Floppy disk - Origins the 8-inch disk. See also: Table of 8-inch floppy formats In 1967 IBM gave their San Jose, California storage development center a new task: develop a simple and inexpensive system for loading microcode into their System/370 mainframes. The 370s were the first IBM machines to use semiconductor memory, and whenever the power was turned off the microcode had to be reloaded ('magnetic core' memory, used in the 370s' predecessors, the System/360 line, did not lose its ...

See also:

Floppy disk, Floppy disk - Background, Floppy disk - History, Floppy disk - Origins the 8-inch disk, Floppy disk - The 5¼-inch minifloppy, Floppy disk - New formats no standard, Floppy disk - The 3½-inch microfloppy diskette, Floppy disk - Floppy killers, Floppy disk - Structure, Floppy disk - Current situation, Floppy disk - Compatibility, Floppy disk - More on floppy disk formats, Floppy disk - Using the disk space efficiently, Floppy disk - The Commodore 64/128, Floppy disk - The Commodore Amiga, Floppy disk - The Acorn Archimedes, Floppy disk - 12-inch floppy disks, Floppy disk - 4-inch floppies, Floppy disk - Auto-loaders, Floppy disk - Floppy mass storage, Floppy disk - 2-inch floppy disks, Floppy disk - Ultimate capacity speed, Floppy disk - Usability, Floppy disk - The floppy as a metaphor, Floppy disk - Floppy trivia

Read more here: » Floppy disk: Encyclopedia II - Floppy disk - History

See also:

Floppy disk, Floppy disk - Background, Floppy disk - History, Floppy disk - Origins the 8-inch disk, Floppy disk - The 5¼-inch minifloppy, Floppy disk - New formats no standard, Floppy disk - The 3½-inch microfloppy diskette, Floppy disk - Floppy killers, Floppy disk - Structure, Floppy disk - Current situation, Floppy disk - Compatibility, Floppy disk - More on floppy disk formats, Floppy disk - Using the disk space efficiently, Floppy disk - The Commodore 64/128, Floppy disk - The Commodore Amiga, Floppy disk - The Acorn Archimedes, Floppy disk - 12-inch floppy disks, Floppy disk - 4-inch floppies, Floppy disk - Auto-loaders, Floppy disk - Floppy mass storage, Floppy disk - 2-inch floppy disks, Floppy disk - Ultimate capacity speed, Floppy disk - Usability, Floppy disk - The floppy as a metaphor, Floppy disk - Floppy trivia

Read more here: » Floppy disk: Encyclopedia II - Floppy disk - History

Floppy disk - Using the disk space efficiently. In general, data is written to floppy disks in a series of sectors, angular blocks of the disk, and in tracks, concentric rings at a constant radius, e.g. the HD format of 3½-inch floppy disks uses 512 bytes per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side and two sides, for a total of 1,474,560 bytes per disk. (Some disk controllers can vary these parameters at the user's request, increasing the amount of storage on the disk, although these formats may not be ...

See also:

Floppy disk, Floppy disk - Background, Floppy disk - History, Floppy disk - Origins the 8-inch disk, Floppy disk - The 5¼-inch minifloppy, Floppy disk - New formats no standard, Floppy disk - The 3½-inch microfloppy diskette, Floppy disk - Floppy killers, Floppy disk - Structure, Floppy disk - Current situation, Floppy disk - Compatibility, Floppy disk - More on floppy disk formats, Floppy disk - Using the disk space efficiently, Floppy disk - The Commodore 64/128, Floppy disk - The Commodore Amiga, Floppy disk - The Acorn Archimedes, Floppy disk - 12-inch floppy disks, Floppy disk - 4-inch floppies, Floppy disk - Auto-loaders, Floppy disk - Floppy mass storage, Floppy disk - 2-inch floppy disks, Floppy disk - Ultimate capacity speed, Floppy disk - Usability, Floppy disk - The floppy as a metaphor, Floppy disk - Floppy trivia

Read more here: » Floppy disk: Encyclopedia II - Floppy disk - More on floppy disk formats

Computer hardware is the physical parts of a computer, as distinguished from the computer software or computer programs and data that operate within the hardware. The hardware of a computer is infrequently changed, in comparison with software and data which are "soft" in the sense that they are readily created, modified or erased on the computer. Firmware is special software that rarely, if ever, needs to be changed and so is stored on hardware devices such as read-only memory (ROM) where it is not readily ch ...

