In 2008 I got to play with an old oscilloscope/i486 hybrid beast with dual 5.25 inch floppy drives still in use at my physics lab. You could save the measurements to B while running the code off A. AFAIK it is still in use.
What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
61–70 of 149 posts
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#62My first computer came with no drives, the tape drive was an optional accessory. Loading programs from tape instead of typing them into the basic was loads better. When I got my first PC I had a 3.5" (on B) and a 5.25" (on A) and a bunch of my friends kept coming over to have me copy their 5.25" disks to 3.5" disks and I was the cool kid on the block for a few months.
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#63Senility poll: Did you know the answer to this question?
Yes, because it's asked and posted here very often.
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Novell Netware 2.15 came on 49 360k floppies. I remember generating individualized network clients based on the chipset of your network interface card with SHGEN-1 and SHGEN-2. To this day I have no idea why the last disk it asked for was SHGEN-2 and then it said, "Your shell is now on SHGEN-1."
Wow. What would happen if one of those floppies were damaged or unreadable? Would the whole process be a waste of time?
Yes. It was usually the last disk.
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#65Senility poll: Did you know the answer to this question?
I am just 22 years old and I knew the answer. The first computer I used back in 98 came with floppy disks
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#66Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dude, my copy of SCO Unix was only maybe 15 floppies....
OS2 came on 32 (thirty-two) 5.25" disks. I remember loading that beast.
I remember OS/2 Warp on 3.5" disks being even worse. They had al kind of supplemental disks and IIRC something that resembled Microsoft Works (BonusPak, maybe it was a demo).
To get an impression, I found this on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-IBM-OS-2-Warp-Version-3-with...
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#68My first mass storage was a PhiDeck, a tape cassette drive that stored data digitally and that had motors to load and unload the heads and seek. It had a file system, of sorts, that fit in about 6K of RAM. Effective data rate was about 9600 bits/second, and it usually took 20-30 seconds to launch a program.
Primitive and slow as it was, it was still a vast improvement over audio cassettes.
Later, I wrote a software UART and interfaced my Z-80 system to a single Atari 810 disk drive. 96K of storage and tons faster. I got a lot of work done on that system.
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Novell Netware 2.15 came on 49 360k floppies. I remember generating individualized network clients based on the chipset of your network interface card with SHGEN-1 and SHGEN-2. To this day I have no idea why the last disk it asked for was SHGEN-2 and then it said, "Your shell is now on SHGEN-1."
Wow. What would happen if one of those floppies were damaged or unreadable? Would the whole process be a waste of time?
That's why you had a backup set of those disks.
Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Novell Netware 2.15 came on 49 360k floppies. I remember generating individualized network clients based on the chipset of your network interface card with SHGEN-1 and SHGEN-2. To this day I have no idea why the last disk it asked for was SHGEN-2 and then it said, "Your shell is now on SHGEN-1."
Wow. What would happen if one of those floppies were damaged or unreadable? Would the whole process be a waste of time?
Even worse was illegal software. There were 720KB (Double Density) and 1440KB (High Density) 3.5" diskettes (amongst other sizes). The disk drive would detect the difference by an extra hole in the disk.
People would buy cheaper double density disks, drill a hole in it, so that the same diskette could be used as a 1440KB disk. Of course, they were of a far lower quality, and 'arj' (which was popular at the time) would often fail after the n-th disk.
Edit: heh, there is even a reference to drilling holes on the Apple website ;): http://support.apple.com/kb/TA39910