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What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

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Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#91

Post by smartaleckkill »

lttlrck wrote: post #74
kabdib wrote: post #68

My 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 U…

One of my favorites memories is my dad trying to copy a BBC Model B compact audio cassette without a cable ... speaker to microphone! He started it and crept out the room quietly closing the door behind him. It did not work.

I recall recording software onto audio tape from radio broadcasts, I think it was a regular BBC radio show. (If anyone remembers I'd love a reminder of the details.)

Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#92

Post by btilly »

SeanDav wrote: post #4

A friend of my Father's was a mainframe guru, back in the day, and he told us about "cylinder" hard drives that would take several hours to power down because the torsional stress on them would get too high if slowed down too quickly. Also tape drives that were spinning so quickly they could be dangerous. Sounds almost like heavy engineering!

I am reminded of http://www.penzba.co.uk/GreybeardStories/TheBlackTeam.html.

Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#94

Post by pfarrell »

SeanDav wrote: post #4

A friend of my Father's was a mainframe guru, back in the day, and he told us about "cylinder" hard drives that would take several hours to power down because the torsional stress on them would get too high if slowed down too quickly. Also tape drives that were spinning so quickly they could be dangerous. Sounds almost like heavy engineering!

Some of the most brilliant people I've worked with are satisfied by the work, without needing lots of self-promotion.

"The Story of Mel" is both inspiring and humbling. A "real programmer"

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html

Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#96

Post by adamb0mb1 »

nandhp wrote: post #77
rayiner wrote: post #17

It's funny to talk about the 20 year old hackers who didn't ever have the experience of installing Word Perfect 5.x from 30-40 floppies, but let me tell you that those kids are going to feel just as old pretty soon. My daughter, who is about to turn one, is puzzled by why my Macbook Air doesn't do anything when she touches the screen. She doesn't recognize my dad's old Treo, which he gave her as a toy, as a phone, bu…

Not everybody missed out -- I may not have done 40 floppies of WordPerfect, but I did install my first Debian (3.0 Woody) from a boot floppy, a root floppy, 4 driver floppies, and 20 base system floppies. http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/ch-appendix.en.htm... http://archive.debian.org/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-i386... http://archive.debian.org/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-i386...

Oh man. Same experience, different distro. Slackware was a bunch of disks too (but I don't remember exactly how many)

Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#97

Post by mratzloff »

My first computer was an Atari 800. It had a cassette deck and a 5 1/4" disk drive. I spent a lot of my youth typing in BASIC games that were printed in magazines and books, then modifying them to learn how it worked. My first programming language...

When my parents brought home an IBM-compatible PC with an enormous 50 MB hard drive I could hardly believe my luck.

Anyway, I don't need this to feel old; my wife already does that. She was in middle school when I was in college, and asks things like, "What's Galaga?" But I suspect she does it on purpose about half the time now...

Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#99

Post by japhyr »

My dad worked for DEC in the 70's and 80's. When I was young he took us in and showed us a cabinet that had a bunch of spinning platters in it. They looked like 12" record albums, but they were light brown and made of metal. At least that's how I remember it, and I imagine they were the precursors to today's spinning hard disks.

My dad let my brother and I take a couple retired disks home. We tried to play frisbee once or twice with them, and then wisely decided that was probably a bad idea.

Re: What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

#100

Post by stuff4ben »

acegopher wrote: post #85
microtonal wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) woul…

I used an Xacto knife to create an extra notch in Commodore 64 5.25" disks back in the day so that I could take the single-sided disks and make them double-sided. I would take one disk flipped over the other, mark the notch with a permanent marker, then cut out the outline. Most disks, like Elephant Memory, would work fine. You just flipped the disk over and inserted back into the 1541 to read the reverse side.

standard paper hole punch worked too, given enough hand strength :)
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