Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!wnfeed!204.127.130.5!worldnet.att.net!newsadm From: "Craig Thomas" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 17:03:35 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.67.200.163 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter on Windoze machines? A is always the floppy drive C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... Why is/was B not used? Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) -- craig Craigths@worldnet.att.net ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: "Grant Gischer" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 15:45:11 -0700 Organization: Moonlight Micro Lines: 26 Message-ID: <6ig7f6$glt$1@supernews.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.149.58.196 X-Trace: 894148902 U2UPIVF0P3AC4CF95C usenet52.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 It was used for the second floppy drive, but they generally aren't used anymore. Grant Craig Thomas wrote in message <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>... >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >on Windoze machines? > >A is always the floppy drive >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > >Why is/was B not used? > >Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) > >-- >craig >Craigths@worldnet.att.net > > > ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!server5.netnews.ja.net!server3.netnews.ja.net!news.ox.ac.uk!not-for-mail From: gjones@jesus.ox.ac.uk (Gareth Jones) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 22:30:26 GMT Organization: Oxford University Lines: 23 Message-ID: <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: conf1.jesus.ox.ac.uk X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 I used to have a B drive ! It was a 5 1/4 floppy drive, with A as a 3 1/2 (or vice versa I don't recall). Maybe then people just got used to calling the hard disk C, and it kinda stuck. On Sat, 2 May 1998 17:03:35 -0500, "Craig Thomas" wrote: >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >on Windoze machines? > >A is always the floppy drive >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > >Why is/was B not used? > >Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) > >-- >craig >Craigths@worldnet.att.net ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!ix.netcom.com!news From: aax@ix.netcom.com(ANDREW GRYGUS) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 2 May 1998 22:42:12 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 26 Message-ID: <6ig7g4$gnj@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pas-ca12-24.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Sat May 02 5:42:12 PM CDT 1998 In <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> "Craig Thomas" writes: > >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive >letter on Windoze machines? > >A is always the floppy drive >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > >Why is/was B not used? B: is reserved for the second floppy drive. Remember, the original IBM PC had two floppys and no hard disk. Hard drive partition letters are then assigned, then CDROM, etc. All in all, this is a hoplessly weak system, which you will see if you add a second hard drive and none of your CD-ROM based software works any more. Drive lettering makes NT very difficult to upgrade in an enterprise setting, unlike Unix where a new hard disk can simply be attached as a subdirectory to the root hard disk. Andrew Grygus - California Republic -------------------------------------- Resist Microsoft! ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp.frontiernet.net!node17.frontiernet.net!xcski.com!freenet-news.carleton.ca!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!ab528 From: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 2 May 1998 22:53:51 GMT Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Lines: 12 Message-ID: <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> Reply-To: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) NNTP-Posting-Host: freenet3.carleton.ca X-Given-Sender: ab528@freenet3.carleton.ca (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) "Craig Thomas" (Craigths@worldnet.att.net) writes: > This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter > on Windoze machines? > > A is always the floppy drive > C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions Back in the days of MS-DOS 0.3 (?), the cassette recorder was called the B for Backup drive. But even with a C90 tape, you can't get much data backed up using the Kansis City Standard recording format. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!europa.clark.net!4.1.16.34!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!news.farm.idt.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <354BA7E2.5C94@idt.net> From: Terry Richards Reply-To: trs@idt.net Organization: Terry Richards Software X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01C-IDT-v5 (WinNT; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers To: ANDREW GRYGUS Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig7g4$gnj@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 59 Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 23:07:28 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-21.ts-9.hp.idt.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 02 May 1998 19:07:28 EST ANDREW GRYGUS wrote: > > In <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> "Craig Thomas" > writes: > > > >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive > >letter on Windoze machines? > > > >A is always the floppy drive > >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions > >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > > > >Why is/was B not used? > > B: is reserved for the second floppy drive. Remember, the original IBM > PC had two floppys and no hard disk. Hard drive partition letters are > then assigned, then CDROM, etc. > > All in all, this is a hoplessly weak system, which you will see if you > add a second hard drive and none of your CD-ROM based software works > any more. Drive lettering makes NT very difficult to upgrade in an > enterprise setting, unlike Unix where a new hard disk can simply be > attached as a subdirectory to the root hard disk. > Andrew, I agree that this *was* a very weak idea of IBM's for DOS, it was inherited by Win 16 for backward compatibility reasons which may or may not have been a good idea. Bearing in mind that there were originally very few Windows programs available, I doubt that MS had much choice. However, under NT, you can assign drive letters (check Disk Administrator under Administrative tools). Most people seem to make the CD-ROM drives start at Z: and work down and the hard drives start at C: and work up. Also, NTFS partitions can span multiple volumes so it is easy to add new drives without adding any new letters. For instance, I have two 3 GB drives & a CD-ROM on my machine - the first 1.5 GB of the first drive is C: and the rest of that drive and all of the second drive is D:. D: is my programming drive and C: is my everything else drive. The CD-ROM is Z: If I ever need to add another disk, I can:- add another drive letter (any letter E - Y), or add the whole thing to C: or add the whole thing to D: or split it up and add part to C: and the rest to D: or split it up and add part to C:(or D: or both) and make the rest one or more new drives with any letter etc. > Andrew Grygus - California Republic > -------------------------------------- > Resist Microsoft! -- Terry Richards Terry Richards Software ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!199.125.85.9!news.mv.net!newspump.wustl.edu!crcnews.unl.edu!manager From: 00093182@bigred.unl.edu (Josh Hesse) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 2 May 1998 23:27:10 GMT Organization: CANeM///Cabal Academic Network Monitoring///[tinc] Lines: 25 Message-ID: <6iga4e$ssf@crcnis3.unl.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: bigred.unl.edu X-HTML:
