{"id":584,"date":"2009-08-24T10:04:10","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T15:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=584"},"modified":"2009-08-24T11:17:54","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T16:17:54","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-the-99-floppy-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/584\/retro-scan-of-the-week-the-99-floppy-drive","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> The $99 Floppy Drive"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Floppy<\/a>“Read\/Write 720K Disks Too”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Nothing illustrates the frenetic pace of technological change like past\/present price comparisons<\/a>. As seen in this group ad by JDR Microdevices, a 1.44MB 3.5″ floppy disk drive sold for US $99.95 in 1990 ($164.69 in 2009 dollars). But that’s just for the generic model — for a name brand Misubishi, you had to pay $129.95 ($214.12 in 2009).<\/p>\n

That’s quite a price for a now-obsolete commodity device that sells for $7.99 today<\/a> (or $4.85 in 1990 dollars, interestingly enough). Of course, in 1990, a high density drive like this was cutting-edge.<\/p>\n

As an aside, notice that the 3.5″ floppy drive pictured occupies a 5.25″ half-height form factor. That shows you how old this is — at the time, most owners slid 3.5″ upgrade drives into computer cases that only shipped with 5.25″ half-height bays (this bay size commonly holds desktop DVD-R drives today). To do so, many 3.5″ floppy drives needed a special face plate and brackets to fill the gaps between the smaller drive and the larger bay around it.<\/p>\n

[ From BYTE, October 1990 ]<\/small><\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion topic of the week:<\/strong> What’s the most you’ve ever paid for a computer peripheral or upgrade component?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Read\/Write 720K Disks Too” Nothing illustrates the frenetic pace of technological change like past\/present price comparisons. As seen in this group ad by JDR Microdevices, a 1.44MB 3.5″ floppy disk drive sold for US $99.95 in 1990 ($164.69 in 2009 dollars). But that’s just for the generic model — for a name brand Misubishi, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27,26,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}