

 

I never had much to do with higher density 5.25s but I imagine the reliability would have dropped off progressively just as it did with the higher densities used on 3.5s.

I think that may have been a problem early on that subsided later... I do know that the QD format was very uncommon and sparsely supported on PCs, but HD was established in 1984 with IBM's standard inclusion on the AT line and from what I understand it was reasonably competitive in reliability with HD 3.5" disks at least. (it became the common late/80s and early 90s standard fro 5.25" disks) I personally didn't use them much, but never had problems with my 5.25" HD floppies as a kid in the early/mid 90s beyond compatibility problems when switching to win9x.

 

Despite the lower reliability, 3.5s are much more tolerant to abuse while storing/transporting. You can just not bother to put a sleeve or cover on, throw it in a bag and carry it around, bend it about a bit, and it'll still work good as new.

Lower reliability of the actual disks or the drives? (or was it more of an early problem partially related to software error correction/management?) Growing up in th early 90s, I only really dealt with HD 3.5" disks regularly (and rarely HD 5.25"), so I can't comment to much from personal experience. (plus that's very late anyway, so many early problems could have been eliminated)

 

As for the flippy thing - just blame Atari in the first instance for being too tightarsed and not making DS drives the standard to begin with. A mistake almost of the same magnitude as not having blitter on the release machines.

Not just flippy, but general cost as 5.25" drives/disks should have been more common/cheaper due to high production (SS drives would probably have been a bit lower profile too).

 

"Going cheap" was critical to the ST's success, at least in the EU market... but they did make some unfortunate trade-offs in hindsight that probably could have been avoided and still met a reasonable price point and release date. (that's another topic, but a full blitter would have been impractical in terms of cost/time, but simply adding hardware scrolling could have been critical, as could have been adding a rudimentary DMA audio circuit and a general expansion port in place of the cart slot; and even if adding cost overall, they could have potentially offset that by having more cut-down models lacking some peripheral ports and perhaps the keypad, and the expansion port would offset that by allowing external addition of those ports -that's come up in other threads recently though)

 

 

 

 

I'm a fan of the 5.25" floppy but I can't see how the 5.25" would have made sense at the time as the platform to go with as far as the Atari ST was concerned. With hindsight there might be a lot more Atari STs out there with working original drives if Atari had used 5.25" drives but that is an ironic side note.

 

As wood_jl already mentioned, Atari already had caused mass confusion with the SS and DS mechs when they started switching with the 520STFM - the generic Atari documentation reads like "we have no idea what drive is actually fitted inside your new Atari - please do X,Y,Z to find out". A 5.25" format would have only added to the confusion and the hassle imposed on games producers to support minimum spec machines.

Why would 5.25" drives have been worse?

I'm talking about using ONLY 5.25" drives and one single density selected from the start to go forward with... (either QD or HD -the latter preferable by far if it was affordable) so even if single-sided, flippies could be used. (HD would have been really nice in spite of the compatibility issues with DD as it would be ~600 kB per side and match a common emerging standard on PCs unlike the rarely used QD format -and much more delayed 3.5"- and also avoid any formward compatibility issues that later switching to HD from QD could cause -the only issues would be for specific cases of using DD disks for PC compatibility early on -prior to HD becoming really common on PCs, but not for ST specific software)

 

 

 

 

 

It was dated, low capacity, fragile but far worse it was big, think about the practicalities of trying to fit that big drive in to the ST case, it would have meant either a bigger case which would have made a bulky ugly machine, or external drive which would have made a messy ugly system. The St showed such success due to it's neatness of packaging.

Remember that all early STs only had external drives anyway, and bulk would have been a non-issue for desktop versions. (actually, early on, external drives situated under the monitor were used to make the ST configuration look more like a professional desk top PC with separate keyboard -a form factor that Atari really should have had from the start along with the lower-end console models)

Really though, compact 5.25" drives wouldn't have made things too bad on the 1040ST/STF configurations (single sided drives might have facilitated that too), though it would have depended on how early they adopted lower profile drives, or internal drives for console models at all.