X-URL: http://www.binary.net/conc X-BumperSticker: HONK IF YOU LOVE VI! X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950621BETA PL0] Craig Thomas (Craigths@worldnet.att.net) wrote: : This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter : on Windoze machines? : : A is always the floppy drive : C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions : D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... : : Why is/was B not used? : : Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) : B is for the _second_ floppy drive (Check out any decent used computer store if you actually need evidence that pc's ever had more than one floppy drive.) -Josh -- Do not send mail to this account. Really. "Talk about silly conspiracy theories..." -Wayne Schlitt in unl.general This post (C)1998, Josh Hesse. Quoted material is (C) of the person quoted. |ess|erb|unl|u| (Oo) MYTHOS How's my posting? 1-800-DEV-NULL email: jh|e@h|ie.|.ed| /||\ NEW AEON .Sigfile freshness date: 4/2/98 Free Karate practices for UNL students & staff--- Just ask me. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!ultraneo.neosoft.com!news2.amd.com!txnntp.amd.com!canntp.amd.com!news.amd.com!decwrl!tribune.usask.ca!news.uregina.ca!not-for-mail From: bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 03:18:07 GMT Organization: University of Regina, Dept. of Computer Science Lines: 36 Message-ID: <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: borealis.cs.uregina.ca In article <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, Craig Thomas wrote: >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >on Windoze machines? > >A is always the floppy drive >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > >Why is/was B not used? > >Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) Initially it was the second floppy drive - with hard drives being expensive, any serious computer user would get a second floppy before a nard drive, so the hard drive was C: by convention. Later, A: was the 5 1/4 drive and B: was the 3.5 drive, and all systems came standard with that configuration, so again C: was the hard drive by default - to the point that a lot of software stupidly assumed that C: was the hard drive (programmers can be amazingly clever and mindbogglingly stupid at the same time - especially those whose preferences are for an OS which itself consists of nothing but a lobotomised file system and a few interrupt handlers) and wouldn't work if C: not a hard drive (and sometimes wouldn't work even if it *were* - best Microsoft error message of all time IMO: "Dictionary not found - insert disk containing dictionary in drive C: and press return." - with *no* 'cancel' option! The only way out of this message if you accidentally tried to check the smelling of your document was to reboot the computer and lose all your work). Boy, that paragraph was A) too long and B) ended too many lines with a '-'. -- John Bayko (Tau). bayko@cs.uregina.ca http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~bayko ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!digex!intgwlon.nntp.telstra.net!news.telstra.net.nz!news.wlg.netlink.net.nz!news.akl.netlink.net.nz!waikato!news From: butting@borg.cs.waikato.ac.nz (Bryce Utting) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 05:00:10 GMT Organization: Defenestrative Solutions Lines: 44 Message-ID: <6igtkq$a1i@netserv.waikato.ac.nz> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: borg.cs.waikato.ac.nz X-Mailer: slrn (0.9.4.3 UNIX) Eugen Mezei (eugen_mezei@hotmail.com) wrote: >- you can install 2 floppy drives in any PC ... or 3, or 4... >- what hardware type of floppydrive is A and B you can define in the BIOS so you >can make your drives: 360kB/5,25" > 720kB/3,5" > 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) > 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) And of course, before there -were- BIOS settings, there were an awful lot of 160K, 180K, and 320K drives out there. >In the ancient times the first drive was a 5,25" drive (in pre-ancient times 8" >but not on PCs) and the second 3,5". In "ancient" times (how quickly they forget...) they tended to be the same; one family machine was a Sanyo MBC-555, with two 360K drives IIRC (though I seem to remember it originally being a -550 with a single 180K drive. And MS-DOS 1.25. Shudder). It was a LONG time before 3.5" drives emerged, and I'm sure there're -some- lurking with tales of 8" floppies in PCs. (they're hopefully feeling better now?) >Than it was usual to use a 3,5" drive as A: >and 5,25 as B:. That was in the time 3,5" floppy became cheaper and software and >bootdisk came on 3,5". Today on most PCs the 5,25" drives are inexistent as >5,25" floppydiskettes have no importance today (althougt all my PCs still have >this drive installed ;-)). Pretty much; though it's not at all rare for developers/consultants with obscure drivers to support to keep a 5.25" drive around to access old install media. butting -- Bryce Utting http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~butting the cross before me, the world behind me no turning back ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!fu-berlin.de!news.tu-darmstadt.de!not-for-mail From: Eugen Mezei Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 06:26:21 +0200 Organization: Technische Universitaet Darmstadt Lines: 48 Message-ID: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: geo1.gt.bauing.tu-darmstadt.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [de] (Win95; I) Hi Jones, this is all correct what you write, only a little precisation: - you can install 2 floppy drives in any PC - under DOS their names are A: and B. - what hardware type of floppydrive is A and B you can define in the BIOS so you can make your drives: 360kB/5,25" 720kB/3,5" 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) So you can install 2 different type of floppdrive on your PC or two of the same type. In the ancient times the first drive was a 5,25" drive (in pre-ancient times 8" but not on PCs) and the second 3,5". Than it was usual to use a 3,5" drive as A: and 5,25 as B:. That was in the time 3,5" floppy became cheaper and software and bootdisk came on 3,5". Today on most PCs the 5,25" drives are inexistent as 5,25" floppydiskettes have no importance today (althougt all my PCs still have this drive installed ;-)). Bye, Eugen Gareth Jones schrieb: > I used to have a B drive ! It was a 5 1/4 floppy drive, with A as a 3 > 1/2 (or vice versa I don't recall). > > Maybe then people just got used to calling the hard disk C, and it > kinda stuck. > > On Sat, 2 May 1998 17:03:35 -0500, "Craig Thomas" > wrote: > > >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter > >on Windoze machines? > > > >A is always the floppy drive > >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions > >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > > > >Why is/was B not used? > > > >Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) > > > >-- > >craig > >Craigths@worldnet.att.net ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!ubnnews.unisource.ch!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter.cosy.sbg.ac.at!news.cs.utwente.nl!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!xs4all!xs4all!not-for-mail From: Jan van den Broek Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 10:45:31 +0200 Organization: Staats Ysbeer Beheer Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6iharb$ncu$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig7g4$gnj@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xs2.xs4all.nl X-XS4ALL-Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 10:45:33 CEST X-Order: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please. X-Question: never, never known not even by many to exist X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 aax@ix.netcom.com(ANDREW GRYGUS) writes: >All in all, this is a hoplessly weak system, which you will see if you >add a second hard drive and none of your CD-ROM based software works >any more. Drive lettering makes NT very difficult to upgrade in an >enterprise setting, unlike Unix where a new hard disk can simply be >attached as a subdirectory to the root hard disk. Although I never use it, one might look at the "join"-command[1]. [1] If this is still shipped with ms-dos[2], I only have 5.0 here. [2] Even now I don't understand why the behaviour of "mem /p" was changed in ms-dos 6. Why would anyone change the meaning of a parameter? _________________________________________________________________________ De digitale paardenslager Jan van den Broek balglaas@xs4all.nl ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!ubnnews.unisource.ch!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!masternews.telia.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.87.106.104!surfnet.nl!sun4nl!