A Look at the Short-Lived 3-Inch Compact Floppy Disk

Byte Cellar ^ | 25FEB19 | Blake Patterson

[vannrox]

A Look at the Short-Lived 3-Inch Compact Floppy Disk

Posted on February 25, 2019 by Blake Patterson

I was recently listening to the latest episode of Retro Computing Roundtable podcast during which there was mention of a 3-inch floppy disk. No, not 3.5-inch, but 3-inch. These disks are known as Compact Floppy Disks (also “CF2”) and were used in a number of systems outside the US, including some models of Amstrad, Tatung, and MSX machines. And, while the Sony-engineered 3.5-inch disks that those of us who don’t think that they are 3D-printed takes on the “save icon” know well are more or less square, these disks are rectangular. This was a curiosity discussed in the podcast at length.

The Compact Floppy Disk form factor was engineered by Matsushita and Maxell and, in the states, it was offered for a variety of machines by Amdek as an standalone unit. The Amdek Amdisk-III was a dual-drive unit released in 1982 at an introductory price of $899, offered for the TRS-80 CoCo and the Model III as well as the Atari 8-bit line. Amdek also sold a single-drive Amdisk-I unit exclusively for the Apple II, billed as a perfect second-drive option. I saw an ad for the latter when I was using an Apple IIe as my main system and it appealed for it’s cool-factor, but was too expensive. Eventually I saw a close-out deal for the Amdisk-I at a price of about $75 and I went in on it. When it arrived it came with four blank 3-inch floppies and I plugged it into my Disk II controller card and installed the third and fourth floppy-sides of Ultima IV on it and played away. It was reliable and, as expected, pretty cool.

I sold the system it was attached to and moved to an Atari ST, but I kept one of the disks. After hearing the discussion on the RCR podcast about the oddness of its rectangular form-factor, I decided to dissect the disk I have on hand to see and share just what’s inside. Would there be a magical storage space for trinkets? Something special waiting for the adventurous user who decided to crack a disk open? As it turns out — no. There’s just a spring and an overall situation that presented no particular reason for it being non-square.

Having cracked open the disk, I present the photos here for posterity. I’ve been without a drive to read this disk for over 20 years, and so the destruction of the media is of little pain for me. The magnetic media of yesteryear (some even less common than these) is an interesting thing to examine, I think.

[C19fan]

I am 50 and this is the first time I read about a 3” floppy.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

You broke it...Now your Lotus 123 won’t work.

[Red Badger]

Ping!..........

[Redleg Duke]

Actually, it was 3.5” floppy, a tremendoun improvement over the 5 1/4” floppy.

The Zip Drive followed, but read/write CDs killed it.

[Yo-Yo]

From the article:

No, not 3.5-inch, but 3-inch.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Ahhhh....Ultima IV. Such fun. Hours of wasted time.

"Appar Unem!"

[ShadowAce]

[Vermont Lt]

I loved Lotus.

I was a 1-2-3 whiz. That kept me employed for a few years. When I finally moved to Excel, it was like losing a good friend.

[ShadowAce]

You got trapped again by not reading the article :)

[Redleg Duke]

First I heard of the 3”.

[circlecity]

Remember Bill Gates’ words - “Windows isn’t done till Lotus won’t run.”

[Redleg Duke]

Well, then throw my worthless ass off of this site!

I have been accused of being a liberal because I criticize the “conservative purists”! This is proof positive!

[bigbob]

You could put a camera in one of those, but then you couldn’t post it here.

[bigbob]

Reading comprehension.

[wally_bert]

I used Lotus some but would be lost in it now.

However, I get to contend with Lotus Notes.

[struggle]

NAND Flash is flipping capacity so fast it’s unreal.

[Blue Highway]

I remember getting my first PC in December of 1996. I was seduced by the then new technologies of super floppys. I hemmed and hawed but never bought one but I lusted after those Imation LS-120 Super Drives and the Caleb iT 144 drives. They were theoretically superior to the ZIP drives at the time but the market was already saturated with Iomega products. I did invest in the SyQuest drives which WERE superior to the ZIP or JAZZ drives by Iomega. The SyJet discs held 1.5GB each which then was massive! The Iomega Jazz only held 1gb.

I also later on in the later 90s or early 2000s bought a couple of those Castlewood Orb drives on eBay as those cartridges held 2.2gb.

[Yo-Yo]

Me too. I remember Sony’s 3.5” floppy, which I used tons of during my Amiga 500 days, and I remember Zip and Jazz drives that were handy before thumb drives go so much capacity.

I guess that’s why this article was titled “A Look at the Short-Lived 3-Inch Compact Floppy Disk.”

[MrEdd]

Bah.
Humbug.

I want to throw rocks at an undead Fred.
That’s a true CRPG.