this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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I remember some brands of blank 3.5 inch floppy disks had a notch you could slide into 1 of two positions to lock or open it for writing. Have no idea how that worked.
The drive had a sensor that detected the notch status and either allowed (or not) the write ability.
Basically the same as SD cards today, it’s just assumed that the drive will respect that switch.
Older 5.25-inch floppies you would cut a notch in a specific place, and you could use tape to cover it and make it writable again.
VHS and audio cassettes work the same way too.
Other way around. You punched the edge to make it writeable (or double-punched to write on the back side, if you were brave). Cover it to make it read-only. The 3.5" sliders were the same mechanism, open was write, closed was read-only.
Oh the double punch. That's a deep cut there