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I will start to feel old when…

Some kid asks me why they don’t use A: or B: for hard drives.

June 24th, 2009 4 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Computer-fu

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  1. Blunderprone posted the following on 24 June 2009 at 12:36 pm.

    Why I remember 5 1/4 inch floppies and a hard drive was considered HUGE with 340MB of storage. Life was simpler back then in the days of ‘286 I tell you! Dialing into a BBS was all the rage. It was bliss. Hours would go by while you shared useless information in some chat room running Internet relay Chat and no one would call your land line because you were tying it. ChessMaster 1000 was in 2 colors, Black AND white… and WE liked it!

        Reply to Blunderprone
  2. annie posted the following on 24 June 2009 at 1:32 pm.

    wow… a:… i remember forgetting to put a disc in and it made that funny buzzing noise. we thought we were so cool running around college with those hard floppies, and then in senior year, the zip discs. but I think I’ll really start to feel old when kids ask me “what’s a floppy”

        Reply to annie
  3. Donnie posted the following on 25 June 2009 at 12:27 pm.

    @Blunderprone: 5 1/4 floppies…they’ve been useless for so long, it’s now cool to have one!

    @Annie: Ah, yea, the Zip drive. Having 100MB was so amazing…never splurged for the 250 version (which was good, ’cause it went downhill quickly after that).

        Reply to Donnie
  4. tacticus maximus posted the following on 27 June 2009 at 9:13 pm.

    Hmmm…and why isn’t it that A:, B:, C:, and D: are reserved?

    After all the “Technical Reference Personal Computer XT First Edition (January 1983)” says on page 1-107:
    “thus, the 5-1/4 inch diskette drive adapter can attach four 5-1/4 inch drives…”.

    And four drives were supported by the BIOS. See Appendix A – ROM BIOS Listings at line 2314, page A-34:
    ; (DL) – Drive Number (0-3 ALLOWED, VALUE CHECKED)

    I think the answer may have something to do with the following from page 1-131:
    “The system unit has space and power for one or two 5-1/4 inch diskette drives.”

    “Space and power.” Sounds philosophical. Cool.

    But floppies were so much better than paper tape and punch cards. But, I don’t want to get all nostalgic…. :)

        Reply to tacticus maximus

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