The long-rumoured explanations went something along the lines of Amstrad getting them from a bankruptcy auction and/or salvaging them from a scrapheap after another computer manufacturer abandoned their project when it became clear that 3.5" had become the de facto standard.
Neither of those really made much sense - the choice would have been made about a year before 3.5" became unstoppable, and if there'd been a big computer manufacturer bankruptcy then why not sell off the whole computers rather than just the disk drives?
RP's explanation still hangs on Amstrad's reputation for being cheap'n'cheerful (reusing the ubiquitous 5.25" controllers & drivers definitely will have brought the cost down) but rings a lot more true than those other stories.
I was a 8512 owner so had the fancy-pants DSDD variant as my B: drive. The disks were great - not just more robust than 3.5", but the Amsoft-branded ones came with a jewel case with standardised inlay and labels. Even the soft slip cases you got with the Maxell ones were pretty useful!
unnah 42 minutes ago [-]
According to Wikipedia, 3-inch disks were not only used in Amstrad and Sinclair home computers, but also by the smaller British home computer makers Oric and Tatung, as well as Sega and Yamaha. However there are no details about which Sega and Yamaha models those might be...
It's interesting to hear Tatung described as "British", but for their computers that's an accurate description. I know the same 'Tatung' from their iconic Taiwanese electric steamer[0]. While Tatung is a Taiwanese company, their British research lab designed the Tatung Einstein TC-01 home computer with a 3" Hitachi floppy drive.
I highly recommend this newsletter on the Tatung electric steamer. Likely worthy of its own HN post.
My first computer was an Amstrad 8256 (also known as the Joyce). It came with a 3" drive. They worked ok but were expensive. After a while I installed a standard 3.5 " drive in the second drive slot. Besides being cheaper and much easier to obtain, they also had twice the capacity, as I recall. Over time I also installed a modem and replaced the 8 bit dot matrix printer with a 16 bit one.
orangewindies 28 minutes ago [-]
Do you mean replacing the 9-pin dot matrix printer with a 24-pin one? 9 pins allowed printing a line of text with ascenders and descenders in one pass.
alienbaby 4 days ago [-]
Had a pcw8256 . Learned z80 assembly and cp/m. Added line drawing and pixel plotting to locomotive basic. Fun times :)
iberator 5 days ago [-]
Thx. Didn't know until now that 3" floppies even existed
manwithaplan 4 days ago [-]
And speaking of Matsushita setting up a dedicated production line for the 3-inch floppy drives, they will have done the same for the dedicated 2-inch floppy drives production line 5 years later:
Neither of those really made much sense - the choice would have been made about a year before 3.5" became unstoppable, and if there'd been a big computer manufacturer bankruptcy then why not sell off the whole computers rather than just the disk drives?
RP's explanation still hangs on Amstrad's reputation for being cheap'n'cheerful (reusing the ubiquitous 5.25" controllers & drivers definitely will have brought the cost down) but rings a lot more true than those other stories.
I was a 8512 owner so had the fancy-pants DSDD variant as my B: drive. The disks were great - not just more robust than 3.5", but the Amsoft-branded ones came with a jewel case with standardised inlay and labels. Even the soft slip cases you got with the Maxell ones were pretty useful!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#3-inch_%2...
I highly recommend this newsletter on the Tatung electric steamer. Likely worthy of its own HN post.
0: https://newsletter.yunhai.shop/p/-taiwan-and-its-steam-cooke...
https://youtu.be/YhKWMHN4m0U?t=67