Including:

• Computer hardware - Personal computer hardware
• Computer hardware - Wiki links

Read more here: » Computer hardware: Encyclopedia - Computer hardware

A USB flash drive is essentially NAND-type flash memory integrated with a USB 1.1 or 2.0 interface used as a small, lightweight, removable data storage device of up to 8 GB (as of 2006). Depending on the drive type and OS version, and in some cases what patches are installed, the drives generally work with Windows 98/ME/2000/XP (Windows 98 requires a driver to be installed; often, inconveniently, a specific driver for each type of flash drive), Macintosh, ...

Including:

• USB flash drive - History
• USB flash drive - Components
• USB flash drive - Essential components
• USB flash drive - Additional components
• USB flash drive - Strengths and weaknesses
• USB flash drive - Size and style of packaging
• USB flash drive - Common uses
• USB flash drive - Network administration
• USB flash drive - Flash drive for applications
• USB flash drive - Flash drives as audio players
• USB flash drive - Flash drives to boot operating systems
• USB flash drive - Security
• USB flash drive - Naming confusion
• USB flash drive - Comparison to other portable memory forms
• USB flash drive - Future developments
• USB flash drive - Trivia

Read more here: » USB flash drive: Encyclopedia - USB flash drive

CP/M is an operating system originally created for Intel 8080/85 and Zilog Z80 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc.. Initially confined to single tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64,000 bytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations, and were migrated to 16-bit processors. CP/M stood for either Control Program for Microcomputers or Control Program/Monitor. The name echos the prevailing naming scheme of its t ...

Including:

• CP/M - Hardware model
• CP/M - Components of the operating system
• CP/M - Command processor
• CP/M - Basic disk operating system
• CP/M - Basic input output system
• CP/M - File system
• CP/M - History
• CP/M - The beginning and CP/M's heyday
• CP/M - The 16-bit world
• CP/M - MS-DOS takes over
• CP/M - ZCPR

Read more here: » CP/M: Encyclopedia - CP/M

The Apple II, one of the very first personal computers, is widely seen as the founding pioneer and literal grandfather of the personal computer industry of today. As the direct descendant of the Apple I, it evolved from a meager hand-built computer kit intended for hobbyist, to a fully factory assembled machine ready-to-use out of the box most anyone could use. With its elegant case styling and simplicity (requiring just a television set as a display) it represented a computer that for the first time c ...

Including:

• Apple II family - History
• Apple II family - The original Apple II
• Apple II family - The family grows
• Apple II family - Apple II Plus
• Apple II family - Apple IIe
• Apple II family - Apple IIc
• Apple II family - Apple IIGS
• Apple II family - Apple IIc Plus
• Apple II family - Apple IIe Card
• Apple II family - The Final Years
• Apple II family - Clones
• Apple II family - General
• Apple II family - Apple II media
• Apple II family - Different style renditions of the II name
• Apple II family - Life after death
• Apple II family - Industry impact

Read more here: » Apple II family: Encyclopedia - Apple II family

At the time of its release, many users noticed that performance suffered as a result of upgrading from System 6 to System 7, though newer hardware soon made up for the speed differential. Another problem was System 7's large "memory footprint": System 6 could run on a single floppy disk and took up about 600 KB of RAM, whereas System 7 used well over a megabyte, and could no longer be usefully run from floppy-only machines. (Versions up to 7.5 could boot from a floppy, but there would be no room for other applications, although it was possib ...

See also:

System 7 Macintosh, System 7 Macintosh - Features, System 7 Macintosh - Software, System 7 Macintosh - Third-party software, System 7 Macintosh - Microsoft Windows Compatibility, System 7 Macintosh - Miscellaneous Info, System 7 Macintosh - Version History, System 7 Macintosh - Available Versions

Read more here: » System 7 Macintosh: Encyclopedia II - System 7 Macintosh - Miscellaneous Info

By the mid-1980s most high schools had computer labs of one sort or another, typically using Apple IIs or Commodore PETs. The Apple was chosen primarily due to its color graphics and wide availability of educational software, while the PET's all-in-one metal construction and "networkable" floppy disk system had obvious advantages in a classroom setting. However it was not too uncommon to find a whole range of other machines in the business cl ...

See also:

Unisys ICON, Unisys ICON - History, Unisys ICON - Description, Unisys ICON - External link

Read more here: » Unisys ICON: Encyclopedia II - Unisys ICON - History

WordStar was originally developed for CP/M, one of the most popular microcomputer operating systems of the pre-MS-DOS era. It was the most feature-rich and easy-to-use word processor available for this OS, and became a de facto standard. Notably, WordStar was the last commercial word processor supporting the CP/M operating system. Release 4, the final CP/M compatible version was sold with 5-1/4" floppy disk as a defa ...

