Notices by Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io), page 6

They should have an article about what’s real and fake about what’s in the Washington Post
https://mastodon.social/@tvaziri/115605669765801191

@elithebearded @neffo

Fwiw Wiktionary agrees with you that "diskette" was formed by analogy with "cassette" but doesn't provide a source for the etymology.

But it does mean "small disk" regardless.

@raymaccarthy @hp obviously but at the time this came out most people didn’t have USB

yay

also weird that they didn’t have this until now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Crazy how people wrote good without computers, word processors, the Internet, Grammarly or “AI”

@alda it’s a fascinating story of something that’s really a niche and basically instantly obsolete product riding the wave of the dot com
bubble presumably

@raymaccarthy @hp they announced Linux support back in 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20000819085531/http://www.smartdisk.com/Downloads/Software/FlashPath%20for%20Linux.htm

@alda thanks that’s helpful

I was wondering because originally it was announced as a toshiba product

https://www.wired.com/1998/03/toshiba-smoothes-path-for-digital-pics-on-the-web/

@kaito02 ikr

RE: https://mastodon.online/@universalhub/115601426636136860

😶

I still need to figure out the link between Toshiba and SmartDisk, haven’t researched it yet.

@neffo “cassette” just means “small box” in French (diminutive of Old North French casse "box")

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115605216261158113

As my good deed for today, I updated the FlashPath Wikipedia page as it was missing references and had a wrong announcement date (FlashPath was announced in March 1998, not May 1998).

@mjdxp no, in the term "floppy disk" the "floppy" is an adjective describing the "disk".

if it would refer to the case or shell it would be called "floppy square".

this was opposite to "hard disks", which at the time often came in interchangeable cartridges, often with the platter(s) visible (photo attached)

@hp There's three variants, SmartMedia, MultiMediaCard/SD and Memory Stick (the OG one).

They all work in any HD 3 1/2" floppy drive, but all of them need special drivers installed (which are available for contemporary Windows and Mac OS versions).

Finally expanding the potential of my Floppy Disk Drive!

@joschi you'd think!

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/115604873348659045

Maybe you think all of this is irrelevant now, who gives a fuck about a media format more than 50 years old?

Well, fun fact, the design of SD cards is referencing the design of floppy disks, and were specifically made thin enough to be used in floppy adapters (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlashPath).
Yes, they made an adapter to stick your SD card in and read and write it in a standard floppy disk drive; though you would need to install special software to use it (ironically that software probably came on a CD).

Why would they do such a thing? Because there was no (widespread) USB.

@csolisr as I said, hard disks normally used 14" platters (so actually larger than vinyl).

Though some hard disks were way larger, for a time 24" was normal.

And yes, all these sizes were referred to as "diskettes" (small disk), even the 8" one, even by their inventor, IBM.

Even in huge letters on the sleeve.