[zaxomi]

The first floppy from 1967 only had one side. Adding one signal to select side was an easy solution to increase the capacity without to much modification of the controller. Adding the capability to read from both heads at the same time would require much more modifications, and more memory.

[FullyFunctional]

Undeniably true; so much of computing hardware (and software) looks archaic and bizarre because it's the process of a long chain of backwards compatible changes (don't get me started on ATAPI).

But that aside, like dusted I too wonder just _how_ hard it would have been for a company like, say Apple, to demand the extra circuit. Might not have been worth it for just 2X speedup.

Now I want to build a 10X floppy RAID ...

[MBCook]

Everyone had that extra circuit in the floppy controller, it was just somewhere else.

Ask for it to be integrated and now you go from being able to buy drive from almost anyone to only one vendor.

It is odd it never improved and stayed as simple as it was until the end of floppies. The power of history I guess.