 

 

Outdated and low capacity is totally false: we're not talking DD disks here, but QD or (preferably) HD disks with 720 kB or 1.2 MB (1/2 that per side) and full use of that capacity even on single sided drives via flipping. (again, 1.2 MB was in standard use by IBM in '84 and proliferated on PCs well before 3.5" became common -and was still in regular use in the early/mid 90s for commercial software)

And yes, durability/convenience of use are the staples of 3.5" disks, so that would be the main factor to weigh against general utility/cost/compatibility (with PCs), and the reliability of the drives themselves. (and capacity/double sided use, etc)

 

If the ST had been more successful and been going strong well into the early 90s when HD 3.5" disks were fully standard, then things could have gotten a bit conflicted, but as it was, that point is a bit moot as the ST's strongest market period took place with 5.25" HD (and even DD to some extent) floppies being the defacto standard on PCs.

 

 

I already addressed most of that in the topic post...

 

I like the quirkiness of the larger disk system but it's archaic, it's a novelty now nothing more. Even at the ST launch time it was dated and people with foresight could see it's days were numbered.

 

And they were right.

Except it was far more successful than the Amiga in Europe early on (ie until the very end of the 80s), and everything in the US fell behind PCs anyway, even for gaming towards the end of the 80s and definitively in the early 90s.

 

The ST was obviously an extremely good value when launched in terms of a general purpose computer and while the Amiga was more or less a similar value, the higher price pushed it into a different category. (the ST was the best bag for the buck of any other 16-bit computer of the time for sure... but that didn't matter for the ST or the Amiga in the US with the PC market as it was... and the ST and Amiga managed as they were -for Atari, especially from 1989 onward when they declined =quite possibly tied to Sam Tramiel's management)

Anyway, this is again, off topic and I already addressed the pertinent stuff above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As much as I hate to disagree I must, Oliver. Getting a working 3.5" drive in an ST is a hard thing to do and there are plenty of working 5.25 various cap. drives still out there in working condition. Yes, the 5.25" disk was on its way out but it stayed that way for a long time, and was still in use when the first CD-roms started being used.

 

If Atari had used the 5.25" disks there would be a lot more working drives out there still (like in most of my vintage machines here, they all have working 5.25" drives while their 3,5" drives bit the dust long ago).

 

All in retrospect.

True, but that wasn't even my point on this topic. I was thinking more in the perspective of the mid 80s for general practical use in terms of cost and functionality.

And you're right, 5.25" was "on its way out" for a very long time, so long in fact, that it was still (more or less) the defacto standard at the end of the 80s (in North American and Japan at least -Europe sort of jumped onboard 3.5" from tapes -and held onto tapes an oddly long time too). And there's tons of that that would have been pretty clear back in '84 and '85, not just in retrospect:

IBM had yet to include a 3.5" drive of any cap as standard on a PC, but had just introduced the 1.2 MB DSHD format as standard for the 1984 PC-AT (in hindsight it would be 3 more years before the PS/2 series jumped to 3.5", but much longer still for clones to push away from 5.25" entirely). Also it would be clear that using 5.25" would be much more foolproof for single sided drives (due to flipping) and if SSHD drives were cost effective at the time (and a corresponding floppy controller), that would have been a really nice option to go forward with and avoid any conflict with higher densities later on. (until an actual switch to 3.5" -which would be much later anyway, and in hindsight would only matter if the ST had really evolved and remained popular into the early 90s)

 

