Question of the day

[midlifecrisis]

It can't be the PC, not after watching deutschland '83!
They didn't know what a floppy disc was according to that.
I'd say the bank card, didn't they come about then...

 

[2b1ask1]

Go on...

 

[CatmanV2]

I thought I knew the answer to this, but turns out I didn't. Not even an easy google.

C

 

[midlifecrisis]

Go on...

The magnetic strip card is perfectly plausible being 1960's but thinking about it magnetic tape been round for a while even in computing. So unless I was crassly underestimating the east Germans, the card with a chip on it.

 

[zagatoes30]

A smart card or a card with a chip in it as opposed to a mag strip card

 

[2b1ask1]

We have a winner Martin; The Smart card or chip in card. We most commonly associate with SIM cards in our phones, Who remembers early car phones or mobiles having a full credit card SIM? The French started the Chip and Pin divergence and now we all have them in our bank cards and many other variants.

Over to you Midlife...

 

[midlifecrisis]

It's certainly an education this forum.

Quick and easy one, what was the original size of the floppy disc as invented by IBM?

 

[2b1ask1]

Logically...

They ended up 2.5" 1.44mb double sided
I recall the 2.5" started as 720kb

5 1/4" IBM floppies were 521kb in the end so I'm going to suggest they probaly started as 128kb

There was a much bigger IBM floppy but I couldn't say if this was parallel or before the 5 1/4" They were 7" I think and before them was reel to reel audio tape...

 

[2b1ask1]

I know my father in law built his own computer in the late 70's and he saved for months to buy single components, it had a massive 128 bits of memory, no persistent memory at all so every time it booted you had to load the bios before it could do anything, it plugged into the TV and took all day to load it enough to do anything. He finished it in 1980 and a week after his brother came back from Florida with a solid gold LED watch that cost as much as a car!

 

[rockits]

I got in the industry when RAM was £25 per mb. A smidge cheaper now!

 

[spkennyuk]

Ive seen a picture of the original floppy disc it looked like one of those flexible single record discs that they used to give away with music magazines sometimes. Showing my age a bit there

The ibm disc looked bigger than a 7 inch single so i would say it was 8 or 9 inches but i have no idea on capacity. 64k or 128k but im just guessing at the capacity.

 

[midlifecrisis]

You got it with 8". the funny thing today is that the 'C' drive on any PC is the hard drive and any partition is 'D' or higher but no-one will use 'A' or 'b' again. Old habits?
The floppy was essentially killed off by the Apple iMac with its Cd-rom drive after numerous format attempts with zip drives etc. Remember them?

 

[spkennyuk]

Bit of a guess on my part to get the right answer.

Next question is :

Tony Dyson the creator of the original R2 D2 models used in the star wars film died recently. Where does the name R2 D2 come from ?

Should be quick and easy for any star wars geeks

 

[midlifecrisis]

The brain of George Lucas, I didn't know it stood for anything.
But to help others, R2 units were the small droids, remember the scene when Luke Skywalker abd his uncle bought C3P0 and the red R2 unit?

Does C3p0 stand for something as well?

 

[Andyk]

Apparently George was on the film American Graffiti when a friend asked for him to give him the recordings that where on the reels and he asked for reel two and dialog two which is where the shortened R2 D2 came form......He had written the abbreviation down in his note book and as they saw the rest is history.

 

[conaero]

You got it with 8". the funny thing today is that the 'C' drive on any PC is the hard drive and any partition is 'D' or higher but no-one will use 'A' or 'b' again. Old habits?
The floppy was essentially killed off by the Apple iMac with its Cd-rom drive after numerous format attempts with zip drives etc. Remember them?

Had most of them from Syquest 44mb Scis drive to Iomega Zip discs and do you remember the bigger brother the Jazz discs?

 

[2b1ask1]

I did a CAD course in 89, using 5 1/4" floppies, on for work and another as a backup, we were instructed to use polythene bags to carry them to keep them dust free.... Little wonder they corrupted so easily.

 

[spkennyuk]

Apparently George was on the film American Graffiti when a friend asked for him to give him the recordings that where on the reels and he asked for reel two and dialog two which is where the shortened R2 D2 came form......He had written the abbreviation down in his note book and as they saw the rest is history.

Spot on Andy. The film footage was stored on reels of film and the sound was recorded seperately. Each set of recording given either an R number for film or D number for Dialogue/sound The Reel 2 Dialogue 2 explaination was confirmed by the sound editor. The abreviation being R2 D2.

The origin of the C3 PO name has to my knowledge never been confirmed. The original script called the droid C3. It was changed to C3 PO. The popular story for the change is that on a map of George Lucas's home town the post office is located in square C3. Which then became C3 PO. That explaination has never been confirmed.

Over to you Andy.

 

[daverichardson]

Didn't Leonardo de C3Po just win an ascot?

 

[Andyk]

Captured in North Vietnam, American POW Jeremiah Denton repeatedly blinked his eyes in Morse code during a forced 1966 television conference spelling out what word?