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As a semi-normal, semi-sane person, I've always viewed 3½" floppies with the label end being the top.

So much so that it didn't click until a few years ago that the weird "CH" logo was actually... HD inverted. 🤦

Today, I'm archiving and scanning disks, and what do I notice? LOOK WHAT APPLE DID.

Wait, was that common? Did I overlook it all this time? No, I flipped through hundreds of disks, and this is the ONLY one I have with the HD right-side up!

#RetroComputing #Floppy #Floppies

Another scan of a floppy disk, this one a beige-y off-white, again with a brushed-metal shutter. The shutter is fancily silkscreened in red: an Apple logo, the words High Density, and an icon depicting a floppy drive with a circle and a line through it, with "400k/800k" written below (early Macs used single- and double-sided double-density floppy drives, which couldn't read newer high-density disks). The label is professionally created this time, with a white background, the word "Macintosh" written up the right side in green Apple Garamond, a multi-color Apple logo in the top left, the disk title ("Fonts") below that, and a large "7" in the bottom right in a funky 90s font, as this disk belonged to the new System 7.0. But what's really impressive here is that the standard "HD" logo in the bottom left has been rotated so that it reads correctly when the disk is viewed the right way up!
A scan of the disk for one of the most important pieces of software to ever exist: BUDWEISER FROG SCREENSAVER WITH SOUND for WIN[broken character]95! It's a black floppy disk with a brushed metal shutter, and a very cheaply-produced, inkjet-printed label depicting three bullfrogs sitting on lillypads in a swamp, from which rises a bar/pub with a giant neon Budweiser beer sign on. Anyway, down in the bottom left is a symbol that's on every high-density 3½" floppy disk, whether embossed into the plastic, or as in this case, silkscreened on. From this angle and due to the styling of the letters, it looks like "CH". But the designers of the 3½" floppy disk intended disks to be viewed with the shutter on top and the label at the bottom. You'll even find commercial disks labeled that way on occasion (IIRC, Microsoft did it *sometimes*). From that point of view, the symbol looks more like what it's supposed to depict: HD, for high-density. But for the most part, the people spoke: the label goes on top, ya dinguses.
#retrocomputing #floppies #floppy
This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to screambiogenesis

Jens Finkhäuser
mastodon - Link to source
Jens Finkhäuser
• •

Related: you think you have the right disk in the drive, but aren't sure. You plop out the disk for a cm or so:

Either the writing is upside-down, or you see the bottom of the label.

in reply to Jens Finkhäuser

screambiogenesis
mastodon - Link to source
screambiogenesis
• •
@jens Yeah, in your scenario, I'd much rather see the top of the label upside down than the copyright info (or the blank bit) at the bottom of the label!
@Jens Finkhäuser
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