I Didn't Know That!

[securespark]

Let's make this a thread of things that posters have just learnt.

I'd like to start with this one:

The British Airways Boeing 747-400 fleet, up to its retirement in 2020, used 3.5-inch floppy disks to load avionics software.

 

[EddieM]

A windows 10 installation iso would require approximately 3500 3.5" floppy disks.

 

[teaboyjim]

There's enough data storage available to store every single conversation that anybody has every spoken in the entire history of the world

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

A windows 10 installation iso would require approximately 3500 3.5" floppy disks.

From memory, Win 3.1 was on 10 or 11 3.5 HD disks.

 

[teaboyjim]

From memory, Win 3.1 was on 10 or 11 3.5 HD disks.

I'm wondering how many word documents you could squeeze onto a 3.5 floppy disks - do you know? I'm guessing a few hundred to a thousand max

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I'm wondering how many word documents you could squeeze onto a 3.5 floppy disks - do you know? I'm guessing a few hundred to a thousand max

That will depend on their size, plus there will be an overhead per document.

 

[EddieM]

I'm wondering how many word documents you could squeeze onto a 3.5 floppy disks - do you know? I'm guessing a few hundred to a thousand max

An A4 sheet of plain text is about 2k bytes, so you could store about 500 A4 pages on a floppy disk. IIRC correctly War and Peace is under 2Mb in size.

 

[wobs]

I'm wondering how many word documents you could squeeze onto a 3.5 floppy disks - do you know? I'm guessing a few hundred to a thousand max

Not as many as you used to be able to.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

An A4 sheet of plain text is about 2k bytes, so you could store about 500 A4 pages on a floppy disk. IIRC correctly War and Peace is under 2Mb in size.

So around one and bit floppies.

 

[EddieM]

So around one and bit floppies.

2 really. The 1.44 MB HD floppies when formatted could only hold about 1 MB.

 

[teaboyjim]

2 really. The 1.44 MB HD floppies when formatted could only hold about 1 MB.

Where they only 1.44 MB?

 

[EddieM]

Where they only 1.44 MB?

Unformatted, yes.

 

[Brigade77]

I've always had a problem with how coal was formed. I just cannot picture all those trees falling over & just laying there until something came along to cover them over. I've always wondered why there wasn't something that will one day become coal but isn't quite coal yet.

I remember the storm that blew over a really BIG tree during my childhood, I remember it 'cos it was a fantastic tree to climb. The pathetic & decayed remains of that tree are still there all these years later . . . .

I recently learned that back when coal was formed, fallen trees didn't rot away like they would today, because the enzymes, the bacteria, the fungi & the insects that attack fallen timber hadn't yet evolved.

Ive also learned why I never got inside Julie Brewers knickers in '76, bumped into her & her wife whilst out walking last week

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Where they only 1.44 MB?

Yep!

But PC's only had 512K of memory.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

2 really. The 1.44 MB HD floppies when formatted could only hold about 1 MB.

Wrong way round. 2Mb pre-format, then 1.44Mb once formatted.