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History (1982): 3-Inch Compact Floppy disk

Designed by Hitachi, Matsushita and Maxell

This article was published by the Museum of Obsolete Media.

3-inch Compact Floppy disk (1982-1991)

The 3-inch floppy disk (also known as the Compact Floppy or CF2) was designed by Hitachi, Matsushita and Maxell, and introduced in 1982.

3-inch floppy disks were double-sided in nature, and needed to be turned over in single-sided drives to use the other side. To distinguish the two sides, they were labelled A and B and the disk had independent write-protect switches.

Each side of the disk held 180KB for a total of 360KB per disk, or 720KB for double-density (CF2-DD) disks.

The 3-inch floppy has a more rigid casing than a 3.5-inch microfloppy, and the metal shutter is opened by a sliding plastic tab. The disks are just over 3-inches wide, and nearly 4-inches long.

The main user of the 3-inch disk format was the UK-based Amstrad company, that used it for the Oric-1 and Oric Atmos, Tatung Einstein, and some MSX systems, as well as some more obscure computers.

External drives produced by AmDisk were also available for computers such as the TRS-80 and Apple II.

The disks were expensive due to the complex case design. The rival 3.5-inch microfloppy disk was chosen by Apple for use in the Macintosh in 1984, and in 1987 IBM used it in the PS/2 range (in it’s high-density version) making it the standard for floppy disk drives.

In 1991, Amstrad switched to the 3.5-inch high-density microfloppy for the PCW range.

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