16 Aug
2004
16 Aug
'04
5:30 p.m.
Nico de Jong wrote:
My first encounter with 8" floppies was with a
S/370, IIRC.
There was a vertical floppy drive near the top of the system.
What was that used for ? Microcode, diagnostics, .... ?
The 8" floppy was invented as a method of loading microcode and first
used for the IBM 3330 disk controller and soon thereafter for 370 series
processors. At that time it was a read only device (at the customer site)
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa110198.htm
-- HansP