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!xs4all!xs4all!not-for-mail From: Jan van den Broek Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 10:51:38 +0200 Organization: Staats Ysbeer Beheer Lines: 13 Message-ID: <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xs2.xs4all.nl X-XS4ALL-Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 10:51:40 CEST X-Order: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please. X-Question: never, never known not even by many to exist X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 Eugen Mezei writes: > 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) > 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) I hate to disagree with you, but I've seen both working on 286's. +------------------------+ "Life is just a situation | Jan van den Broek | Life is just a game +------------------------+ Life is just a whirlpool | balglaas@xs4all.nl | And it's calling out my name" +------------------------+ - The Residents, Amber ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newscore.univie.ac.at!europa.clark.net!192.148.253.68!netnews.com!newsfeed.concentric.net!global-news-master From: Shogun44 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 03 May 1998 11:07:44 EDT Organization: Home Lines: 35 Message-ID: <354C87F2.3EB02053@concentric.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig7g4$gnj@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> Reply-To: shogun44@concentric.net NNTP-Posting-Host: ts001d19.mer-nh.concentric.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; U) > >Why is/was B not used? > > B: is reserved for the second floppy drive. Remember, the original IBM > PC had two floppys and no hard disk. Hard drive partition letters are > then assigned, then CDROM, etc. > > All in all, this is a hoplessly weak system, which you will see if you > add a second hard drive and none of your CD-ROM based software works > any more. Drive lettering makes NT very difficult to upgrade in an > enterprise setting, unlike Unix where a new hard disk can simply be > attached as a subdirectory to the root hard disk. > > Andrew Grygus - California Republic > -------------------------------------- > Resist Microsoft! Dos used to do something like this using a join command. PCDOS 3.3 and MSDOS 3.3 support this function. It purpose was to "logically connect a drive to a directory on another drive to produce a single directory structure from two seprate directories ." -- --------------------------------------- The Shogun shogun44@concentric.net http://www.concentric.net/~shogun44/ --------------------------------------- First, you must fill you head with wisdom, then you can hit ice with it. -Akira "The Simpsons" --------------------------------------- ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!tnglwood.demon.co.uk!unclebob From: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk (Robert Billing) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sun, 03 May 98 12:11:18 GMT Message-ID: <894197478snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig7f6$glt$1@supernews.com> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Mail2News-User: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Mail2News-Path: post-11.mail.demon.net X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 894217230 5420 unclebob tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 15 In article <6ig7f6$glt$1@supernews.com> grant@mlmicro.com "Grant Gischer" writes: > It was used for the second floppy drive, but they generally aren't used > anymore. Actually, one machine here *has* got a B drive, because I am testing a particular drive type for a client. -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!ubnnews.unisource.ch!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!masternews.telia.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news3.cac.psu.edu!not-for-mail From: viro@riemann.math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 13:09:16 -0400 Organization: Penn State University, Department of Mathematics Lines: 15 Message-ID: <6ii8bs$8r6@riemann.math.psu.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig7g4$gnj@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> <354C87F2.3EB02053@concentric.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: riemann.math.psu.edu In article <354C87F2.3EB02053@concentric.net>, Shogun44 wrote: [snip re mount vs drive-letters] >Dos used to do something like this using a join command. PCDOS 3.3 and >MSDOS 3.3 support this function. It purpose was to "logically connect a >drive to a directory on another drive to produce a single directory >structure from two seprate directories ." Yeah, sure. But they required all mountpoints to be a direct subdirectories of the root(s). I.e. mounting d: on c:\foo\bar was impossible, as well as mounting e: on d:\bar _and_ d: on c:\foo - in this case poor DOS would have to deal with c:\foo\bar - deeper than one level. Yes, they could process it correctly. But they didn't. And it wasn't join's fault - it just patched an array in the kernel . The kernel itself was unable to deal with deeper mountpoints. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!164.67.42.145!awabi.library.ucla.edu!137.82.194.1!unixg.ubc.ca!alph02.triumf.ca!shoppa From: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 13:18:46 GMT Organization: TRIUMF, Canada's National Meson Facility Lines: 24 Message-ID: <6ihqrm$691$1@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6igtkq$a1i@netserv.waikato.ac.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: alph02.triumf.ca In article <6igtkq$a1i@netserv.waikato.ac.nz>, Bryce Utting wrote: >It was a LONG time before 3.5" drives emerged, and I'm sure there're >-some- lurking with tales of 8" floppies in PCs. (they're hopefully >feeling better now?) Well, not an 8" drive *in* a PC, but I have experience with: * S-100 boxes running QDOS with 8" floppies * Pentiums with external 8" drives attached. For more information on how to connect 8" floppies to a modernish PC-clone, see the "22DISK" documentation at http://www.sydex.com/ >Pretty much; though it's not at all rare for developers/consultants >with obscure drivers to support to keep a 5.25" drive around to access >old install media. Hey - I still support 14" disk packs, 8" floppies, and paper-tape punches/readers on industrial systems. Not all the world is a PC-clone! Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!ubnnews.unisource.ch!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!masternews.telia.net!news-stkh.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: rinaqeb@trbpvgvrf.pbz (Evandro Menezes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 17:13:03 GMT Organization: E&R Lines: 21 Message-ID: <354ca583.9213476@news.nabi.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> Reply-To: evandro@geocities.com (Evandro Menezes) NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.6.184.164 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 894215789 7FE11U3.SB8A4D006C usenet76.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 In <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, "Craig Thomas" wrote: >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >on Windoze machines? > >A is always the floppy drive >C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > >Why is/was B not used? Actually, it's still used for a virtual second floppy drive in systems with only one floppy - you'll be asked to change disks. HTH ____________________________________________________________ Evandro Menezes Austin, TX USA Tel:+1-512-502-9199 ICQ:7957253 mailto:evandro@geocities.com http://over.to/evandro ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.enteract.com!news.enteract.com!newsfeed.inetnebr.com!crcnews.unl.edu!manager From: 00093182@bigred.unl.edu (Josh Hesse) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 May 1998 21:50:58 GMT Organization: CANeM///Cabal Academic Network Monitoring///[tinc] Lines: 30 Message-ID: <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: bigred.unl.edu X-HTML:
