I think he might have figured out the secret to happiness:
> "Me, I just like to get up in the morning, have people ask me questions, and try to solve problems. My business is a little bit of an adventure for me every day."
The last person standing in the floppy disk business
151–160 of 363 posts
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#152No post body was provided.
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#153[flagged]
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#154Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Michelangelo and similar viruses only activate when you boot from the disk it's on. Insert a disk with Michelangelo in a running system, then format the disk (make sure you overwrite the boot sector), all OK. The operating systems of the time didn't have any autoplay functionality that could be exploited by viruses. I guess in theory viruses could have exploited things like buffer overflows in the OS code that reads…
Autoplay is as at least as old as Windows 3.1. A file called "autoexec.bat" would be executed on mounting, IIRC (not a Windows-person myself).
That's autorun.inf, not autoexec.bat.
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#156Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#157You haven't lived until you installed an operating system from 38 floppy disks. Slackware and OS/2 for example My lord those were fun days. Especially fun when you got to OS/2 Disk 21 and it died, or Slackware Xwindows Floppy 4 and you started hearing that disk drive kurchunking and you just knew you were dead in the water.
SCO Xenix was every bit as bad, and yes, I did the Slackware "download floppy images, make a stack of floppies, spend hours installing" dance as well. I remember being very relieved by the rise of CD-ROM and CD-R.
ISTR a couple of boot floppies was enough to get the attached Wangtek drive spinning so you could bootstrap a DC600 tape and load from there.
I don't recall if this was an official implementation or something we cooked up.
Oh yes, and there was the floppy way too.
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#158Anyone else old enough to remember the 8 inch floppies on TRS-80 Model II? Heh how far we've come, it's incredible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_II
I was cleaning around a stack of DEC tapes at work a few weeks ago and found an 8 inch floppy. Having grown up with the 5 1/4" disks it was a bit surreal to hold the bigger one... almost felt like I'd shrunk a little!
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#159Nothing in modern computing compares to the audible and kinesthetic satisfaction of the ka-chunk of a 3.5 inch floppy being inserted into a drive.
And nothing makes your heart sink faster than the rhythmic sound of trying over and over to read the same bad disk.
Especially when you're on floppy #25 of OS/2 Warp.
Re: The last person standing in the floppy disk business
#160And by coincidence, an unopened, branded box of 10 x DS/HD 3.5" floppy disks arrived in the post for me today. They will be used with a couple of Z80 systems I have constructed - when I build a floppy controller board!
I prob have 2 boxes, shrink wrapping intact... in my storage closet.
I have 2 boxes somewhere that I bought when Staples in the UK was closing down; they presumably found them right at the back of a shelf in the stores. 50p a box I think.