For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used? • Hacker News Board

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#21

Post by trezor » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:18 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #12

giu wrote: post #4

This question makes me feel old. And I'm in my early twenties.

I started in computing with an Apple II+ (not really - my II+ was only the first to have floppies). I always wondered why those poor CP/M (and MSX) users had to put up with such nonsense as drive letters ;-)

I started out with an Amiga before moving to the PC. The Amiga (while still dealing with device-roots) at least had a more flexible system.

fd0: was floppy 1. If you had an additional drive, that would be fd1: etc. The best part was that you could also access devices by file-system label, so if you needed to make sure you were accessing not only a floppy, but the device labelled "WorkbenchExtras" you would simply do WorkbenchExtras:

Needless to say, this made multi-disk tasks & scripting rather pleasant, easy and cut out lots of boilerplate and checking.

It was a nice system and I kinda miss it.

Edit: df0: was floppy 1. dh0: was first harddrive, etc. Not that in changes much.

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#22

Post by julian37 » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:19 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #11

Who else remembers using the square punch to put a hole in those 3 1/2" AOL disks to reformat them as HD?

Yep, or vice versa, put a bit of tape over the hole to make disks writable that weren't intended to be. Good times!

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#23

Post by lovskogen » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:20 AM UTC

How long before a question like "My DVD wont play in this old computers DVD player?"?

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#24

Post by julian37 » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:22 AM UTC

othello wrote: post #14

This reminds me that even us twenty-somethings may one day be made every bit as clumsy and baffled by whatever comes up 30 years from now as our own proverbial mothers are today...

Like this, linked from the article: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/12/

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#25

Post by flexd » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:22 AM UTC

This makes me remember elementary school and saving stuff on floppies, and that i have Sango fighter on floppies in a drawer somewhere. They really do not make games as good as they were before!

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#26

Post by nevvermind » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:23 AM UTC

There are too many "this makes me feel old" in here. And in SO, for that matter. You snob folks...

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#27

Post by benwerd » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:24 AM UTC

Aw, man. I turned 32 on Friday, which is 224 in developer years, and have spent the last couple of days consoling myself that everything's fine, I'm not past it, etc etc. And now this. Thank you, Hacker News. Thank you so much. I am as old as dust and time and the fabric of the universe. Now I know how all those COBOL programmers felt.

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#28

Post by Natsu » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:24 AM UTC

giu wrote: post #4

This question makes me feel old. And I'm in my early twenties.

Same here and I'm not much older than you.

Worse, my current computer has an A:\ drive. I don't know why I keep a 3.5" floppy drive around, exactly, because I haven't actually put a floppy in there in years, but I do have one.

And that's nothing compared to the 8088 that's collecting dust. It has two floppy drives, a 10 MB (yes, MB, not GB) hard drive, a CGA card & monitor, a math coprocessor and as much RAM as it can hold.

I don't know if it still works, though. It did work roughly a decade ago, which is the last time it was actually turned on.

Pity we got rid of the Apple ][ GS back in the 90s. It might be a collector's item by now.

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#29

Post by funthree » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:27 AM UTC

benwerd wrote: post #27

Aw, man. I turned 32 on Friday, which is 224 in developer years, and have spent the last couple of days consoling myself that everything's fine, I'm not past it, etc etc. And now this. Thank you, Hacker News. Thank you so much. I am as old as dust and time and the fabric of the universe. Now I know how all those COBOL programmers felt.

If its any consolation I am only 24 and felt a bit old as well knowing entirely what was coming after clicking the link.

Lets just say whoever posted the question is a newb :)

Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

#30

Post by mootothemax » Wed, Jan 12, 2011, 11:29 AM UTC

danielh wrote: post #13

mootothemax wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and feeling somewhat nostalgic about it And then remembering taking forever to save anything on a school computer, only for the floppy to read half the file and die when I got home. It's amazing - maybe it was the crappy quality of floppies I was using, or maybe I was using them for too long, but for me, regularly not being able to read data back off a floppy was a fact of life. Times have definitely changed for the…

Norton Disk Doctor to the rescue! Even if it couldn't save the data, you could reuse the floppy. They were expensive at the time. Out of curiosity, I just googled for prices and it seems prices stayed about the same since I bought the last pack.

Norton Disk Doctor to the rescue! Even if it couldn't save the data, you could reuse the floppy.

Not only reuse but be pleasantly surprised yet irritated at the same time because suddenly the disk was magically usable again!