Again skewing from the topic a bit, one general problem that Atari seemed to have was aiming at that wrong market competition... at least initially they had a machine that was universally superior to all but the very top end workstation class PCs in '85 and at a fraction of the price of even lower/mid-range PCs (most competitive would probably have been the Tandy 1000) with better hardware, a better OS with a good user interface, much better graphics and sound (and PCs took forever to get 3rd party sound cards -not until '87 and not supported until '88), but moving forward from that Atari went the wrong direction with a more or less half complete attempt at matching the Amiga rather than pushing forward from the original design advantages over the market standard PCs (and in Europe, Amiga may have been primary competition, but the ST had been the standard up to ~89 when Amiga games finally got strong support breaking away from the ST). By '89 they should have been pushing for graphics competitive with VGA (higher res 16 color modes, 320x200 256 color packed pixels from at least 12-bit RGB, 15-bit would be better and 18-bit would match VGA, hardware scrolling and other modest hardware acceleration to aid software blits -copy, line fill, etc) while the STe's audio was probably OK as such, but a faster CPU should have been standard too (by '89 it should have been 16 MHz... and probably should have been that back with the MST rather than bothering with the blitter -or maybe much more limited acceleration integrated in the SHIFTER for scrolling/etc along with a fast CPU, albeit something that should have been done in '85 but would at least have been faster/cheaper and more fool proof later on -and allowed it to be standardized for lower end models far sooner too; lacking such features from the start was a big hit, but if they'd corrected that really early on it might have gotten reasonable support -especially if they got the new SHIFTER out by '86 across the board -when only a relatively small chunk of the ST market was established and practically none in Europe) Hell, had they been thinking ahead, they could have made the SHIFTER socketed to allow easy upgrade of early models while maintaining the early release date. (had they also included a decent expansion port including analog audio input, external DMA audio -or other expansion for that matter- could have been fairly cheap/simple to add as well -though that may also have been cheaper to leave a socket on the board of early models)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Er - Atari had no way of knowing that at the time, they were not interested in the Atari scene as we know it now, they purely wanted to capture a market that was available at the time and leverage profit from it whilst remaining competitive with the likes of Apple and Commodore.

IBM and clones were the big players, and there were tons of reasons in '84/85 that I addressed above and in my original post. %.25" disks wer ethe highest cpacity media in common use until 3.5" HD deives became common towards the very end of the 80s and early 90s. (while 5.25" HD was still pretty commonly supported well into the early 90s)

 

My opinion is that the Atari ST would have failed miserably if Atari had taken the decision to use older 5.25" technology over the up and coming 3.5" technology at the time of release...

Older perhaps, but higher capacity (or similar capacity but higher usable capacity -for QD over SSDD 3.5" but HD would have been the way to go unless it was really expensive compared to 3.5") and PC compatibility/standardization in use. (especially if there was a stronger push for PC cross compatibility formatting supported for both reading on writing disks on PCs and STs)

I agree that using SS/DSDD 5.25" would have been rather pointless and a bad idea as such, but I was talking about QD or (preferably) HD formatting, not DD.

[svenski]

Why would 5.25" drives have been worse?

I'm talking about using ONLY 5.25" drives and one single density selected from the start to go forward with... (either QD or HD -the latter preferable by far if it was affordable) so even if single-sided, flippies could be used. (HD would have been really nice in spite of the compatibility issues with DD as it would be ~600 kB per side and match a common emerging standard on PCs unlike the rarely used QD format -and much more delayed 3.5"- and also avoid any formward compatibility issues that later switching to HD from QD could cause -the only issues would be for specific cases of using DD disks for PC compatibility early on -prior to HD becoming really common on PCs, but not for ST specific software)

 

I don't think I said 5.25" would have been worse but do you honestly think that Atari could have kept solely with 5.25" drives and not moved to introduce 3.5" drives at some point during the ST's life cycle? A user base split between 5.25" and 3.5" drives would only have muddied the waters even more.

 

Remember that all early STs only had external drives anyway, and bulk would have been a non-issue for desktop versions. (actually, early on, external drives situated under the monitor were used to make the ST configuration look more like a professional desk top PC with separate keyboard -a form factor that Atari really should have had from the start along with the lower-end console models)

 

I'd disagree and I think Atari as it was then would too. The 1040, which was the original high end unit, was launched off the bat with the floppy drive fitted internally. People didn't like the cable clutter and external units so Atari modified the casing and moved to integrate the floppy and the PSU inside the case. Obviously there were cost savings by going that route as well.

