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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?

#141

Post by m0nastic »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #60

> "Please Insert Disk 13" OH GOD WHERE IS DISK 13, I CAN'T FIND DISK 13. - Jeff 16 hours ago I have exactly this memory as well. My first computer was a Compaq Deskpro Portable. It had a 5.25" floppy drive and a 40 MB hard disk. It was an embarrassment of riches - how could you ever fill up 40 whole mega bytes? Between that and my custom AUTOEXEC.BAT file, I was set. As it happens, I still have most of the files I cr…

When I was a kid, we used to go dumpster diving; looking for software, discarded hardware, information, whatever.

Once, I found a few 3.5" Microsoft Office disks (I think it was Office 4.0), and decided to try and complete the set.

I think it took me like three months of digging through garbage to get the full set of disks (it was something ridiculous like 30 disks).

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

#142

Post by RyanMcGreal »

dctoedt wrote: post #114
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #60

> "Please Insert Disk 13" OH GOD WHERE IS DISK 13, I CAN'T FIND DISK 13. - Jeff 16 hours ago I have exactly this memory as well. My first computer was a Compaq Deskpro Portable. It had a 5.25" floppy drive and a 40 MB hard disk. It was an embarrassment of riches - how could you ever fill up 40 whole mega bytes? Between that and my custom AUTOEXEC.BAT file, I was set. As it happens, I still have most of the files I cr…

A couple of months ago, my siblings and I were cleaning out our parents' house. In the attic, I came across my original Compaq sewing-machine luggable. I'd given it to my dad when I upgraded to something newer. If memory serves, the Compaq came with two 5.25" floppy drives and 256K RAM. When I was using it myself, I upgraded to 640K RAM, swapped the B: drive for a 10 -MB hard disk, and eventually swapped the A: drive…

Last time I fired mine up (a couple of years ago), it still booted. However, an alarming amount of smoke came out of the fan vent so I didn't keep it running for long.

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

#144

Post by JonnieCache »

jdee wrote: post #138
raganwald wrote: post #116

Floppies!? Kids these days. My High School had an actual, physical computer, a Data General minicomputer. We used teletypes that printed on a continuous roll of cheap paper. The computer used removable media: 12" removable "Diablo" 5MB hard drive platters. One had four user basic on it, one had single user basic, and one was locked away with the software for grading students. Memory management was primitive: BASIC ra…

Luxury! I used to have to snip endless chads out of punched cards to represent the very zeroes and ones of the program i was writing! Thanks to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Go for the original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eDaSvRO9xA

1948's finest.

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

#145

Post by osipov »

jdee wrote: post #138
raganwald wrote: post #116

Floppies!? Kids these days. My High School had an actual, physical computer, a Data General minicomputer. We used teletypes that printed on a continuous roll of cheap paper. The computer used removable media: 12" removable "Diablo" 5MB hard drive platters. One had four user basic on it, one had single user basic, and one was locked away with the software for grading students. Memory management was primitive: BASIC ra…

Luxury! I used to have to snip endless chads out of punched cards to represent the very zeroes and ones of the program i was writing! Thanks to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

Back in my elementary school days we had to compute with an abacus!

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

#146

Post by [deleted] »

rick_2047 wrote: post #111

Interesting. After the first few thoughts like "This can't be happening I am only 19" and "this guy is either dumb or 6" my next thought was "What would be the question that would make me feel really old when I am in my 50s"? The effect this question has on people is because they remember some information which most of the users today don't know as they have never used that technology. So what technology of today wil…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by regularfry »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #52

My first computer didn't have disk drives at all - it used standard audio cassette tapes in standard audio cassette machines. I remember feeding the audio into an oscilliscope and reverse engineering the format used on the tape, then writing Z80 machine code (I didn't have an assember - I wrote actual hex opcodes and fed them into a program I wrote that read hex and poked the values into memory) to create tapes that…

I had something similar (a later model, if I'm guessing right). The problem with mine was that the 3.5mm jack socket on the machine had a loose contact, so I had to apply pressure for the whole time things were loading off tape. If I let it slip even slightly, I wouldn't necessarily know about it until 5 or 10 minutes later when the damn thing finished loading and just didn't work.

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

#149

Post by tel »

redthrowaway wrote: post #34
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.

Obligatory: http://thejokeshop.org/2008/12/as-useful-as-a-cobol-programm...

* It was actually eight thousand years later, not the year 2000. Technology had advanced to such a degree that everyone had virtual reality interfaces which allowed them to contact anyone else on the planet.*

This joke needs to be adjusted for the times. It should say 10 years not 8000.

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

#150

Post by erikpukinskis »

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.

This thread had the opposite effect on me. I see all these "old folks" responses and think "now we get to see who the REAL rockstars are."

When we're talking about 100 core cell phones and Clojure, in many ways the teenagers and the old hands are on more equal footing. Then someone busts out "and then I reverse engineered the tape drive with an oscillascope" and I'm like.... "Respect."

I look forward to one day being the old hack who can say shit like that.

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