This question makes me feel old. And I'm in my early twenties.
I'm 18 and could instantly answer the question.
Not sure how to feel about this.
For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
91–100 of 280 posts
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#92This question makes me feel old. And I'm in my early twenties.
One of my friends who teaches 11-16 year-olds recently had to explain to one of her classes what camera film was, and how it was used.
The movement from camera film to digital cameras was a largely unnoticed revolution which took place within the last decade.
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well windows 1.0 were only [1] 5 5.25" floppies and [2] 2 for MS-DOS and another one for write (the grandfather of word). I think i need a drive to try them again ;-) . [1] http://twitpic.com/39kbjz [2] http://twitpic.com/39kaxd
I recall Slackware Linux requiring 13 disks
My younger brother typed format c: instead of format a: once on my Dad’s laptop that he was borrowing to do homework - he was up all night reinstalling Windows 95 from 26 floppys.
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#94As far as I remember the A and B drives were used for floppy disks. In the olden days home computers didn't have hard drives, and typically either had a single or dual floppy drive. With a dual drive you could do fancy things like make backup copies, without having to repeatedly store data to RAM and swap source and destination floppies. In the 1980s home computers typically didn't have enough memory to store the ent…
I was working at an Apple reseller when the iMac came out. Part of our sales pitch was to try to convince everyone who bought an iMac that they needed a USB floppy drive to go with it. Everyone was convinced that people needed that floppy drive.
http://www.osnews.com/story/18/The_iMac_and_the_Floppy_Drive...
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#95Few people on superuser.com seem to mention that B:\ was always reserved even on a single floppy system so that it was possible to copy data from one floppy onto another:
1. Insert source disk
2. Type copy a:\. b:\
3. The system will read a chunk of data from a:\ then say: Please insert disk B: and press any key to continue...
4. You'd swap the disks, press a key, and the system will write the chunk of data and say Please insert disk A: and press any key to continue...
This would go on and on and on...
Anyone remembers installing Win95 and the number of 1.44MB 3.5" floppies it came on? 26! And once you got to about disk no. 13 it would start asking you to insert seemingly random disk numbers every minute or so... Or how about getting to disk number 17 and being told that the installation is corrupt, start over.... errrr.......
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#96Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Don't forget the ASSIGN utility which created new device roots from one (or more!) existing folders, or with deferrment i.e. when assigning Fonts: to df0:Fonts, the OS remembers the disk referred to, and will ask you for that specific disk if you remove it and subsequently access Fonts:. It made working with floppies a lot more pleasant.
SUBST on Windows is similar, but with 1/10th of the power and just single drive letters.
I miss the Amiga too, but it simply never kept up the pace.
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#98Makes you wonder, when will the floppy be discarded as the icon for 'save'?
Maybe when something comes along to replace "save"?
With the steadily increasing amount of software that auto-saves without you noticing, maybe soon we just wont need to "save" anything. It'll just happen.
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#99> "I think it shows how obsolete these things have become that the 'new generation' have no experience of them :-) Makes me feel old – Andy Paton"
Yet we had to put up with this inferior technology for so long. I remember people were still running around with floppy disks at high school in the late 90s/early 00s (it was easily 20 year old technology by that time) and I started using the internet for transferring my files. So much that I have never purchased a USB memory device.
Re: For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?
#100I recently bought my 13-year-old daughter a laptop with 8 gig of RAM. When I was 13, I was lucky enough to get a computer with 8 kb of RAM (and one of the 8 went to the operating system, so there were 7167 bytes free.) There aren't too many areas where one generation translates to a million-fold improvement.
Your daughter had better be using that 8 gig for something useful. 8k should be enough for anybody!
Every now and then I regale her (and her sisters) with tales about life in the olden days, when if you wanted to change the channel on the TV, you had to get up and walk across the frickin' room!
Now excuse me, I need to chase some pesky kids off my lawn.