>>The old 5 1/4" floppy was pretty floppy (I seem to remember the early ones just using thin cardboard for the outer casing?)
>>
>>>Actually, the disk was floppy. It was the hard, plastic case that wasn't.
>>>
>>>
>>>>I'm sure you remember when software was delivered on 720 MB floppy disks ;-) (Which weren't actually floppy).
>
>Remember when they sold punches that would notch the floppy so you could try to use the second side of the single sided ones?
Don't remember that....

>Or 8" floppies?
Those - yes. See my reply to Mike...

>( or loading DOS from a cassette as you dreamed of a floppy drive )
The first machine of my own was a Tandy / RadioShack TRS80. Bought it in the States when it first came out - nothing comparable available in the UK. That, IIRC, had a simple version of basic on board.

But I did buy an assembler for it that was loaded from cassette. Used to spend ages fiddling with the volume control - more like being a radio-ham than a programmer :-}