24

Something I got to thinking of while sorting out a pile of driver floppies for windpws XP & 2003...

Of all the software products ever released, what came on the highest number of floppy disks? Windows 95 used 13, but I doubt that was the upper limit as things moved towards dual-release on floppy and CD before becoming CD only.

4
  • Should take this over to superuser.com
    – squillman
    Oct 7, 2009 at 3:06
  • I thought '95 was > 13... I remember sitting there for the best part of a day swapping them out Oct 7, 2009 at 3:10
  • funny, i just threw out an old Win95 retail box full of the original floppies... Oct 7, 2009 at 5:01
  • 1
    the update version was 25 disks
    – Journeyman Geek
    Oct 7, 2009 at 7:12

10 Answers 10

20

I don't know if it was publicly released, but I remember that when I was with one customer who had a very old (but powerful) machine and were licence customers of Microsoft, they requested XP on disk and it was delivered on around 250+ floppys

5
  • 2
    Whatt? Seriously? XP on floppies? Well, that's somehow cool...
    – Bobby
    Oct 7, 2009 at 9:03
  • I am sure I still have it somewhere, (I never throw computer related stuff away!)... I will try to go to the attic and find it a bit later Oct 7, 2009 at 11:18
  • 2
    that must have sucked when you found disk 249 was bad.
    – Keltari
    Jan 13, 2014 at 20:00
  • 3
    I wanna see pics!
    – MDT Guy
    Jan 13, 2014 at 20:08
  • 1
    Imagine spending payroll on someone installing an OS from 250 floppies rather than just buying a CD-ROM drive.
    – db2
    Jul 18, 2019 at 13:48
9

MS Office 97 Professional came on 45 floppies 55 floppies (97 Standard came on 45).

1
  • I have a copy of MS Office 4.3 from back before cd's existed, and that was 43 floppies. Aug 23, 2010 at 12:12
5

OS/2 Warp v3 was 25 (39 if you include the bonus pack) - and i know because i just dusted it off and counted :) now can i find a working floppy drive?

3
  • Thanks for doing that so I didn't have to go count :D
    – adric
    Oct 7, 2009 at 4:04
  • I have a totally working USB floppy drive in my office desk drawer, and you'd be amazed by no litte use it sees these days! :) But still, every so often, I need to install Win XP x64 for instance, and suddenly I have to pop a driver in there.. :)
    – tplive
    Oct 7, 2009 at 5:58
  • ..and by "no litte use" I actually mean "how little use"... PEBKAC problem..:)
    – tplive
    Oct 7, 2009 at 6:22
2

I still have the disks for Microsoft C++ 7.0 here in my drawer. There are 16 of them.

2

Slackware Linux came on 33 disks.

1

I recall hearing that MS SQL Server was quite a few disks (I want to say around 40), but can't find the exact number anywhere...

1

MS Office Pro, 40+ disks, as far as I can remember...

1

How about for games? Monkey Island 2 came on 11 disks for the Amiga - and hard drives weren't that common!

1
  • That was double density floppies though, not HD ones. Not sure if they would only count half :] But yes, good times swapping disks! I managed to finish the thing on a floppy only machine.
    – cc0
    Jan 5, 2011 at 7:19
0

i remember that Borland C++ was on 15 disks

0

I remember Lotus SmartSuite used 23...

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