Dear Stephen,

Unfortunately floppy disks were marketed in Australia not in their original
designed sizes but rather in the sizes that were dumbed down for the USA
market.

The 90�millimetre disk was marketed as a 3 1/2" floppy, despite the fact
that it was designed and made as a 90�millimetre disk.

One of the key components of this fiasco was directly built in to the
Microsoft Windows software where the name of the 90�millimetre disk appeared
as a 3 1/2" and I believe that this was very difficult (impossible) to
change to its real size. I know � I tried.

The 5 1/4" disk, as I heard the (probably apocryphal) rumour, was designed
by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at a lunch one day. The story goes that when
they discussed how big a floppy disk should be, one of them picked up a
folded serviette and said, "It should be about this big'. They then took the
serviette back to work and used it for a model. As to the original
dimensions of the serviette, I can only guess that it looks a lot like a
400�millimetre serviette folded into three. But this is purely conjecture on
my part.

Cheers,

Pat Naughtin LCAMS
Geelong, Australia
-- 


on 2004-05-22 02.45, Stephen Gallagher at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Does anybody know how 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch floppy
> disks were marketed in Australia.  Were they marketed
> with metric or imperial sizes and, more importantly,
> how does/did the public refer to them.
> 
> Just wondering.
> 
> Stephen
> 
> P.S.  This may have been posted twice.  Sorry.
> 

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