[renewiltord]

I think I encountered 5¼" floppies only near the beginning of my computing life so I only had a couple at the school lab but this is the first I've heard of flippy disks. What a clever name! If most PC drives couldn't read these, which manufacturer drives did people use?

[toast0]

IBM pcs generally had double-sided drives. No need to flip, because the drive had heads for the top and bottom. Other computers varied, usually depending on when they introduced floppy drives (double sided is more complex, but better experience).

Note that the data orientation will be different on the bottom of a single sided disk written with the disk upside down than if written on a double sided drive.

[core-questions]

I remember being prompted to flip over the disk on an Apple //e clone from a company called Datatrain we had back in the 80s.

[royjacobs]

Some Commodore drives (like the 1541) were single sided so you'd have to use the floppy disk approach.