Soldato
- Joined
- 20 Oct 2002
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- 11,955
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I am really suprised that a&b drive are still reserved on Windows 7 and Upcoming Windows 8.
Why is it always the C:\ drive, not the A:\ drive?
- Thread starter pitchfork
- Start date
It shouldn't be surprising. It's the nature of Windows.
Soldato
- Joined
- 12 Jan 2006
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- 2,547
lol you would be surprised how many kids coming out with computer science degrees aren't even remotely familiar with them
Must be getting old if floppy disks have already been completely forgotten about. Got to be 10 years or so when FLASH drives started showing up and finished them off. You can even still buy them in some outlets.
I still remember storing all my college work on one or two disks and using a file splitter to download whopping 10MB files on the JANET network (56K at home). I went spare when one disk would corrupt and ruin the whole thing.
There were also Extra Density disks (2.44MB) but I never managed to get a hold of any. Were they ever commercially widespread or just phased out?
I still remember storing all my college work on one or two disks and using a file splitter to download whopping 10MB files on the JANET network (56K at home). I went spare when one disk would corrupt and ruin the whole thing.
There were also Extra Density disks (2.44MB) but I never managed to get a hold of any. Were they ever commercially widespread or just phased out?
Soldato
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- 7 Mar 2005
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Don't remember those. Ever use one of the LS-120s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LS-120
My father got an LS-120 drive for our computer. Don't remember us ever using it or even installing the drive to our computer.
I'm not. It would break backwards compatibility.
The whole driver letter assignment thing is out of the ark (well MS-DOS). There's something to be said for a clean break with legacy standards.
The ED disks were 2.88MB. The main supporter was IBM and all IBM PS/2 systems came with the drives, however the disks were rather expensive.
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Associate
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- 23 Jul 2007
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- 2,225
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- Central Scotland
Was all about the zip disks.
just a shame so much base addressing is still done in the 640K Basic memory!
Soldato
- Joined
- 9 Nov 2003
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- The Motor City
Recently stumbled across a copy of DOS 5.0 at work still wrapped in cellophane and it gave me an idea. We had a Dell Optiplex PC that had to be wiped because it was scheduled for refresh, so I decided I'd see if they would even run on it before I turned it in. Since the PC didn't have a floppy drive it was easy to find an installable DL of DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1 online. I found myself typing up an autoexec.bat and config.sys from memory (believe it or not, mouse.com works for USB mice too). My younger coworkers were in complete disbelief, especially when loading mscdex for the CDROM and loading all the drivers into high memory.
Once said and done, boot time from BIOS screen was about 2 seconds. Then just plain old boring Win 3.1 desktop with nothing to do but play solitaire.
Ahh, the good ol' days. Having to tweak memory to get games working. X-Wing, for example, required extended memory to run as base memory was not sufficient even when throwing all the drivers into high memory. Wow, can you imagine running everything these days with less than 2MB RAM?
Once said and done, boot time from BIOS screen was about 2 seconds. Then just plain old boring Win 3.1 desktop with nothing to do but play solitaire.
Best one I've seen (heard) yet!I believe this is appropriate (even more so as the game came on floppy
Ahh, the good ol' days. Having to tweak memory to get games working. X-Wing, for example, required extended memory to run as base memory was not sufficient even when throwing all the drivers into high memory. Wow, can you imagine running everything these days with less than 2MB RAM?
Hmm. Maybe not.
My biggest bugbear was some games needed XMS, some older ones wanted EMS. It all got a bit easier when developers started using DOS4/GW to manage the RAM.
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Lots of windows Memory functions still happen in a fluid space thats set out at under 1Mb, it's called base addressing.
still have a working floppy drive in storage with 1.4 and 2.88 disk's
strange no one metioned pc dos 7 as that blew the socks of ms dos
easier to get higher base and extended ram with there drivers
i found the trick was in selecting what correct order the drivers loaded in to maximise usable mem
strange no one metioned pc dos 7 as that blew the socks of ms dos
easier to get higher base and extended ram with there drivers
i found the trick was in selecting what correct order the drivers loaded in to maximise usable mem
Pretty sure that's got to be incorrect for any of the Windows NT based OS. I shall have to check.
The 640kb limit was an Intel 8088 restriction. The later chips changed the hardware to address more memory, however DOS kept it in for backwards compatibility reasons. Hence the EMS bodge for the 286 etc.
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Don't remember those. Ever use one of the LS-120s? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LS-120
My father got an LS-120 drive for our computer. Don't remember us ever using it or even installing the drive to our computer.
They came out the same time as the normal High Density 1.44MB ones will all see and know. They must have not taken off as they apparently came available in 1987. I don't know if you needed a special ED drive or anything.
I do remember the LS-120 but they came later.
Ahh, DOS4/GW. Hated that 1/2 the time. The amount of DOS4/GW crashes I saw trying to get something to work ... grrr.
I'm getting all nostalgic. May have to build a little VM and dig out some of my old games and see if I can get any of them to work
