You may already know this, but the 8-inch floppy disk was developed to provide instruction microcode for the IBM Sys/370. Right after power up, that computer would read from an 8-inch floppy just behind the front panel in order to retrieve the instruction set's microcode. It did not just emulate a 1400 Series machine, it became a 1400 series machine when that floppy was in place. Normally, the 360/370 instruction set floppy was in there.
The Xebec Company licensed the technology from IBM and then made the first commercially available floppy drive system. Those were initially targeted for PDP-8 and PDP-11 computers. Digital Equipment Corporation didn't let that stand for long.
Hey there, self! IBM licensed that drive from Xebec!!!
I still have some “punch cards” with one of our accounting programs on them.