Comment by herodoturtle 21 hours ago
Cool idea!
Is the terminology correct though?
Looking at the showcased disks, in my youth we called these “stiffy disks” - owing to their stiff plastic casing.
We also had “floppy disks” - but these were larger (in size, albeit with less storage capacity) and floppier (the plastic case would bend easily).
I treasured my burgundy Dysan stiffy disk boxes!
> I have never heard that term
Are you also from the US like the other commenter on this sub-thread?
Italian here, and I never heard of the term either. Everybody always used the term floppy also for the 3.5 disks
I guess that since it was a foreign word the physical connotation of the term was simply lost, and "a floppy" was just the disk that your computer used.
thanks, that's an insightful comment.
so defs not a globally consistent usage of the term then?
judging by the article's authorship, i'm guessing denmark and US the same
so perhaps US and EU but not elsewhere?
i feel like you're onto something here...
a marketing campaign for middle-aged men perhaps
I was under the impression that a floppy disk is referring to the substrate that holds the data, not the cartridge that contains it. So a 3.5" floppy disk would be "floppy" in contrast to a 3.5" hard disk drive that has rigid metal or glass platters.
This nomenclature could be a regional thing though (I'm from the US).