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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?

#161

Post by geedee77 »

robin_reala wrote: post #93
ikitat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My older brother, when learning assembly, needed a memory address to write to on the hard disk of my Dad's business computer. Sadly he chose the first one as he hadn't discovered the File Allocation Table at that point. My Dad wasn't best pleased, even though technically the data was still on the disk!

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

m0nastic wrote: post #141
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).

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by snorkel »

Don't even get us old timers started on how we used to mount CD drives. Editing AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS and making sure the sound card driver loaded after so it wouldn't steal the same interrupt, and sometimes D:\ would appear to be there but you couldn't read it ... ah, my back hurts! Get off my lawn!

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

#164

Post by raganwald »

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

Before going to school, and thereafter in the summer, I do remember writing WATFIV and SNOBOL programs on punch cards, but I used a card punch machine to create them.

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

#165

Post by Vivtek »

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

You had cards? We had to use a hammer and awl to punch the holes into vellum that we tanned ourselves.

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

#166

Post by orenmazor »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #100
madaxe wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you should probably chase them off the block, because they can still grab your wifi from the neighbours lawn.

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

#167

Post by nollidge »

EGreg wrote: post #131

They used to be used for floppy disks and other such things! In fact they started in DOS. Ah, remember the days? I do... b because I'm 27. Anyone here started programming with QBasic?

I ate QBasic for breakfast for a couple years. Rewrote SNAKE.BAS with SCREEN 13 graphics. Wrote a slot machine program based on the one in "Absolute Beginner's Guide to QBasic" (IIRC - Google is no help, but I remember it had a neon green cover with a safari adventure guy). Rewrote a loan amortization program that my dad had originally written in Wang BASIC (and even then he only had a printout).

I have a soft spot in my heart for QBasic. As DOS-based procedural languages go, it has of the best editing environments, fantastic integrated help, and hits that sweet spot of making simple things easy and hard things possible that never outgrew my learning curve. Contrary to popular opinion, I never had to "unlearn" anything once I graduated to modern languages.

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

#168

Post by runjake »

The Timex-Sinclair 1000 was like my 3rd or 4th computer. End of contest (hopefully all the real PDP folks are long dead, right?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000

2K RAM, 3 MHZ CPU (much faster than the .9 MHZ of my TRS-80 Color Computer. Yes, it didn't even have 1 MHZ). And yes, I did a lot of programming on that keyboard.

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

#169

Post by hc5 »

Vivtek wrote: post #165
jdee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You had cards? We had to use a hammer and awl to punch the holes into vellum that we tanned ourselves.

I'll just leave this here :) http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1992-09-08/

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

#170

Post by dionidium »

patio11 wrote: post #19
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?

My aunt did one better: she used a scissors to reformat a 5.25" disk as a 3.5" one. (Lesson learned: be excessively cautious when giving instructions.)

OT: You are just the second person I've ever heard say "a scissors" (with an article). Is this a regional thing (like waiting "on line" vs. "in line")?
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