See also:

WordStar, WordStar - History, WordStar - Interface, WordStar - Features, WordStar - Filename extensions

Read more here: » WordStar: Encyclopedia II - WordStar - History

PCS created a new genre of computer games—the "builder" or "construction set" class of games. In PCS, users constructed their own virtual pinball arcade machine, by dropping controls onto a table. Controls included bumpers, flippers, spinners and other standard pinball paraphernalia. Attributes such as gravity and the physics model could also be modified. The user could save his creation and develop custom artwork to go along with it. Tables could be saved on floppy disks and traded with friends. Pinball Construction Set is still recognized a ...

See also:

Pinball Construction Set, Pinball Construction Set - Description, Pinball Construction Set - History, Pinball Construction Set - External link

Read more here: » Pinball Construction Set: Encyclopedia II - Pinball Construction Set - Description

The MacVenture engine was written in 1985 for the first game in the series, Deja Vu. Making the entire game fit together with system software on two 400 k single-sided floppy disks proved to be quite a challenge and special image compression routines had to be written to accomplish this. Deja Vu was awarded SPA excellence in software awards for Best Entertainment Product and Best New World in 1986 as the first genuine point-and-click adventure game. The MacVenture interface saw no significant ...

See also:

MacVenture, MacVenture - History, MacVenture - Developers, MacVenture - Features, MacVenture - Content, MacVenture - Sound, MacVenture - Characteristic features, MacVenture - Ports

Read more here: » MacVenture: Encyclopedia II - MacVenture - History

The first Slackware release, 1.00, was released on July 16, 1993 [1] by Patrick Volkerding, founder and lead developer. It was based on the SLS Linux distribution and supplied as 3½" floppy disk images that were available by anonymous FTP. Slackware is the oldest maintained distribution to date, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2003. The name "Slackware" stems from the term "Slack," as defined by the Church of the SubGenius. In the early releases of Slackware, the distribution had three user accounts, "satan," "gonzo" and "snake." These were provided as examples, but were removed from later re ...

See also:

Slackware, Slackware - History and name, Slackware - Releases, Slackware - Design philosophies, Slackware - KISS, Slackware - Startup scripts, Slackware - Package management, Slackware - ZipSlack, Slackware - Internet communities

Read more here: » Slackware: Encyclopedia II - Slackware - History and name

System 7 was the first version of the Mac OS that required a hard drive for installation as a full installation was too large to fit on the capacity of a 1.44 MB floppy disk. It did not come bundled with major software packages itself, but newly purchased Apple Macintosh computers often included bundled software such as Millie's Math House, HyperCard and ClarisWorks. PowerPC Macintoshes included Graphing Calculator, previously not available in System 6. System 7 also included networking and file sharing software in th ...

See also:

System 7 Macintosh, System 7 Macintosh - Features, System 7 Macintosh - Software, System 7 Macintosh - Third-party software, System 7 Macintosh - Microsoft Windows Compatibility, System 7 Macintosh - Miscellaneous Info, System 7 Macintosh - Version History, System 7 Macintosh - Available Versions

Read more here: » System 7 Macintosh: Encyclopedia II - System 7 Macintosh - Software

In older architectures, NMIs were used for for interrupts which were typically never disabled because of the required response time. Examples include the floppy disk controller on the Amstrad PCW, the 8087 coprocessor on the x86, and the Low Battery signal on the HP 95LX. In the original IBM PC, a NMI was triggered if a parity error was detected in system memory, or reported by an external device. In either case, the PC would display an error message and halt. Some later PC clones used a NMI to conceal the hardware differences from th ...

See also:

Non-Maskable interrupt, Non-Maskable interrupt - Overview, Non-Maskable interrupt - History, Non-Maskable interrupt - See Also

Read more here: » Non-Maskable interrupt: Encyclopedia II - Non-Maskable interrupt - History

Since the Amstrad CPC was specifically built to compete with the ZX Spectrum and C64, and was a relatively late entrant into the 1980s 8-bit home computer market, comparisons between those computer systems were very frequent on specialized magazines but also among players themselves. Also, the three machines were practically the most software-wise supported 8-bit home computers in history, and had a virtually identical selection of games, although with major differences in qualit ...

