And yet, here we are. When I built my first system in 1985 as a trainee technical officer, the *first* thing I did was copy all of the 8" floppies I could from a donor system onto my 5.25" DSHD drives (1.2MB - The biggest system in the neighbourhood at the time), so I could return the borrowed 8" drive to its owner.
I never had 8" drives at home. I fully accept Kildall's rationale for having one standard - but we have proven in the 50 years since then that a worldview that is static doesn't work long term. One thing worth considering is that CP/M never had subdirectories - only User areas which are a pain to search for things within. (User1 - DIR, User2 - DIR, user 3 - Dir... etc etc..) so limiting floppy size to Single Density made great sense. Fortunately, now we have modern standards that are extensible. They cost us dearly in complexity, but it allows us to plug the next available storage device into a USB orifice, and have it 'just work' Just my $0.02 ;-) Kindest regards, Doug Jackson em: d...@doughq.com ph: 0414 986878 Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net On Wed, 9 Oct 2024 at 10:59, Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > >> I once had a brief discussion with Gary Kildall, in which I pleaded with > >> him to create a "secondary" standard for 5.25". > >> He replied, "THE CP/M standard is Single Sided Single Density." > >> He felt that people, disunirregardless of which hardware they were using > >> SHOULD be able to transfer back and forth with 8" SSSD > >> So, we ended up with thousands of 5.25" formats. > > On Tue, 8 Oct 2024, ben via cctalk wrote: > > That is because the 5.25 was 'no standard' format, because the selling of a > > cheap media device. 35 tracks, single density to who knows what, as > > every other year a new standard and media. > > I think the real reason Kildall stuck with that standard,was sectors were > > 128 bytes, and things had to shoehorn into what memory you had. > > CPM I think was only 2K of ram for the OS,and 256 bytes of system RAM. > > Also, he believed in a single standard, and the user had an obligation to > be able to get to and from the standard. > If he added "secondary" standards, as I was suggesting for 5.25", there > would be a never ending proliferation. > Need a standard for double sided. > Need a standard for double density. > Need a standard for 40 tracks. > Need a standard for 80 tracks. > > Need a standard for 3" > Need a standard for 3.25". > Need a standard for 3.5" > . . . > > By refusing to create a "secondary" standard, he avoided dilution of > the standard, and he stood up for his belief that everybody should at > least be able to comply with THE standard. > > -- > Grumpy Ol' Fred ci...@xenosoft.com > >