 

Europe sort of jumped onboard 3.5" from tapes -and held onto tapes an oddly long time too). And there's tons of that that would have been pretty clear back in '84 and '85, not just in retrospect:

 

Again you seem to think of Europe as some poor back water. Europe didn't "sort of" jump to 3.5" from tapes at all.

[kool kitty89]

I don't think I said 5.25" would have been worse but do you honestly think that Atari could have kept solely with 5.25" drives and not moved to introduce 3.5" drives at some point during the ST's life cycle? A user base split between 5.25" and 3.5" drives would only have muddied the waters even more.

Perhaps, but only if they did better than they did historically. They wouldn't need to make a switch from 1.2 MB 5.25" until the early 90s... and if they were in good enough shape (market wise) to do that, then that's got other implications in general.

They'd have had to deal with the same sort of transition as PCs did though it could have been a fair bit cleaner, especially if they started with HD 5.25" from the start. (ie go from 600 kB DDHD -with flipping- to full DSHD drives later on before transitioning to 1.4 MB HD 3.5" if things went well -no dealing with 2 or 3 different 5.25" densities along with 2 3.5" densities and a long transitional period as PCs had to deal with). Although if they started with QD formatting it might have been a bit trickier depending on whether they switched straight to 3.5" HD or to 5.25" HD prior to that. (if single sided HD 5.25" drives were reasonably cost competitive with the SSDD 3.5" drives Atari Corp used, that would definitely have been a good option -or even if a bit more costly than SSDD 3.5" but still significantly cheaper than DSDD 3.5")

 

I'd disagree and I think Atari as it was then would too. The 1040, which was the original high end unit, was launched off the bat with the floppy drive fitted internally. People didn't like the cable clutter and external units so Atari modified the casing and moved to integrate the floppy and the PSU inside the case. Obviously there were cost savings by going that route as well.

A decent compact 5.25" drive shouldn't have been too bad in that respect, however, Atari should have been offering a nice desktop/box format (like the MEGA) earlier on anyway, and that would have been even more reason to do so. (that's diverging into another discussion in general though -ie the Mega should have been there in '85/86 and faster CPU models should have been available, etc, etc)

 

Europe sort of jumped onboard 3.5" from tapes -and held onto tapes an oddly long time too). And there's tons of that that would have been pretty clear back in '84 and '85, not just in retrospect:

 

Again you seem to think of Europe as some poor back water. Europe didn't "sort of" jump to 3.5" from tapes at all.

That's not what I meant... I simply meant the market trends were different in UK/Europe (in a broad/generalized statement). In the US (and to a fair extent, Japan as well) cassettes fell out of favor very quickly in the early 80s in favor of 5.25" floppies (with some rather small niches remaining), but they persisted in Europe as mainstream media for years longer while disks didn't become nearly as popular on the 8-bit computers and it wasn't until the 16-bi machines really hit big towards the end of the 80s that floppies really became standard in the lower-end consumer range... and since those 16-bit platforms were all pushing 3.5", 5.25" got largely passed over on the market. (there were obviously exceptions -as always- and not all regiond experienced that to the same extent, but from what I understand, that was pretty much the case for Europe/UK)

There's also other market differences from the US (and Japan), especially with the computer game market vs consoles, but that's another topic.

[oky2000]

The higher capacity formats you speak of are quite expensive to buy disks for and also less reliable when being mass produced and probably more expensive to master. I don't even think PC games used this high capacity format.

 

Commodore did have a drive for this for the C64, the SFD1000 I think, and it was hugely expensive as were the correct disks.

[akator]

This is an interesting topic. It has a lot to do with perception, both then and now.

 

In 1985, why would someone want to buy a more expensive 16-bit GUI based computer with the same lame low capacity 5.25 floppies that were in their old 8-bit machines?

 

Now, decades later, we know that 5.25 disks turned out to be more reliable than expected. Even tapes have held up surprisingly well. It makes sense that lower density formats would be less sensitive to degaussing. However, that is all hindsight. Regardless of what we know now, I don't think most consumers in 1985 saw 5.25 as a reliable format.

