Talk:Floppy disk

message: In 2017 I wrote:
There wasn't much support then and the consensus seemed to be to use the prefixes of the source and live with ambiguity. A comment to that effect is embedded in the section of the article.  in a recent edit, now reverted, converted all of the values with IEC decimal prefix kB to values with conventional binary prefixes, KB.    Going all conventional binary prefix is one way to resolve the ambiguity but if we are going to convert units such conversion probably should be flagged in some form.  Personally I would prefer IEC Binary and Decimal prefixes but going all conventional, so annotated, works too.  Comment?  Tom94022 (talk) 18:41, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is not a reliable source.  For example, an IBM 1981 JRD article, "The IBM Diskette and Diskette Drive" gives the 23FD, 33FD, and 43FD capacities as 81,644 bytes, 242,944 and 568,320 bytes respectively.  In these cases kB is appropriate and there is no basis for conversion to KB.  Tom94022 (talk) 01:08, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

text: I think the table should be updated to use the current binary standards of kiB and MiB, or at the very least include a footnote on the standard used. For the formatted capacity anyway, the marketed capacity should use whatever it was originally marketed as. StuartH (talk) 11:24, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Before we start on such a project there needs to be consensus here on doing it.  Right now it is 2 in favor of unambiguous prefixes and one neutral.  Given the number of conventional binary prefixes zealots on Wikipedia we probably need 5 to 10 in favor of such a rewrite before we dare attempt.  I suppose we could ping the editors who have contributed the most to this article to see if there is such a consensus. Tom94022 (talk) 18:01, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

text: I take it that means you oppose IEC Binary Prefixes.  A detailed note in the "Sizes, performance and capacity" section along with some sort of warning at the start of the article, perhaps in the lede, would work so long as we are careful that k==1000 and K==1024 is consistent throughout.  I already put in explicit descriptions for the first usage of KB and MB.  Tom94022 (talk) 17:29, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use unambiguous prefixes again 

message: Is there any significance to "Floppy Disk" spelled with a "k" vs. "Compact Disc" spelled with a "c"?  24.51.192.49 (talk) 04:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: "Compact Disc" is trademarked, "Floppy Disk" is not, the HDD folks adopted disk to avoid potential trademark issues with IBM and that carried over into FD. Tom94022 (talk) 07:30, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: If one reads HP manuals and marketing materials from the 1980s, the word was always spelled with a 'c'.  Similar material from IBM spells with a 'k'.  The 'k' won out at some point.  Since the 'c' spelling was in use long before CDs were invented, I think it's doubtful that a concern over trademark issues was the cause. Christopher Rath (talk) 19:57, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The decision was in the 1960s so HP materials from the 1980s are pretty much irrelevant.  Tom94022 (talk) 21:03, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling 

message: The older "360K" floppies (and I'm speaking about IBM-style formatted capacities) had a reinforcing center ring where the drive would clamp the disk.  This ring was eliminated on the 1.2M floppies.  What was the original idea behind this and why was it deemed unnecessary on the very similar-looking 1.2M disks?  57.135.233.22 (talk) 05:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm pretty sure the ring was not standard on any 5¼-inch FD - AFAIC recall it was added by some vendors to prevent or reduce damage caused by the various FDD clamping mechanisms, which would then make the disk unreliable.  Tom94022 (talk) 21:00, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm looking at all the pictures of 5.25" disks in the article because I didn't believe you and I don't see any with that ring, so I guess you're right.  "Mandela effect" or something. :) .... 57.135.233.22 (talk) 08:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  5.25 Floppies 

message: Re: this revert, what's the reason for preferring vulgar fraction characters in these section titles? "5.25" and "3.25" are already being used in subsection headers of Floppy disk#Sizes. Per MOS:FRAC, articles that use vulgar fractions not on the approved list must use , but this cannot be used in link targets, so using decimals in section headers makes it less awkward to link here from those articles and for automated scans to show they have been fixed. -- Beland (talk) 01:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, MOS:FRAC admits an acceptable exception "If ¼, ½, and ¾[k] are the only fractions needed" where [k] says these characters "are in ISO/IEC 8859-1 and work in screen readers".  I think we want screen readers (and everyone else) to read these as "five and a quarter" and "three and a half" (rather than "five point two five" and "three point five") because that's what these floppy disks were generally called in their day. Tayste (edits) 03:28, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Very well, I have changed all the instances of  and decimal fractions to use the Unicode characters. The section headers actually have supplemental anchors with decimal fractions, so links from other articles should work fine. -- Beland (talk) 18:57, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for making this change. The decision for consistency had been sitting out there for awhile. ShadyCrack (talk) 14:43, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fraction characters