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

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

#251

Post by electromagnetic » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 3:02 AM UTC

LordLandon wrote: post #155

electromagnetic wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just used the CD trick when playing multiplayer. You start the game with the disc in one computer and then eject and run into the next room to start the game on that computer. I think 9/10ths of the games I played with my brother were exploited with this trick until the warez scenes started developing proper and timely released nocd cracks.

Why? Westwood were probably the only game company that understood this problem, and shipped their games on two CDs (allies and soviets), even if the content was mostly identical, and could all easily fit on one, just so that two people could play at once.

It wasn't a particular problem with Westwood games, although it was when we got another player involved. I was thinking more of Age of Empires when actually saying that, I remember getting a 3-way going using a single disc.

We managed a 7-player at school, but that was using 2 discs.

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

#252

Post by whatusername » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 3:29 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #50

maxklein wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you live in a major US city or Small European or Asian Country?

Look at remote places in Canada or Australia.

Local data caching is important.

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

#253

Post by beej71 » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 3:30 AM UTC

It's the same reason there's no Channel 1 on TV.

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

#254

Post by Retric » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 3:44 AM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #129

roel_v wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you read it as 'a massive pile of legacy Windows applications', which is reasonable, it's not a stretch to assume that many applications written in the last 20 years assume that the OS is on a harddisk, and on C: for that matter.

Prior to Windows 95 the preponderance of Windows programs were 16bit. Seeing as 16bit programs are not compatible with recent versions of Windows one can be reasonably assured that they are not in that vast pool of legacy applications. Hand in hand with 32bit Windows came the registry, which is where most applications stored configuration information until relatively recent times. To the best of my recollection, I ha…

Most code was written for internal systems. So even if you don't encounter them there are plenty of hard coded paths including drive letter in plenty of systems.

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

#255

Post by mkramlich » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 5:05 AM UTC

That's one of those questions that makes a guy feel old. I also remember 8" floppy disks first-hand. I was a kid, but still.

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

#256

Post by mkramlich » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 5:06 AM UTC

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…

I also wrote a Star Trek adventure game in BASIC. Must have been a rite of passage for kid programmers. :)

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

#257

Post by redthrowaway » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 5:39 AM UTC

whatusername wrote: post #252

redthrowaway wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you live in a major US city or Small European or Asian Country? Look at remote places in Canada or Australia. Local data caching is important.

I'd agree that caching is important, but when, realistically, would you not have any sort of wireless access in 20 years? Driving? Many cars these days have hard drives; it's easy to see that becoming more prevalent as storage gets even cheaper. The people designing mobile devices aren't worried about a single farmer in the middle of Saskatchewan. Cell phone providers didn't even bother with the whole of Saskatchewan for a number of years.

If you can get a cell signal, you can get streaming media, or at least you will be able to. I don't see that being much of a problem.

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

#258

Post by redthrowaway » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 5:57 AM UTC

waqf wrote: post #238

RodgerTheGreat wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it takes an hour to copy a terabyte of data to a tape, put it in a car, drive to a location and read the tape, you just transported 8796093022208 bits in 3600 seconds, or about 2443359173 bits/second. edit: I always understood the quote as "the [potential] bandwidth"- the bandwidth that can be available using the station wagon as physical infrastructure.

Firstly, that number is a function of how far apart your particular origin and destination are, so it's not intrinsic to the station wagon. And secondly, you just measured latency there, not bandwidth.

Unless I'm wrong, they've measured both: Latency is 1 hour (time it takes a packet to go from source to destination), bandwidth is that number they quoted.

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

#259

Post by sedachv » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 6:24 AM UTC

snorkel wrote: post #163

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!

Do you remember those sound cards that came with their own IDE controller for CD drives?

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

#260

Post by someisaac » Thu, Jan 13, 2011, 8:21 AM UTC

javanix wrote: post #113

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…

I found a set of Windows 3.1 disks at home back in high school once and actually managed to get them installed on my brand new gaming rig that I bought. I was unreasonably proud of that feat.

I still remember my dad installing windows 3.1 from a set of windows 3.1 disks. My job was to change the disks when it asks :)