 

I remember having many, many 5.25 disks erased, bent, overheated, whatever, rendering their data lost immediately. I was worried about what happened to my data in 1981, not in 30 years when I was no longer carrying things in backpacks on school buses.

 

The 3.5 disks were a significant improvement in durability. In all of the years that I used 3.5 disks, from 1984-1998, I only had 2 lose data. That was a vast improvement over my experiences with 5.25 disks. Of course, I also grew up and stopped carrying my disks in the same container as my bagged lunch. My 3.5 disks may have simply been more reliable because I was no longer in grade school.

 

*Now* we know that 3.5 data retention is shorter. Many of my 1990s 3.5 disks are unreadable, whereas most of my lower capacity 3.5 disks from earlier still work. Turns out that was a result of chintzy floppy manufacturing and cheaper drive mechanisms.

 

We have the similar problems today with cheap optical media, that doesn't mean that CDs and DVDs are less reliable than 5.25 floppies, just that we get what we pay for

[kool kitty89]

The higher capacity formats you speak of are quite expensive to buy disks for and also less reliable when being mass produced and probably more expensive to master. I don't even think PC games used this high capacity format.

 

Commodore did have a drive for this for the C64, the SFD1000 I think, and it was hugely expensive as were the correct disks.

DD would have been catered to for lowest common denominator reasons just as 3.5" took a long time to get support with the exception that you could cater to lower densities and assume functionality on higher capacity drives. (ie games on 3.5" catering to DD for a while until HD really became common, or the same for 360 kB DD 5.25" disks over 1.2 MB HD disks in use from 1984 onward) Furthermore, HD capacity 5.25" drives were being commercially manufactured prior to DD 3.5" drives being released commercially. (and far earlier than HD 3.5" years later)

 

Again, IBM pushed HD back in 1984 and HD 5.25" drives went forward from there (they skipped QD disks, so there was a big gap between 360 kB DD and 1.2 MB HD disks), but HD 5.25" preceded any standard use of 3.5" on the PC... later games and software tended to cater specifically to HD formatted disks once the install base was sufficient (and far more practical and convenient than using 3 or 4 times the number of DD disks), and as such was still being supported along side HD 3.5" disks in the early/mid 90s when CDs were beginning to displace floppies in general. (the 1993 X-Wing I know for a fact was released on HD 5.25" floppies as well as 3.5" -I think Tie Fighter may have been as well in '94)

 

They were common and in standard use by the late 80s on PCs (not sure when they totally displaced DD drives though) and obviously became common well before HD 3.5" drives, but I'm not sure about DD 3.5" on the PC. (there seems to have been less of a push for that, but it was supported across the board -and for a time was supported over HD due to catering to lowest common denominator) IBM didn't include 3.5" drives standard until the PS/2 line in '87 (I don't think any clones beat them to that either) and by then they were pushing more towards HD formats. (only the early, low end 8086 based PS/2 machines used DD)

 

And as I said, the 720 kB QD format was never widely used on PCs in hardware or software. (just the 180 kB/side 40 track/256 byte sector/18 sector DD format and 600 kB/s 80 track/512 byte sector/15 sector HD format)

For 3.5" there was also brief support for the 2.88 MB ED disks, but that faded rather quickly. (due to cost and reliability issues, I believe)

 

I wouldn't be surprised if there were many more HD 5.25" drives used on PCs than DD 3.5" drives worldwide, probably more HD 5.25" than DD 5.25" for that matter -but far closer given how common DD 5.25" was. (HD 3.5" probably more than all others)

 

Also note that in Japan, NEC introduced HD 3.5" drives on their 8-bit PC8801 line in '85 and possibly earlier on their x86 based PC9800 series. (also jumping from DD straight to HD like IBM)

 

 

I'm not sure about reliability of the disks or drives and there seems to be mixed information on such as well. (and things may have changed substantially over time in terms of reliable disk production, drive mechanisms, drive controllers, and software routines -and error correction)

 

