# What was the biggest application ever distributed on floppy discs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 8, 2014, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629 "2014-04-08T12:24:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/21 "2014-04-09T06:56:26Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > [Obamacare released on 35 floppies.](http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-improved-obamacare-program-released-on-35-flop,34294/) 😃 That’s not as far-fetched as it seems. I was assisting a woman with government HUD paperwork as recently as 5 years ago, and the latest software mandated by HUD ran in a MS-DOS window and required a telephone modem to transmit the reports, not the Internet. I remember installing it on her XP machine, and I think it came on 3.5" floppies. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/22 "2014-04-09T08:28:32Z")
> [@astro](#): > > The last version of WordPerfect on floppy discs were (IIRC) up to around 30-40 3.5 floppies. Some database programs were a lot bigger than that. That’s what I would have thought too - but I looked at DBASE, AutoCad and Photoshop, and none of them seemed to be very large in terms of discs. Were there any specific applications you were thinking of? > [@Celidin](#): > > I once bought a version of CorelDRAW at a flea market that came on 300 **CDs**. > Okay, CD’s 1-299 were stock photos, but still… (it was for those 299 CDs of photos that I bought it for $5) Hah! That might have to win for sheer numbers of bytes. $5 sounds like a steal for that many stock photos. > [@Little\_Pig](#): > > I think it had to be the OS/2 Extended Edition development package which came on 5 and 1/4, 1.2 MB floppies. This was released either just before (1988) or after Windows 3.0 . - I think. This was targeted for the 80286. It was mammoth. I actually saw the mountain of disks which were sent but can’t remember precisely (fog of time). Perhaps some other Doper recalls. Sorry. I was trying to find out how many discs this actually was, but found this thread in the top few links. Well done on indexing speed, Google, but fail for any more useful information. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/23 "2014-04-09T08:44:21Z")
Thanks Dervorin. I do remember doubting my hard drive having enough room. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/24 "2014-04-09T09:01:06Z")
So…how did this ever work? My recollection is that any number of disks over 5 brought the chance of failure to “if you don’t expect it to work, you won’t be disappointed” levels. An app distributed on 20+ disks…could you resume an install that failed previously? Order a specific disk from the distributor? Were many of the disks optional (so you could proceed without disk #19’s content say)? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/25 "2014-04-09T09:58:37Z")
I remember that when the 3½" discs replaced the old 5¼" floppies, there was a suggestion to find a new name, because the new ones were not actually ‘floppy’. One serious suggestion was to call them… Stiffies. Would have gone down well in Australia I think. “Shove a stiffie in that slot for me will ya mate.” ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/26 "2014-04-09T12:58:55Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I remember that when the 3½" discs replaced the old 5¼" floppies, there was a suggestion to find a new name, because the new ones were not actually ‘floppy’. When I taught Computer Literacy in the old days I’d rip apart a 3.5" disk to dispel this nonsense. (Too many students thought a hard drive was a 3.5" disk.) The disk _is actually_ floppy. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/27 "2014-04-09T16:47:19Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > An app distributed on 20+ disks…could you resume an install that failed previously? Depends on how the install app was written. Usually not. > [@](#): > > Order a specific disk from the distributor? I don’t know, but probably not. > [@](#): > > Were many of the disks optional (so you could proceed without disk #19’s content say)? Yes, often a graphic application would install from just a few disks and the rest were sample clipart, template or font files. Hard drive space being what it was (or not at all), you might never install or copy all the other files, but just access the floppies as needed. Or never. > [@ftg](#): > > When I taught Computer Literacy in the old days I’d rip apart a 3.5" disk to dispel this nonsense. (Too many students thought a hard drive was a 3.5" disk.) The disk _is actually_ floppy. Right. Only the case is rigid. The 3.5" floppy does have a metal hub; the 5" does not. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/28 "2014-04-09T16:59:09Z")
> [@urban1a](#): > > I have a copy of OS2 1.0 (or, maybe 1.1, 1988 or 1989) which has 32 3.5" floppies in the box. It wasn’t long after that that they went to CD, first, then DVD. > > Bob Me too. I remember writing breathlessly on the DOS v. OS2 competition for the marketplace. (I think I even had an OS2 over early Windows machine. Could that have been possible? I was into all that then.) Musicat quote: > [@](#): > > Right. Only the case is rigid. The 3.5" floppy does have a metal hub; the 5" does not. For a while we used to distinguish in speech between floppies and flippies, but it never caught on. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/29 "2014-04-09T17:27:36Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > For a while we used to distinguish in speech between floppies and flippies, but it never caught on. I had a girlfriend with dual floppies. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2014, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/30 "2014-04-09T17:44:09Z")
Nothing to advance the OP, but personally I could never get into referring to them as ‘floppies.’ I started out using the mainframe 8-inch disks, which IBM called “Diskettes,” so to me all subsequent floppy disks are just successor “diskettes.” ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2014, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629/31 "2014-04-10T08:40:29Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I remember that when the 3½" discs replaced the old 5¼" floppies, there was a suggestion to find a new name, because the new ones were not actually ‘floppy’. > > One serious suggestion was to call them… Stiffies. > > Would have gone down well in Australia I think. > > “Shove a stiffie in that slot for me will ya mate.” I find it hard to believe that that wasn’t a tongue in cheek (see what I did there?) suggestion. You’d have to be phenomenally clueless not to realise that calling something a “stiffy” is going to spawn instant hilarity. It’s not like the lack of this term has stopped a whole series of juvenile jokes about hard drives, though. > [@Mijin](#): > > So…how did this ever work? My recollection is that any number of disks over 5 brought the chance of failure to “if you don’t expect it to work, you won’t be disappointed” levels. > > An app distributed on 20+ disks…could you resume an install that failed previously? Order a specific disk from the distributor? Were many of the disks optional (so you could proceed without disk #19’s content say)? I remember having a failure with an install of something reasonably large - might have been Office, or maybe Visual Basic (one of the old versions) that caused my heart to leap into my mouth. The first thing I did was to make a copy of the failing disc (yes, yes, technically copyright violation) and that worked. I’m not sure you could get individual replacements, but as you noted, a good chunk of the discs were optional components or drivers (“Please insert the disc labelled Windows 3.1 Installation Disc #17 into Drive A: and Press Enter When Ready”) so weren’t always required. I’m pretty sure a failed install wasn’t recoverable - the best case scenario was that it would roll back cleanly, leaving you with a usable system, but I also seem to recall at least one borked install that led to formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows because it screwed so much up. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-biggest-application-ever-distributed-on-floppy-discs/685629.md?page=1)