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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?

#271

Post by redthrowaway »

regularfry wrote: post #261
redthrowaway wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Latency is greater than 1 hour, if it takes an hour to copy the data to the tapes. You've got to get them to the destination and copy them off after that.

>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

That's 1 hr latency, unless I'm mistaken. Latency doesn't include disk operations on the client side, does it? Is latency time between a signal being sent and received, or between sent, received, and acknowledgement sent/received?

ie, is latency time(client->SYN->server->SYNACK->client->ACK->server), or time(client->SYN->server)?

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

#272

Post by regularfry »

redthrowaway wrote: post #271
regularfry wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency is greater than 1 hour, if it takes an hour to copy the data to the tapes. You've got to get them to the destination and copy them off after that.

>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 That's 1 hr latency, unless I'm mistaken. Latency doesn't include disk operations on the client side, does it? Is latency time between a signal being sent and received, or between sent, received, and acknowledgement sent/received? ie, is latency time(client->SYN->server->SYNACK->client->ACK->server), or t…

Bah. My reading comprehension not so good.

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

#273

Post by ondra »

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…

32-bit Windows 7 runs 16-bit programs just fine.

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

#274

Post by pronik »

What scares me about this question is that such easy and popular questions (and answers to them) mean a lot of karma points to all of the participants before it goes into community wiki mode, while folks who actually can google their problems (and spend time actually working instead of reloading StackOverflow every five seconds) have low scores, since the questions they ask are complicated and thus rarely answered and even more rarely popular.

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

#275

Post by yuhong »

ido wrote: post #213
yuhong wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The first PC I used was an XT-286; the precursor to the AT." It was actually a smaller case version of the AT.

I believe it had a different cpu (6mhz vs 8mhz) and different a motherboard (16bit vs 8bit).

"(16bit vs 8bit)"

False.

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

#276

Post by Luyt »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #80

I 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.

Let me guess, did you have a PET-2001?

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

#277

Post by cipango »

jmaygarden wrote: post #197
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 worked for a company in 2005 that was still maintaining Data General minicomputers for test-range radar tracking systems. The original "radar program" in Data General assembly has since been ported to C for new development, but those old systems are still ticking just fine.

I'm guessing they didn't have you sign a NDA?

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

#278

Post by lostbit »

I still have my MSX Hotbit with a 5 1/4 floppy disk extension. I had a lot fun with it in the past. Now I'm wondering what to do with it... At this time, I guess kids will find interesting that a computer must be attached to the TV so you can have a screen. Some love the typewriter, which prints at the same time you type!

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

#279

Post by jmaygarden »

ido wrote: post #213
yuhong wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The first PC I used was an XT-286; the precursor to the AT." It was actually a smaller case version of the AT.

I believe it had a different cpu (6mhz vs 8mhz) and different a motherboard (16bit vs 8bit).

You are correct about the clock speed, but not the bus difference.

"In 1986, the XT/286 (IBM 5162) with a 6 MHz Intel 80286 processor was introduced. This system actually turned out to be faster than the ATs of the time using 8 MHz 286 processors due to the fact that it had zero wait state RAM that could move data more quickly."

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

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

#280

Post by jmaygarden »

cipango wrote: post #277
jmaygarden wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company in 2005 that was still maintaining Data General minicomputers for test-range radar tracking systems. The original "radar program" in Data General assembly has since been ported to C for new development, but those old systems are still ticking just fine.

I'm guessing they didn't have you sign a NDA?

Everything I stated is public information. Here is a brochure that specifically states that a Data General machine is being replaced with a new system using the radar program written in C.

http://www.esdradar.com/brochures/VME%20upgrade.pdf

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