The Commodore comparison would be out of context as they used odd custom formatting (same for the 3.5" drives on the 8-bit commodores) and any problems may have had unique due to the odd format (like comparing Mac floppies to some extent), unlike Atari/IBM/Amiga stuff using pretty common formatting. (Atari 5.25" was very similar to 40 track IBM formatting -SD disks were a 128 byte versions of the 256 byte/sector DD format, Amiga used extended formatting cramming more sectors per track by requiring data to be written in single track blocks -some similar extended formats were also available on PCs)

 

 

 

If anyone has any useful info (or actual statistics) on comparative reliability of disks, cost, etc (and context in terms of timing as well), that would be great, but I haven't found anything specific on that so far. (some anecdotes, but that's not consistent either) In terms of sheer production and common use, early on HD drives and disks may have been more expensive than DD 3.5" disks/drives, but I'm not sure (it could have been the opposite or at least fairly similar -especially if you included single sided drive comparisons, and quantity production would obviously come into play -especially).

QD formatted disks (similar density to DD 3.5") and drives should have been cheaper in general (not as cheap as DD obviously), but that may have been less advantageous in the long run as PCs never adopted that format. (so even if cheaper to manufacture, the high production volumes of HD drives/disks could have been far more advantageous -not to mention cross compatibility with PCs, OTOH I think most/all HD drives were physically compatible with QD formatting so long as the necessary drive controller and software were present, so they could have switched production if/when HD drives got cheaper than QD -they could have introduced HD sooner on select higher-end machines too, though as with some other density shifts, there may have been some cross compatibility format issues -there were some between DD and HD, but I'm not sure about QD) Atari/TTL would have known of IBM's jump to HD format support (Standard on the AT in 1984) even in the fairly early stages of ST/RBP development, so that could have been added motivation. (though if single sided drives were standard -for any density- that would complicate cross compatibility -it would certainly have allowed specifically intended cross=platform disks to be single side formatted for either platforms... but that would also mean single sided DD disks if you were to cater to lower end PCs -though the same thing applies to the SS 3.5" drives too)

 

There was certainly some confusion issues on PCs with the transitional support of both HD and DD formats (and some machines with a mix of both drives), but that's separate form any reliability issues in general.

 

 

I haven't seen any hard info on drive/disk cost at all. (It's hard to imagine that QD disks and drives would have been more expensive than 3.5" in '84/85 though)

 

In any case, Atari would have almost certainly gone with single sided drives from the start (especially if HD, and in either case allowing lower profile drive mechanisms on top of lower cost) and later introducing DS drives. (but unlike 3.5", flipping would allow use of both sides of a disk on a SS drive regardless -360 kB per side for QD, 600 per side for HD -there would be the aformentioned cross compatibility issues of SS drives though)

Edited December 31, 2010 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

In 1985, why would someone want to buy a more expensive 16-bit GUI based computer with the same lame low capacity 5.25 floppies that were in their old 8-bit machines?

Never, ever suggested using single density low capacity drives, or even the common double density formatting (360 kB/180k per side), but the higher density QD and HD formats as potential alternatives. (QD is the same capacity as DD 3.5" but may have been cheaper, and even if similar cost to the SSDD 3.5" drives Atari initially used, they could be flipped for full 720 kB use, unlike 3.5" disks -HD would have been great though, even single sided)

 

Now, decades later, we know that 5.25 disks turned out to be more reliable than expected. Even tapes have held up surprisingly well. It makes sense that lower density formats would be less sensitive to degaussing. However, that is all hindsight. Regardless of what we know now, I don't think most consumers in 1985 saw 5.25 as a reliable format.

That was never my argument... my argument was for cost and utility of drives/disks back in the mid/late 80s, not for how things are today.

 

I remember having many, many 5.25 disks erased, bent, overheated, whatever, rendering their data lost immediately. I was worried about what happened to my data in 1981, not in 30 years when I was no longer carrying things in backpacks on school buses.