X-URL: http://www.binary.net/conc X-BumperSticker: HONK IF YOU LOVE VI! X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950621BETA PL0] Jan van den Broek (balglaas@xs4all.nl) wrote: : Eugen Mezei writes: : : > 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) : > 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) : : I hate to disagree with you, but I've seen both working on 286's. : Indeed. The IBM PC/XT(and clones) could only use Double Density diskettes[DD] A 5.25DD was 360K(double sided) and a 3.5DD was 720K. These disk drives were colored black by convention. The PC/AT(286) could use the High Density[HD] disk drives, which are beige by convention. There was a warning with some software about formatting DD diskettes in a HD drive, because of the different materials, currents and dimensions used, a DD diskette could be less than reliable. My computer has a Extra Density[ED] drive, and ED diskettes(3.5 only) have a 2.88M capacity(4.0M unformatted). Unfortunatly, these seem to be relatively rare, and the diskettes are a pain to find, and very expensive if you do (2-3 times the cost of a HD diskette) -Josh -- Do not send mail to this account. Really. "Talk about silly conspiracy theories..." -Wayne Schlitt in unl.general This post (C)1998, Josh Hesse. Quoted material is (C) of the person quoted. |ess|erb|unl|u| (Oo) MYTHOS How's my posting? 1-800-DEV-NULL email: jh|e@h|ie.|.ed| /||\ NEW AEON .Sigfile freshness date: 4/2/98 Free Karate practices for UNL students & staff--- Just ask me. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!linley From: linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: Organization: Megami no Belldandy-sama no deshi References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 22:15:11 GMT Lines: 30 Sender: linley@netcom9.netcom.com In ye olden post 00093182@bigred.unl.edu (Josh Hesse) spake... > >My computer has a Extra Density[ED] drive, and ED diskettes(3.5 only) have >a 2.88M capacity(4.0M unformatted). Unfortunatly, these seem to be relatively >rare, and the diskettes are a pain to find, and very expensive if you do >(2-3 times the cost of a HD diskette) Ah yes, the ever-meaningless "unformatted capacity" quote. This one's right up there with, "Best ---- in its class", "---X max speed CDROMS" (what's the min speed?) and hard drive makers habit of quoting disk space in GB meaning 10^9 bytes. Well, at least they don't quote "unfor- matted capacity" there. Let's see if a 1440K floppy it touted as having a 2.0MB unformatted capacity, that's a bogus factor of +42%. So a 4GB (4x2^20) hard drive could be advertised as having an unformatted capacity of 6GB!!! G being 10^9, of course. I wonder how long it will be until we have variable speed processors? Think about it. The CPU could run at super accelerated speeds for short periods of time and then slow back down to allow the excess heat to dissipate and then speed up again. I wonder what processor speed will be printed in the ads for such machines. 1GHz Max! CPU! Let the buyer beware. -- Bruce James Robert Linley | +---+---+--_ | "Tea is always bitter... but linley@netcom.com | | |NV | UT | blood is warm and sweet." Programmer, Fortunet Inc. | \ CA \ |___ | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA ----------> \*| AZ | - Miyu ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.idt.net!WCG!uunet!in4.uu.net!world!rhc From: rhc@world.std.com (Rich Clancey) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 22:36:34 GMT Lines: 12 Also, in the DOS days, the BIOS would try to boot from the A: drive first, and if there was no disk discovered, would try the C: drive next, since orginally people booted from floppies because that's all they had. You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. -- | rich clancey "Hold aloof from the expressions of certain pretentious | | rhc@world.std.com minds who instead of saying that eyes were made for | | rclan@cs.umb.edu seeing, say that we see because we find ourselves | | having eyes." ~ Leibniz, "Discourse on Metaphysics" | ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sun, 03 May 1998 23:52:16 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 61 Message-ID: <354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.27 i486) John Bayko wrote: > > In article <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, > Craig Thomas wrote: > >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter > >on Windoze machines? > > Initially it was the second floppy drive Up to here you were travelling nice and OK. > - with hard drives being > expensive, any serious computer user would get a second floppy before > a nard drive, Actually the original IBM PCs (i.e. pre XTs) came with _only_ 2 floppies, no HD, no HD controller. Some had no drives at all (those intended for ROM Basic use. I have never seen an 1 floppy one, were seldom if they ever existed. > so the hard drive was C: by convention. Later, A: was > the 5 1/4 drive and B: was the 3.5 drive, and all systems came > standard with that configuration, so again C: was the hard drive by > default - to the point that a lot of software stupidly assumed that C: > was the hard drive (programmers can be amazingly clever and > mindbogglingly stupid at the same time This may be alt._folklore_.computers and not alt._history_.computers. But spreading your speculations as history doesn't go. Tsss, tsss, tsss. The A:, B:, C: numbering is curtesy of IS.SYS (Microsoft, not IBM, as someone else claimed). IBM on the PC introduced the BIOS call INT 0x13, with 2 floppies (0x00 and 0x01), Microsoft mapped these to A: and B:. On the XT IBM added 2 hard disks (0x80 and 0x81), MS gave them (or rather their primary partitions) C: and D:. When CONFIG.SYS drivers were added by MS they got numbered to the first free number. When extended partitions came they were inserted between the primary partitions and CONFIG.SYS. On an single floppy machine 0x01 is undefined, B: is not used because C: is in the way, it later was defined to become an nickname for 0x00. OTOH on an single hard disk machine D: gets recycled as CONFIG.SYS drive. This is also why an 2 partition disk C: D: becomes C: E: when you add an second hard disk with an primary partition, and so why you should only make extended partitions for DOS on an 2nd hard disk. -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ Lawyers are killing society, perhaps we should return the favour. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!feeder.qis.net!btnet-peer!btnet!baron.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!server3.netnews.ja.net!news.ox.ac.uk!not-for-mail From: Ben Hutchings Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 01:46:52 +0100 Organization: Oxford University Lines: 20 Sender: womble@eldritch.dyn.ml.org Message-ID: <6ij35s$3vg$1@eldritch.dyn.ml.org> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: max88.public.ox.ac.uk In article , Rich Clancey wrote: > Also, in the DOS days, the BIOS would try to boot from the A: drive >first, and if there was no disk discovered, would try the C: drive next, since >orginally people booted from floppies because that's all they had. > > You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change >the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. The BIOS numbers floppy and hard drives independently, starting from 0. It's DOS that allocates A to fd 0, B to fd 1, C to hd 0, and so on. The BIOS limitation is purely that it refuses to boot from any floppy drive other than the first one. Mine will quite happily boot off any of the 4 IDE hard drives the motherboard supports directly, or a SCSI hard drive, or an IDE CD-ROM drive, or a IDE big-floppy drive (depending on how you configure the boot order). -- Ben Hutchings -- should be revising | Jay Miner Society: http://www.jms.org/ m95bwh@ecs.ox.ac.uk | http://users.ox.ac.uk/~worc0223/ | IRC: Womble Reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!howland.erols.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!intgwlon.nntp.telstra.net!news.telstra.net.nz!newshost.comnet.co.nz!inca01!gmiller From: gmiller@inca.co.nz (Gaven Miller) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 01:58:10 GMT Organization: Comnet Technologies Ltd, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND Lines: 37 Message-ID: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: 202.36.226.1 X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Neil Franklin (Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove) wrote in alt.folklore.computers: > John Bayko wrote: > > Craig Thomas wrote: > > >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive > > >letter on Windoze machines? > > > > Initially it was the second floppy drive > Up to here you were travelling nice and OK. > > - with hard drives being > > expensive, any serious computer user would get a second floppy before > > a nard drive, > Actually the original IBM PCs (i.e. pre XTs) came with _only_ 2 > floppies, no HD, no HD controller. Some had no drives at all (those > intended for ROM Basic use. I have never seen an 1 floppy one, were > seldom if they ever existed. What about those IBM PCs with a cassette drive as secondary storage? I can recall seeing a magazine advert for the IBM PC in 1982/3 that mentioned how advanced it [the PC] was, and could use all these glorious storage media and so forth (and then listed them as cassette, floppy disc, hard disc and probably others I've forgotten by now) Although on reflection, wasn't the hard drive only available from the XT? (I really wasn't into computers until 1984/5, so some of these recollections of mine may be a little in error) -- All email sent to my inca address will fail, however I can now be contacted via an intermediary : gem at tos pl net. I would like to apologise to the genuine respondents that this may inconvenience. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news-lond.