See also:

Amstrad CPC, Amstrad CPC - The Amstrad CPC sold as a complete system, Amstrad CPC - The CPC family, Amstrad CPC - The Amstrad CPC 464 472 664 6128, Amstrad CPC - West Germany: Schneider CPC 464 664 and 6128, Amstrad CPC - East Germany: KC compact, Amstrad CPC - The CPC 5512, Amstrad CPC - PLUS models, Amstrad CPC - Hardware description, Amstrad CPC - Video graphics: modes outputs, Amstrad CPC - Audio sound, Amstrad CPC - The 3 floppy disk drives, Amstrad CPC - Serial port adaptor, Amstrad CPC - Similarities to the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC - Software, Amstrad CPC - Built-in BASIC and operating system, Amstrad CPC - Other languages, Amstrad CPC - Criticism of CPC software games, Amstrad CPC - Notable games with screenshots, Amstrad CPC - Magazines, Amstrad CPC - The Amstrad CPC vs. its competitors, Amstrad CPC - Later Amstrad, Amstrad CPC - Hardware tricks on the CPC series

Read more here: » Amstrad CPC: Encyclopedia II - Amstrad CPC - The Amstrad CPC vs. its competitors

Amiga uses MFM encoding/decoding by default when handling floppy disks. There are 80 cylinders on an Amiga floppy disk. Each cylinder has 2 MFM tracks, 1 on each side of the disk. Double density (DD) disks have 11 sectors per MFM track, High density (HD) disks have 22 sectors. The geometry of an Amiga Floppy Disk is as follows: DD disks: 512 bytes/sector, 11 sector/track, 2 track/cyl, 80 cyl/disk HD disks: 512 bytes/sector, 22 sector/track, 2 track/cyl, 80 cyl/disk The DD disk has 11 * 2 * 80 = 1760 (0 to 1759) ...

See also:

Amiga Old File System, Amiga Old File System - History, Amiga Old File System - Characteristics

Read more here: » Amiga Old File System: Encyclopedia II - Amiga Old File System - Characteristics

A program called "Elk Cloner" is credited with being the first computer virus to appear "in the wild" -- that is, outside the single computer or lab where it was created. Written in 1982 by Rich Skrenta, it attached itself to the Apple DOS 3.3 operating system and spread by floppy disk. The first PC virus was a boot sector virus called (c)Brain, created in 1986 by two brothers, Basit and Amjad Farooq Alvi, operating out of Lahore, Pakistan. The brothers reportedly created the virus to deter pirated copies of software they had written.[1] However, analysts have claimed that the Ashar virus, a variant of Brain, possibly p ...

See also:

Computer virus, Computer virus - Definition, Computer virus - Use of the word virus, Computer virus - History, Computer virus - Why people create computer viruses, Computer virus - Replication Strategies, Computer virus - Nonresident viruses, Computer virus - Resident viruses, Computer virus - Host types, Computer virus - Methods to avoid detection, Computer virus - Avoiding bait files and other undesirable hosts, Computer virus - Stealth, Computer virus - Self-modification, Computer virus - Viruses and legitimate software, Computer virus - The vulnerability of operating systems to viruses, Computer virus - The role of software development, Computer virus - Anti-virus software and other countermeasures

Read more here: » Computer virus: Encyclopedia II - Computer virus - History

Under Microsoft's DOS operating system and its derivatives drives are referred to by identifying letters. Standard practice is to reserve "A" and "B" for floppy drives. On systems with only one floppy drive DOS permitted the use of both letters for one drive, and displayed prompts to swap disks. This allowed for copying from floppy to floppy (this wasn't a very fast method though as it generally ended up asking for disk swaps far more often than really needed) or having a program run from one floppy whilst having its data on ...

See also:

DOS, DOS - History, DOS - Accessing hardware under DOS, DOS - DOS and other PC operating systems, DOS - Reserved device names under DOS, DOS - Drive naming scheme, DOS - Trivia

Read more here: » DOS: Encyclopedia II - DOS - Drive naming scheme

A hard disk is generally accessed over one of a number of bus types, including ATA (IDE, EIDE), Serial ATA, SCSI, SAS, FireWire (aka IEEE 1394), USB, and Fibre Channel. Back in the days of the ST-506 interface, the data encoding scheme was also important. The first ST-506 disks used Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM) encoding (which is still used on the common "1.44 MB" (1.4 MiB) 3.5-inch floppy), and ran at a data rate of 5 megabits per second. Later on, controllers using 2,7 RLL (or just "RLL") encoding increased this by half, to 7.5 megabits pe ...

See also:

Hard disk, Hard disk - Mechanics, Hard disk - Access and interfaces, Hard disk - Other characteristics, Hard disk - Addressing modes, Hard disk - Manufacturers, Hard disk - Firms that have come and gone, Hard disk - Marketing capacity versus true capacity, Hard disk - Hard disk usage, Hard disk - History, Hard disk - Timeline of capacity and other technical improvements, Hard disk - 1950s, Hard disk - 1960s, Hard disk - 1970s, Hard disk - 1980s, Hard disk - 1990s, Hard disk - 2000s, Hard disk - Derivative technologies

Read more here: » Hard disk: Encyclopedia II - Hard disk - Access and interfaces