How were 3.5" disks of similar quality less prone to thermal damage or accidental erasing (especially via magnets)? (I can see the bending issue, but that's not a huge problem either as it really takes a lot to bend/fold a good disk to the point of critical damage -at least in my personal experience, but it could have meant the difference from having to carry disks along with papers in a folder or such vs possibly having them in a cloths pocket -otoh, 5.25" would be nicer to have stuck in a folder/binder/stack of papers etc due to the flatter form factor)

 

The 3.5 disks were a significant improvement in durability. In all of the years that I used 3.5 disks, from 1984-1998, I only had 2 lose data. That was a vast improvement over my experiences with 5.25 disks. Of course, I also grew up and stopped carrying my disks in the same container as my bagged lunch. My 3.5 disks may have simply been more reliable because I was no longer in grade school.

You'd definitely have to compare disks of similar age and build quality for that to really be definitive... ie much later/newer 5.25" disks/drives/software/etc against similar 3.5" drives/disks. (I'm only familiar with 5.25" disks/drives from the early 90s -maybe some from the very late 80s and pretty much all with HD formatting and the "half height" drive form factor -except 1 which was an even more condensed combo HD 3.5"/5.25" drive) I only used them in the early 90s as a kid and haven't much touched them since... didn't actually use 3.5" that much either oddly enough. (a good bit more and a good bit later than 5.25", but mainly for school stuff, very few 3.5" floppy games -more 5.25"- and we moved on to CD games pretty quickly in the early/mid 90s)

 

*Now* we know that 3.5 data retention is shorter. Many of my 1990s 3.5 disks are unreadable, whereas most of my lower capacity 3.5 disks from earlier still work. Turns out that was a result of chintzy floppy manufacturing and cheaper drive mechanisms.

Drive mechanisms (and software to some extent) as well as disk quality would be a ranging problem anyway and that wasn't the context of my premise anyway. (in Atari Corp's case, they'd probably be using the absolute cheapest components that were still reasonably reliable and functional -so high build quality would be more up to chance in any case)

 

It also makes sense that lower density stuff holds up better/longer in general. (of similar build quality etc, of course)

 

We have the similar problems today with cheap optical media, that doesn't mean that CDs and DVDs are less reliable than 5.25 floppies, just that we get what we pay for

No, not really... that may be the case with CD-Rs and such (in part due to software/drive and in part due to disc quality -one major issue is many programs not burning at a continuous speed -high speed writing can ruin reliable use, so you'd want to select a fixed speed, sometimes a slower fixed speed is preferable but sometimes it doesn't matter -or is even less reliable than faster fixed speeds).

But for commercially made discs, it should be good forever (barring significant physical damage -and even scratches can be repaired to a point, though not for the top surface of CDs -unlike DVDs it's extremely thin and directly over the critical reflective layer... if that's scratched/ruptured it's ruined for good)

And of course, some drives/software is far better and reading damaged/problematic disks than others. (that's one way of recovering from damaged discs too -rip it using an exceptionally tolerant drive and re-write the backup)

CD-Rs will age as well, and eventually decline in readability, unlike factory pressed CDs/DVDs/BDs.

[Dal_1978]

And where would 5.25" drives have left the STacy?

[nathanallan]

After all this is said and done, Atari made a mistake NOT making a 5.25" drive available, since it was accepted and dug in tech at the time. People would have figured out a way to make newer tech work with it as it came along just like we do today (NOT comparing today's tech to back then but comparing our methods).

 

And to that, what methods do I refer? Making floppy drives compatible between systems so that more data could have been shuffled back and forth. Someone would have made it happen, it is inevitable that it would have since we are now making things run on hardware just like we did back then on things it was never meant to run on.

 

Apple stuff running on Atari, that happened.

 

So many if's at this point. I wish they had made a 5.25" drive. Who knows what weird and cool things people would have made happen.

 

/edit @Dal_1978 Those disks would have left the STacy with more options and more hacks available.

Edited December 31, 2010 by nathanallan

[Christos]

3.5" DS DD == 720K

5.25" DS DD == 360K

 

There is only one good argument in favor of 5.25" disks and that is that they were cheaper. Also I think they look cooler than the smaller disks but the practically of the latter ones is more important.