Communication Evolution - Essay Example

Communication Evolution Name: Institution: Technology has been undergoing development since time memorial i.e. from analogue to digital. There are various examples of storage devices i.e. magnetic storage and optical storage. Examples of magnetic storage include: diskettes (fixed and removable), high capacity floppy disks, magnetic tapes, disk cartridges etc. Examples of optical storage include: Compact Disk Read Only memory (CD ROM), Digital Video Read Only Memory (DVD ROM), Photo CD, CD Recordable (CD R), CD Rewritable (CD WR) etc. Iron oxide, which is magnetically sensitive, is used in coating magnetic storage devices. Most of the magnetic storage devices are not in much use as before. Floppy disks are an example of “dead” technology due to the fact that they are nowadays rarely used in the technology.Floppy Diskettes are read and written using a floppy disk drive (FDD). In 1967, IBM gave its California storage development centre a task to develop a simple and an inexpensive system for loading microcode into their 370 mainframes. These 370s were the first IBM machines to use semiconductor memory. This microcode had to be reloaded whenever the power was off. The ‘magnetic Core’ memory used in the system/360(which later led to 370 mainframes) line, did not lose its contents when they were powered down. A faster and more purpose-built system is what IBM looked forward to. In fact, this system was to be used in sending updates to customers at a cheaper cost .Various existing solutions were tried by David Noble to see if he could come up with a new style tape. But he had to start over after giving up. He had developed a rear-only storage medium which was the 8-inch floppy diskette. This floppy diskette could only store a maximum of 80 kilobytes data. Then they called it the “memory disk” They had to enclose these floppy disks in a plastic envelope lined with a fabric. This plastic envelop was to that pick up the dirt that was to affect these disks. In 1969, the standard part of this 370 main frame was Minnow which was developed under this code name. Yoshiro Nakamatsu, who is was a Japanese, claims that he independently invented the floppy disk in the 1950s.And it was for this reason that IBM had to acquire a sales license as they started manufacturing their floppy disk systems. From the IBM to Memorex, Allan Shugart moved. They then shipped the first read-write floppy disk drive in 1972, the Memorex 650. A new version of the floppy on the 3740 Data Entry System was released by the IBM a year later. This was a new read-write system which was now using a different recording format that could store up to 250 ¼ kB on the same disks. Magnetic tapes were almost completely replaced by these drives. These drives were becoming more popular and were being used to transfer smaller amounts of data. The IBM standard soft-sectored disk format, which could hold as much data as one box of punch cards, was designed. This standard soft-sectored disk was divided into 77 tracks of 26 sectors (each holding 128 bytes), a box of punch cards and the IBM disks could hold 2000 cards and 77x26=2002 sectors respectively. The 8-inch floppy found a place on these first microcomputers which were being developed in 1970s. Though they were few”high speed, mass storage” devices, they were affordable even to the many individuals and small business. The first microcomputer operating system was the CP/M. It was originally shipped in 8 inch floppy diskettes. But machines by then were just using cassettes tapes instead. This was because these drives were more expensive. But this trend began to change with the acceptance of the ECMA-59 (which was the first standard floppy diskette). This ECMA-59 later led to the birth of ANSI standard. Shugart also moved to found Shugart Associates in 1973. They worked on improving the existing 8-inch disk. They were able to come up with an 800kB system. But he was later forced out of his company because of the losses they were making. The dual sided 1 MB floppy was developed in 1975 but was having a major short coming of poor media quality. (Reinhardt 1996). Later in 1975, a 5 ¼ inch drive was developed by Burroughs’ plant in the Glenrothes. They had the motive of overcoming the larger 8-inch floppy’s asymmetrical expansion properties. They were reflecting the knowledge that IBM’s audio recording product was demonstrating a dictation machine using 5 ¼-inch diskettes. The Borough’s management team shelved the program later. This was after they had realized that the program would be too expensive to make profit. A new 5 ¼ inches drive, which was storing 98.5 kB by Adkisson a year later. This was further developed and later 5 tracks were added to eventually increase it to 110 kB. That is believed to be the first standard computer media that was not initiated by IBM. By then, the 5 1/4 inch drive was more affordable than