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!news From: aax@ix.netcom.com(ANDREW GRYGUS) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 02:24:29 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 26 Message-ID: <6ij8st$ci2@sjx-ixn11.ix.netcom.com> References: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: pas-ca11-22.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Sun May 03 7:24:29 PM PDT 1998 In <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> gmiller@inca.co.nz (Gaven Miller) writes: > >I can recall seeing a magazine advert for the IBM PC in 1982/3 that >mentioned how advanced it [the PC] was, and could use all these glorious >storage media and so forth (and then listed them as cassette, floppy disc, >hard disc and probably others I've forgotten by now) > >Although on reflection, wasn't the hard drive only available from the XT? Some vendors, BusinessLand in particular, sold the cheaper PCs with hard disks in them, either with a "hard card" or by replacing a floppy. I saw many "rebranded" as XTs, but they weren't XTs at all. There were fewer slots in the PC and they were spaced farther apart. The PC also had the cassette connector which the XT did not. Many early "clone" mother boards had slot connectors with the XT spacing, but had one extra set of slot connector solder holes so they could be set up to fit the PC case, almost. Andrew Grygus - California Republic -------------------------------------- Resist Microsoft! ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!netnews.com!news.idt.net!enews.sgi.com!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!towncrier.cc.monash.edu.au!wombat.cs.monash.edu.au!not-for-mail From: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 03:09:59 +1000 Organization: This is innd taking over... Lines: 22 Message-ID: <6ii8d7$61n$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> Reply-To: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au NNTP-Posting-Host: modem15.cs.monash.edu.au X-NNTP-Posting-User: root bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) writes: >In article <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, >with *no* 'cancel' option! The only way out of this message if you >accidentally tried to check the smelling of your document was to >reboot the computer and lose all your work). > Boy, that paragraph was A) too long and B) ended too many lines >with a '-'. It also contained a lovely example of the kind of error that makes me believe that the widespread availability of smell-checkers has actually increased the number of mistakes in published documents rather than decreased ;-) Bernie -- ============================================================================ "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy... ...let's go exploring" Calvin's final words, on December 31st, 1995 ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.wli.net!news.oru.edu!news.IAEhv.nl!not-for-mail From: gigawalt@iaehv.iaehv.nl (Walter Belgers) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 09:45:04 GMT Organization: The TimeWasters Lines: 16 Message-ID: <6ik2n0$rct$1@news.IAEhv.nl> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove> NNTP-Posting-Host: iaehv.iaehv.nl X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test58 (13 May 97) Neil Franklin wrote: >> >This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >> >on Windoze machines? > >On an single floppy machine 0x01 is undefined, B: is not used because C: >is in the way, it later was defined to become an nickname for 0x00. Right, this is why B: can still be handy when you only have 1 diskdrive: you can Still copy from A: to B:, where B: is another floppy in the A: drive. Walter. -- Walter Belgers, PO Box 6132, 5600 HC Eindhoven, Netherlands fax +31 402784697 email: Walter.Belgers@iae.nl -=-=- homepage: http://www.iae.nl/users/gigawalt echo '16i[q]sa[ln0=aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sb0D0A2020544C415741474947snlbxq' | dc ###### Date: 04 May 98 11:26:12 -0800 From: "Charlie Gibbs" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> Message-ID: <1176.428T630T6864051@sky.bus.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Lines: 24 X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.skybus.com Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-fra.maz.net!news.is-europe.net!feeder.qis.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.244.4.2!news.westel.com!news.skybus.com!204.244.247.109 Xcanpos: shelf.01/199805060201!0103240737 In article <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> 00093182@bigred.unl.edu (Josh Hesse) writes: >Indeed. The IBM PC/XT(and clones) could only use Double Density >diskettes[DD] A 5.25DD was 360K(double sided) and a 3.5DD was 720K. >These disk drives were colored black by convention. The PC/AT(286) >could use the High Density[HD] disk drives, which are beige by >convention. There was a warning with some software about formatting >DD diskettes in a HD drive, because of the different materials, >currents and dimensions used, a DD diskette could be less than >reliable. The other reason you didn't mix 360K and 1.2M 5 1/4-inch diskettes was that the 1.2M drives would write narrower tracks (so they could fit 80 tracks where the 360K drives only had 40). They could read and write 360K format (by stepping to every second track), but if you tried to overwrite a 360K disk on a 1.2M drive you'd only write the middle portion of the track; the original data would still be on the outer edges of the track, and would cause errors when you subsequently tried to read the disk on a 360K drive. -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### Date: 04 May 98 11:29:51 -0800 From: "Charlie Gibbs" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <6ii8d7$61n$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <2007.428T2563T6896236@sky.bus.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Lines: 62 X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.skybus.com Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.244.4.2!news.westel.com!news.skybus.com!204.244.247.109 In article <6ii8d7$61n$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (bmeyer) writes: >bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) writes: > >>In article <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, >>with *no* 'cancel' option! The only way out of this message if you >>accidentally tried to check the smelling of your document was to >>reboot the computer and lose all your work). >> >> Boy, that paragraph was A) too long and B) ended too many lines >>with a '-'. > >It also contained a lovely example of the kind of error that makes me >believe that the widespread availability of smell-checkers has actually >increased the number of mistakes in published documents rather than >decreased ;-) Spelling checkers have certainly changed the nature of spelling errors, if not their number. (Although I do get interesting images when I think about the smelling of a document...) -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. Mon Jul 13 21:08:19 1992 Message : #3865232 From: Alan Munn Address : amunn@umd5.umd.edu Group : Usenet.rec.humor.funny Length : 143 words Subject : Spelling chequer woes Msg-ID: Posted: Mon, 13 Jul 92 19:30:3 E Found on a chalkboard in a classroom at Purdue. Posted with permission of John O'Malley (omalley@cc.purdue.edu) (who found it but isn't the author). Spellbound I have a spelling checker It came with my PC; It plainly marks four my revue Mistakes I cannot sea. I've run this poem threw it I'm sure your pleased too no. It's letter perfect in it's weigh. My checker tolled me sew. -- Pennye Harper -- Selected by Brad Templeton. MAIL your joke (jokes ONLY) to funny@clarinet.com Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. Jokes ABOUT major current events should be sent to topical@clarinet.com (ie. jokes which won't be funny if not given immediate attention.) Anything that is not a joke submission goes to funny-request@clarinet.com ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!ubnnews.unisource.ch!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter.cosy.sbg.ac.at!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!nntp.giganews.com!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!131.103.1.114!news2.chicago.iagnet.net!qual.net!iagnet.net!news.uiowa.edu!not-for-mail From: jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 14:17:04 GMT Organization: The University of Iowa Lines: 17 Message-ID: <6ikil0$c3a$1@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu From article <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, by "Craig Thomas" : > This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter > on Windoze machines? > A is always the floppy drive B is always the second floppy drive (if you have one) > C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions > D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > > Why is/was B not used? See above. Recall that all early IBM PCs had 2 floppy drives! Doug Jones jones@cs.uiowa.edu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!btnet-peer!btnet!ais.net!uunet!in5.uu.net!shore!news From: dmoisan@shore.net (David Moisan) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 15:20:38 GMT Organization: DM Productions Message-ID: <354dd78b.105993117@news.shore.