History of the Floppy Disk (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Over the history of the floppy disk a number of different formats were used. Floppy disks have now been largely superseded by other storage media and by network file transfer. In 1967, IBM gave their San Jose, California storage development center a task to develop a reliable and inexpensive system for loading microcode into their System/370 mainframes in a process called Initial Control Program Load. The System/370 was IBM's first computer system family to make extensive usage of volatile read/write semiconductor memory for microcode, so for most models, whenever the power was turned on the microcode had to be loaded. IBM also wanted inexpensive media that could be sent out to customers with software updates.