the 8-inch drive from the IBM, Thus this new 5 ¼ inch drive was appearing on most CP/M machines. In fact, at some instance, Shugart could produce 4,000 drives a day for commercial. By 1978, there were more than 10 manufacturers who were commercially producing the 5 ¼ -inch floppy drives. This lead to a stiff competition between the Hard-sectored (90 kB) and soft sectored (110 kB).Later the 5 ¼-inch hard-sectored disk format eventually became extinct. Then a double-sided drive was introduced. This doubled the capacity. Thus, a new double density format increased it again to 360 kB. In 1970s and 1980s, the floppy drive had become the main storage device for microcomputers. These microcomputers had no hard drives. Their OS was usually booted from one floppy disk. Then it could be removed then replaced with another one containing the application. But some machines, which were using two disk drives (or one dual drive), could allow the user to leave the OS disk in place and simply change the application disks. A 96 track-per-inch drive appeared in early 1980s. It increased the capacity from 360-720 kB. They were not supported by the IBM in its PCs. The PC-DOS and MS-DOS –lagged slightly behind as the popular operating system of the 80’s, despite the availability of more capacity disks. You were either to buy optionally a 5 ¼-inch floppy drive or just rely upon the cassette port because the IBM computers lacked the floppy drive. But only single sided 160 kB floppies were supported by the version 1.0 of DOS (in 1981) Later a version 1.1 in the following year developed it to double-sided i.e. 320 kB disks. In 1983, The DOD2.0 could support 9 sector per track rather than 8, for 360 kB of disk space. A year later, the quad density disk (which was using 96 tracks per inch combined provided 1200 kB of storage when combined with a higher density magnetic media) appeared. By then, the 3 ½-inch disks had become more popular than the 5 ¼-inch disks. But in early 1990s, the popularity of the 5 ¼-inch disks had already faded in popularity. By then the machines which were running on MS-DOS had increased. But many users were forced to upgrade their hardware when the Windows 95 came in and got to outcompete the MS-DOS system into the market. With the advent of the 3 ½-inch disk in the midi-1990s, the drives had almost completely disappeared. The AmDisk-3 Micro-Floppy-disk cartridge system was developed in December 1982 by Amdek. But this disk was purposefully designed to be used with the Apple II Disk II interface card. This disk had also been successfully connected to other computers. A 3-inch single-sided drive was integrated into their CPC and PCW lines by Amstrad. In nature this 3-inch media was double-sided. It had completely independent sides “A” and”B”. The major challenge of the single-sided drive units was that of only accessing the upper side at one time. Surprisingly, the 3 ½-inch floppy diskette had more capacity than the 5 ¼-inch disk. But later , came in the 3-inch disks which were then designed to be reversible and had hard casing thus were more reliable. The 3-inch drives were also used on some CP/M systems like: Tatung Einstein and MSX systems (in some regions). Also the Yamaha MDR-1 used these 3-inch drives. Its main disadvantage was its high prices resulting from its elaborate and complex mechanism. (Reinhardt 1996). The floppy diskettes have been evolving from lower to higher densities. Whereby the term density refers to the measure of capacity of the surface of the disk. The current floppy disks are relatively cheap and portable. Although, with the current technological inventions, floppy disks have lost their popularity due to the fact that they don’t have much storage capacity as compared to the modern CDs(700MB) ,DVDs(4.7 GB/ 9.5 GB) , flash disks(from 1BG ) etc. also the floppy disks get affected by heat and thus are to be handled more delicately. The modern computer motherboards don’t have floppy drives but only have USB ports and CD/DVD drives and thus the floppy drives technology is now termed as a ”dead” technology. (Tom 1983). References Landphair. (2007). So Long, Faithful Floppies .Washington: Washington University Press Norman. (1990). The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Doubleday Press. Reinhardt. (1996). Iomega's zip drives need a bit more zip. New York: Doubleday Press. Shea. (1983). Shrinking drives increase storage .College Station: Texas A and M Press Sollman. (July 1978). Evolution of the Minifloppy (TM) Product Family .New York, USA: Penguin Group US. Spring. (2002). What Has Your Floppy Drive Done for You Lately? PC makers are still standing by floppy drives despite vanishing consumer demand. California: California University Press. Thomas. (1984). The Microfloppy—One Key to Portability. Washington: Washington University Press Tom. (1983). Shrinking drives increase storage. California: California Press. Read More