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354ca583.9213476@news.nabi.net> Reply-To: dmoisan@shore.net NNTP-Posting-Host: tcgbos-01-124.port.shore.net X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Lines: 26 On Sun, 03 May 1998 17:13:03 GMT, rinaqeb@trbpvgvrf.pbz (Evandro Menezes) wrote: >> >>A is always the floppy drive >>C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >>D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... >> >>Why is/was B not used? > >Actually, it's still used for a virtual second floppy drive in systems >with only one floppy - you'll be asked to change disks. My system still has a 5-1/4" 1.2M floppy on drive B, which I use to read disks to and from my DECMate. My first IBM-compatible was a 286 clone with no hard drive (!) and 3.5" 1.44M and 5-1/4" 1.2M disks. I used the 5" drive for bootable disks and the 3.5" for data. Dave David Moisan, N1KGH n1kgh@amsat.org http://www1.shore.net/~dmoisan Invisible Disability: http://www1.shore.net/~dmoisan/invisible_disability.html GE Superradio FAQ: http://www1.shore.net/~dmoisan/faqs/superradio/gesr_faq.html ###### From: "Scott Stevens" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca> <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu> Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 18:12:13 -0500 Lines: 39 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 NNTP-Posting-Host: usr-401-1-137.isd.net Message-ID: <354e4b32.0@aedes.isd.net> Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!sibyl.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!newsfeed.wli.net!newsfeed.frii.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!aedes.isd.net!usr-401-1-137.isd.net Brian Wheeler wrote in message <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu>... >In article <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, > ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) writes: >> >> "Craig Thomas" (Craigths@worldnet.att.net) writes: >>> This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >>> on Windoze machines? >>> >>> A is always the floppy drive >>> C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >> >> Back in the days of MS-DOS 0.3 (?), the cassette recorder was >> called the B for Backup drive. But even with a C90 tape, you >> can't get much data backed up using the Kansis City Standard >> recording format. > > Huh? There wasn't ever a MS-DOS 0.3. B is the 2nd floppy drive. >On older PCs, you could have up to 4 floppies, A-D. E was the 1st hard >disk partition in that case. > >The cassette was CAS:, if I recall correctly. > It's my understanding that the cassette port was reserved for use if there was no diskette drive or drive controller installed in the machine. Under those circumstances, or if there was no floppy in the A drive, early IBM machines would boot up into 'cassette basic' and from that the cassette port was accessable. I have a first generation "PC-1" machine stored away in a closet, but alas, no cassette cable for it. I do have a data cassette from IBM with diagnostic software on it, however. Has anybody reading this ever seen a commercial program released on cassette for the PC? >Brian Wheeler >bdwheele@indiana.edu ###### From: "Scott Stevens" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers References: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> <6ij8st$ci2@sjx-ixn11.ix.netcom.com> Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 18:19:45 -0500 Lines: 45 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.71.1712.3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.71.1712.3 NNTP-Posting-Host: usr-401-1-137.isd.net Message-ID: <354e4cf6.0@aedes.isd.net> Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-dc.gip.net!news-stock.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsm.ibm.net!ibm.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!aedes.isd.net!usr-401-1-137.isd.net ANDREW GRYGUS wrote in message <6ij8st$ci2@sjx-ixn11.ix.netcom.com>... >In <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> gmiller@inca.co.nz (Gaven >Miller) writes: >> >>I can recall seeing a magazine advert for the IBM PC in 1982/3 that >>mentioned how advanced it [the PC] was, and could use all these >glorious >>storage media and so forth (and then listed them as cassette, floppy >disc, >>hard disc and probably others I've forgotten by now) >> >>Although on reflection, wasn't the hard drive only available from the >XT? > >Some vendors, BusinessLand in particular, sold the cheaper PCs with >hard disks in them, either with a "hard card" or by replacing a floppy. > I saw many "rebranded" as XTs, but they weren't XTs at all. There >were fewer slots in the PC and they were spaced farther apart. The PC >also had the cassette connector which the XT did not. > There are also two versions of the older five-slot PC. The PC-1 motherboard has four banks of 16K DRAM on it, for a total of 64K. The PC-2 motherboard has four banks of 64K DRAM on it. The PC-1 can also be distinguised because the power supply inside the case is painted black, instead of being silver covered like on nearly all PCs and clones since. The card-slot backplates, including the ones on original PC-1 cards, and the blank ones for unpopulated slots, are also painted black. Only the very oldest IBM PCs are PC-1s, and I estimate that eventually they will be some of the most collectable. I have my father's original (he was an IBM employee), with all original cards, stored away in a closet (with all manuals as well). The only upgrade that box has seen is that the drives were upgraded to double sided in the mid 80s so he could run PC-DOS 2.1. >Many early "clone" mother boards had slot connectors with the XT >spacing, but had one extra set of slot connector solder holes so they >could be set up to fit the PC case, almost. > >Andrew Grygus - California Republic >-------------------------------------- >Resist Microsoft! ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news.he.net!scanner.worldgate.com!rover.ucs.ualberta.ca!crash.videotron.ab.ca!news@videotron.ab.ca From: jsavard@tenMAPSONeerf.edmonton.ab.ca (John Savard) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 20:38:03 GMT Organization: Videotron Communications Ltd. Lines: 18 Message-ID: <354e2645.3573428@news.prosurfr.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: c9169-004.prosurfr.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.1/16.230 bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) wrote: >Later, A: was >the 5 1/4 drive and B: was the 3.5 drive, and all systems came >standard with that configuration, Very few systems - well, maybe more than that, but certainly not "all" - came with that configuration. When 3.5" drives were introduced for the PC, by IBM with the PS/2, the systems were shipped with only a 3.5" drive. An external 5.25" drive could be added, but it would have been B:. Other users might well have added an internal 3.5" drive to their clones as B: at first, then moved it over to A: as more software came out in the smaller format. John Savard ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-dc.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cam-news-feed2.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!homer.alpha.net!not-for-mail From: charles Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 20:51:02 -0500 Lines: 18 Message-ID: <354E7086.5F360101@maqs.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: ada1-cs-14.dial.midplains.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; U) Craig Thomas wrote: > > This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter > on Windoze machines? > > A is always the floppy drive > C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions > D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > > Why is/was B not used? > > Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) > > -- > craig > Craigths@worldnet.att.net B: was anouther name for the A: drive in a single floppy machine and used if you needed to copy to a second disk. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!sibyl.sunrise.ch!news.imp.ch!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ais.net!news.indiana.edu!not-for-mail From: bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 21:19:48 GMT Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Lines: 23 Message-ID: <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: torgo.educ.indiana.