Re: Did the Apple II use single-density 5.25" drives?

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Tue, 11 Jun 2013, slickrcbdnews@gmail.com wrote:


> How quickly things changed. When I entered the disk market just four 
> years later, it was $10-20 for a 10-pack. That would remain pretty 
> stable until the mid-1990s when the prices started coming down and you 
> started being able to get a 50-pack of 3.5" disks for $20-25. I think 
> the last time I looked a 50-pack now costs about $14, which is even 
> cheaper when you factor in inflation. The price of most things has 
> doubled since then.
The thing about history is it always seems longer when you're living it.
I seem to recall that that four year period was kind of long at the time, 
but yes, now it's a blink.

I honestly don't remember much about buying floppy disks after that first 
10 pack.  I must have, and certainly at some point I decided generic disks 
were okay, but it just became part of the landscape.  I'd have to go 
through the boxes of old floppies to get an idea of brand and maybe that 
would bring back memories of cost.

I think I got one of those 50pack deals.  I can't even remember when it 
was, maybe early 2000's but I don't know, suddenly the Staples flyer had 
floppy disks, 3.5", at a good price and I thought I'd better get some. 
Either it was an extraordinary price, or I was thinking by then that they 
might be disappearing.  I think it was a box of 25, and then sometime 
shortly after, a box of fifty was on sale, and that too was too good to 
miss.  And I've barely used them.  It turned out by that point that I 
wasn't going to use them for storage, or transporting small bits of 
information, it was as boot disks for Linux. Wait, some of that was for 
installing Linux, so I needed multiple floppies, but they could generally 
be reused afterwards.

There was also that time I found about five zip disks in a box on the 
sidewalk, and brought them home, deciding that might be useful.  So I 
started looking for a used zip drive.  By the time I found one at a garage 
sale for a price I was willing to pay, the need had passed.  Cheap 1gig 
USB flash drives had arrived, much handier.  Then I kept finding zip 
drives in the garbage, yet none of them were tempting at that point to 
actually try one.

Some old technology is interesting from a collection point of view, but 
I'm finding these days things that I really wished for at one point but 
couldn't afford, then a period when I might find them used but that didn't 
happen, to finding them used and cheap, and not being interested.  A few 
years back, I saw a good reel to reel tape recorder for ten dollars, and I 
couldn't be bothered carrying it home.  The appeal of the item was lost 
when I no longer had a real use for it.  Same with the 8track recorder 
sitting next to it, only five dollars.  That one was tempting, something 
that was relatively rare back then, and thus a novelty, but in the end I 
left them both.

  Michael