Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by louwrentius 1914 days ago
In Dutch, we always talked about 'diskettes', when talking about the rigid 3.5" disks. The large 5.25" were called floppies. Diskettes were called floppies too sometimes, but never the other way around.

I'm from the time frame in which I never saw 8 inch floppies.

The 5.25" were on the way out, many PCs had both 1.44 and 1.2 MB drives for a while.

/rambling
3 comments
airhead969 1914 days ago
8" were very floppy. ;-)

We, in Silicon Valley, used "floppies" to mean "5.25 or 3.5 inch disks." (Confusing, yes?)

And, we used "disks" to mean "any type of storage media, fixed or removable."

Also, "diskettes" meant "the formal name of 3.5 inch floppies."

I think this is the same nomenclature.

link
louwrentius 1913 days ago
Yes, I think it's mostly the same with more emphasis in NL on the 'diskettes' but that's about it.
link
p_l 1914 days ago
At least in Poland, the PC culture seems to have ended up calling both 5.25" and 3.5" "dyskietka" (lit. "diskette").

"Disk" tended to be encountered in "official" names used by OS software (so, "disk A:" etc.) but at least I never encountered "disk" to refer to anything other than hard drive since ~1992 or so.

link
louwrentius 1913 days ago
Exactly the same for The Netherlands. A diskette/floppy was never a disk. Only hard drives were called disks.
link
unixhero 1914 days ago
It was/is the same rule in English also. Cheers.
link