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 In article <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) writes: > > "Craig Thomas" (Craigths@worldnet.att.net) writes: >> This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >> on Windoze machines? >> >> A is always the floppy drive >> C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions > > Back in the days of MS-DOS 0.3 (?), the cassette recorder was > called the B for Backup drive. But even with a C90 tape, you > can't get much data backed up using the Kansis City Standard > recording format. Huh? There wasn't ever a MS-DOS 0.3. B is the 2nd floppy drive. On older PCs, you could have up to 4 floppies, A-D. E was the 1st hard disk partition in that case. The cassette was CAS:, if I recall correctly. Brian Wheeler bdwheele@indiana.edu ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 22:11:52 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 45 Message-ID: <354E2108.14E62C18@ccw.ch.remove> References: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.27 i486) Gaven Miller wrote: > > Neil Franklin (Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove) wrote in alt.folklore.computers: > > > Actually the original IBM PCs (i.e. pre XTs) came with _only_ 2 > > floppies, no HD, no HD controller. Some had no drives at all (those > > intended for ROM Basic use. I have never seen an 1 floppy one, were > > seldom if they ever existed. > > What about those IBM PCs with a cassette drive as secondary storage? Those were the ones I mentioned as "no drives at all". cassete was used by the ROM Basic to store Programs and Data. Identical to the way home computers like the C64 did it. IIRC then was then an Disk-Basic that extended ROM basic and came on floppy and used floppies (that would allow an 1 floppy drive machine. Then came MS/PC-DOS that booted from and used floppies (nearly allways 2), and ignored the cassette port. > I can recall seeing a magazine advert for the IBM PC in 1982/3 that > mentioned how advanced it [the PC] was, and could use all these glorious > storage media and so forth (and then listed them as cassette, floppy disc, > hard disc and probably others I've forgotten by now) > > Although on reflection, wasn't the hard drive only available from the XT? The PT/XT (XT for eXTended) differed from the PC by having an hard disk (10 or 20 MB) and 8 instead of 5 slots. > (I really wasn't into computers until 1984/5, so some of these > recollections of mine may be a little in error) I started in Nov 1981 (1 month after PC rollout, but first meat PC type machines in 1985 (an XT with 384k and MDA+EGA running Autocad). But I have an strong interest in history (now why do I read this NG?). -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ Lawyers are killing society, perhaps we should return the favour. ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 22:25:11 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 24 Message-ID: <354E2427.5ACAC06B@ccw.ch.remove> References: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> <6ij8st$ci2@sjx-ixn11.ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.27 i486) ANDREW GRYGUS wrote: > > I saw many "rebranded" as XTs, but they weren't XTs at all. There > were fewer slots in the PC and they were spaced farther apart. The PC > also had the cassette connector which the XT did not. PC 5 slots with 10/10" raster (photo of wire wrapped PC prototype, Byte Sept 1990, p416) PC/XT and PC/AT 8 slots with 8/10" raster (spare clone 486SX25 motherboard here) > Many early "clone" mother boards had slot connectors with the XT > spacing, but had one extra set of slot connector solder holes so they > could be set up to fit the PC case, almost. One set? you would need a full 4 extra sets. Each slot would be an extra 2/10" further off. -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ Lawyers are killing society, perhaps we should return the favour. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mel.connect.com.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!towncrier.cc.monash.edu.au!wombat.cs.monash.edu.au!not-for-mail From: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 23:22:14 +1000 Organization: This is innd taking over... Lines: 20 Message-ID: <6ikfe6$8mr$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ij35s$3vg$1@eldritch.dyn.ml.org> Reply-To: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au NNTP-Posting-Host: modem08.cs.monash.edu.au X-NNTP-Posting-User: root Ben Hutchings writes: >The BIOS numbers floppy and hard drives independently, starting from >0. It's DOS that allocates A to fd 0, B to fd 1, C to hd 0, and so >on. The real fun starts when you put more than 2 floppy drives into a PC (yes, it can be done ;-). Then DOS will assign A to the first, B to the second, C to the third, D to the fourth, and then start the harddisks off at E.... Which will really confuse a number of install programs, that cimply cannot comprehend that C is anything but the harddisk you booted from. Bernie -- ============================================================================ "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy... ...let's go exploring" Calvin's final words, on December 31st, 1995 ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-dc.gip.net!news-stock.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.atl.bellsouth.net!news.acsu.buffalo.edu!srv1.drenet.dnd.ca!crc-news.crc.ca!nott!cunews!freenet-news.carleton.ca!FreeNet.Carleton.CA!ab528 From: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 May 1998 23:57:54 GMT Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Lines: 18 Message-ID: <6ilkm2$ohe@freenet-news.carleton.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca> <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu> <354e4b32.0@aedes.isd.net> Reply-To: ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) NNTP-Posting-Host: freenet3.carleton.ca X-Given-Sender: ab528@freenet3.carleton.ca (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) "Scott Stevens" (stevenss@freenet.msp.mn.us) writes: > Brian Wheeler wrote in message <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu>... >>In article <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca>, >> ab528@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Heinz W. Wiggeshoff) writes: >>> Back in the days of MS-DOS 0.3 (?), the cassette recorder was >>> called the B for Backup drive. But even with a C90 tape, you >>> can't get much data backed up using the Kansis City Standard >>> recording format. >> >> Huh? There wasn't ever a MS-DOS 0.3. B is the 2nd floppy drive. >>On older PCs, you could have up to 4 floppies, A-D. E was the 1st hard >>disk partition in that case. My followup (about MS-DOS 0.3) was posted on April 1st, but the National Capital FreeNet posts to Usenet are sent through Kansas City first. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-dc.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ais.net!uunet!in4.uu.net!news.apk.net!not-for-mail From: "Eugene A. Pallat" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 00:01:49 GMT Organization: Orion Data Systems Lines: 26 Message-ID: <01bd77b8$e699d150$14ba36cf@alpha> References: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: as1-icg-10.apk.net X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1161 Gaven Miller wrote in article <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz>... > Neil Franklin (Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove) wrote in alt.folklore.computers: > > John Bayko wrote: > > > Craig Thomas wrote: snip > > Actually the original IBM PCs (i.e. pre XTs) came with _only_ 2 > > floppies, no HD, no HD controller. Some had no drives at all (those > > intended for ROM Basic use. I have never seen an 1 floppy one, were > > seldom if they ever existed. The controller could handle up to 4 floppy drives. snip Remove the '-glop-' for sending email to me. Gene eapallat@orion-glop-data.com Orion Data Systems Solicitations to me must be pre-approved in writing by me after soliciitor pays $1,000 US per incident. Solicitations sent to me are proof you accept this notice and will send a certified check forthwith. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!agate!islay.ssl.berkeley.edu!korpela From: korpela@islay.