thinking of the "ultimate" retro x86 PCs - what bits to seek/keep ?

[Chuck Guzis]

On 06/05/2016 05:04 AM, Liam Proven wrote:

> I'm surprised at your evaluation, though. It did seem to me that if
> the floppy companies & PC makers had actually adopted them wholesale,
> the floppy disk as a medium might have survived.

I doubt it.  The ED floppy did not come at a good time.  Clone (okay,
second-source) manufacturers had adopted the HD format wholesale and the
price of HD floppies themselves had dropped to the level of DD prices.
By 1990, most if not all, new PCs had HD droves and even Apple was able
to understand the PC format.  When ED floppies were released to the
general unwashed public, integrated FDCs largely could not handle the
1Mbps data rate, so adopting the format meant changing the FDC (fraught
with problems if said FDC was integrated into the motherboard) and
buying a new drive and expensive media.  Perhaps the media price would
have fallen if adopted.  That's not a sure thing, however--prices never
fell on floptical (3M superdisk, Caleb SHD, etc.) media.

Also, by 1990, IBM was no longer an industry leader in PCs, nor did it
set the technical standards (MCA pretty much did that in).

But I don't think that a high-capacity Zip would have made a dent in the
CD-R market.  I'm not aware of many consumer-grade audio players that
can handle Zip disks of any stripe.

Too little, too late is probably another aspect.

--Chuck