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

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

#43

In 20 years people won't understand CDs either, or why people would carry around plastic as big as 3 iPods to play 12 songs.

In 20 years, people won't understand iPods, or why you would have to physically carry around data anyway.

How would they play music when jogging or in the train then?

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

#44

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!

USB drives could use such a feature.

write-lock: prevent it from beint written (and acquiring viruses)

read-lock: prevent it from being read (and passing viruses), only showing the free space and being able to write only in the free space

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

#45
post #28
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 ca…

That's pretty high end for an 8088! Is it a PC or PC-XT?

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

#46

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

I used a soldering iron. The holes were round, but with a utility knife to cut the extra plastic, it looked very good.

Thanks, AOL!

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

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 20 years, people won't understand iPods, or why you would have to physically carry around data anyway.

How would they play music when jogging or in the train then?

Ear-implant with wireless streaming, probably.

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

#48
post #28
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 ca…

> I haven't actually put a floppy in there in years

I have one computer (a Sun workstation) with a 3.5 drive that no longer works. The fun part is I cannot tell you in what year it broke.

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

#49
Heh heh, this is hilarious .. Aniquity is a technological effect I'll never quite get used to ..

Which is why I'm waiting with baited breath for the release of this thing:

http://retromaster.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/cumulus-firmware...

So I can really have something cool about computers to teach my 3-year old in a decade or so! :)

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

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 20 years, people won't understand iPods, or why you would have to physically carry around data anyway.

How would they play music when jogging or in the train then?

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect ubiquitous wireless connectivity of one kind or another, and cloud storage. As for what form the device might take, who knows? It would have been pretty hard to predict smartphones in 1990; I expect further consolidation of devices, but have no idea what they'll look like.
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