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 01:31:20 GMT Organization: Cal Berkeley-- Space Sciences Lab Lines: 39 Message-ID: <6ilq58$9l5$1@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: islay.ssl.berkeley.edu In article <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com>, Eugen Mezei wrote: >Hi Jones, >this is all correct what you write, only a little precisation: >- you can install 2 floppy drives in any PC >- under DOS their names are A: and B. >- what hardware type of floppydrive is A and B you can define in the BIOS so you >can make your drives: 360kB/5,25" > 720kB/3,5" > 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) > 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) >So you can install 2 different type of floppdrive on your PC or two of the same >type. >In the ancient times the first drive was a 5,25" drive (in pre-ancient times 8" >but not on PCs) and the second 3,5". I'm not sure about your definition of ancient times, but the original PC did not have a configurable BIOS. Nor were 3.5" disk drives available when the PC originated. The floppy drive originally shipped with the PC was either a 160K (single sided) or 320K (double sided) drive when formatted with PC-DOS 1.X. Under PC-DOS 2.X the same drive was 180K or 360K. The question is why IBM went with 360K drives when 720K was the standard on contemporary CP/M machines. Most likely because 40 TPI drives were a cheaper than 96 TPI drives. Many early clone makers (Tandy, Victor, etc) offered 720K 5.25" drives as standard. One strange thing is neither PC-DOS nor MS-DOS in their standard configurations support the 720K format on 96 TPI drives. Out of spite perhaps? BTW, it is possible to install both 1.2 and 1.44 MB drives on an XT (8086) class computer. Special drivers might need to be loaded under DOS to use them, though. Eric -- Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be korpela@ssl.berkeley.edu | stopped. Click for home page. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!agate!islay.ssl.berkeley.edu!korpela From: korpela@islay.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 01:44:41 GMT Organization: Cal Berkeley-- Space Sciences Lab Lines: 29 Message-ID: <6ilqu9$9se$1@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ij35s$3vg$1@eldritch.dyn.ml.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: islay.ssl.berkeley.edu In article <6ij35s$3vg$1@eldritch.dyn.ml.org>, Ben Hutchings wrote: >In article , Rich Clancey wrote: >> Also, in the DOS days, the BIOS would try to boot from the A: drive >>first, and if there was no disk discovered, would try the C: drive next, since >>orginally people booted from floppies because that's all they had. >> >> You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change >>the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. > >The BIOS numbers floppy and hard drives independently, starting from >0. It's DOS that allocates A to fd 0, B to fd 1, C to hd 0, and so >on. The BIOS limitation is purely that it refuses to boot from any >floppy drive other than the first one. Then there's the HD PRIMARY PARTITION fiction that has been foisted upon us. DOS and Win95 (not sure about WIN NT) can only boot from a primary partition on the first hard drive. Every real OS can boot from any partition. According to the fable only one primary partition on any drive can be accessed at time. Of course, linux simultaneously accesses both primary partitions (OpenDOS and Win95) on my home machine. Linux and OS/2 (the other two OSs on my home machine) will happily live on and boot from logical partitions on any HD. -- Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be korpela@ssl.berkeley.edu | stopped. Click for home page. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!newsfeed.internetmci.com!206.26.158.15!news.kis.net!netra-news.ntrnet.net!feeder.news.azstarnet.com!reader1.news.azstarnet.com!news From: bill_h Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 12:20:30 -0700 Organization: Starnet Lines: 13 Message-ID: <354F667E.191A@azstarnet.com> References: <6ij7bi$n42$3@newshost.comnet.co.nz> NNTP-Posting-Host: 169.197.40.191 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Win16; I) Gaven Miller wrote: > > Neil Franklin (Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove) wrote in alt.folklore.computers: > Although on reflection, wasn't the hard drive only available from the XT? I think there WAS a hard drive option BEFORE the XT came out. From IBM, I mean. Of course there were add-on hard drives from people like DaVong, too. Not sure who was actually FIRST with a hard drive for the original PC. Anybody got a pointer to an advert that might shed some light here? ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.wli.net!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: rinaqeb@trbpvgvrf.pbz (Evandro Menezes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 14:37:55 GMT Organization: E&R Lines: 38 Message-ID: <35502334.5289319@news.nabi.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <1176.428T630T6864051@sky.bus.com> Reply-To: evandro@geocities.com (Evandro Menezes) NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.6.184.130 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 894379277 7FE11U3.SB882D006C usenet76.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 In <1176.428T630T6864051@sky.bus.com>, "Charlie Gibbs" wrote: >In article <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> 00093182@bigred.unl.edu >(Josh Hesse) writes: > >>Indeed. The IBM PC/XT(and clones) could only use Double Density >>diskettes[DD] A 5.25DD was 360K(double sided) and a 3.5DD was 720K. >>These disk drives were colored black by convention. The PC/AT(286) >>could use the High Density[HD] disk drives, which are beige by >>convention. There was a warning with some software about formatting >>DD diskettes in a HD drive, because of the different materials, >>currents and dimensions used, a DD diskette could be less than >>reliable. > >The other reason you didn't mix 360K and 1.2M 5 1/4-inch diskettes >was that the 1.2M drives would write narrower tracks (so they could >fit 80 tracks where the 360K drives only had 40). They could read >and write 360K format (by stepping to every second track), but if >you tried to overwrite a 360K disk on a 1.2M drive you'd only write >the middle portion of the track; the original data would still be >on the outer edges of the track, and would cause errors when you >subsequently tried to read the disk on a 360K drive. Not at all! DOS was smart enough to detect a DD disk and instruct the BIOS to reset its parameters for 40-track operation. Basically, it skipped one track for a step in 40-track mode with an 80-track drive. The possible compatibility problems were due to different head geometries and therefore magnetic fields being recorded differently, which might cause problems with old or worn off DD drives. HTH ____________________________________________________________ Evandro Menezes Austin, TX USA Tel:+1-512-502-9199 ICQ:7957253 mailto:evandro@geocities.com http://over.to/evandro ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.wli.net!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: rinaqeb@trbpvgvrf.pbz (Evandro Menezes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 14:41:15 GMT Organization: E&R Lines: 15 Message-ID: <3551248d.5634676@news.nabi.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ilq58$9l5$1@agate.berkeley.edu> Reply-To: evandro@geocities.com (Evandro Menezes) NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.6.184.130 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 894379477 7FE11U3.SB882D006C usenet76.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 In <6ilq58$9l5$1@agate.berkeley.edu>, korpela@islay.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela) wrote: >BTW, it is possible to install both 1.2 and 1.44 MB drives on an XT (8086) >class computer. Special drivers might need to be loaded under DOS to use >them, though. Right. I remember having seen some 8-bit ISA expansion boards sold with 3.5" drives with a BIOS extension in addition to the FDC for XT's. ____________________________________________________________ Evandro Menezes Austin, TX USA Tel:+1-512-502-9199 ICQ:7957253 mailto:evandro@geocities.com http://over.to/evandro ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: rinaqeb@trbpvgvrf.pbz (Evandro Menezes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 14:44:00 GMT Organization: E&R Lines: 20 Message-ID: <35522544.5817271@news.nabi.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca> <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu> Reply-To: evandro@geocities.com (Evandro Menezes) NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.6.184.130 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 894379643 7FE11U3.SB882D006C usenet76.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 In <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu>, bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) wrote: > Huh? There wasn't ever a MS-DOS 0.3. B is the 2nd floppy drive. >On older PCs, you could have up to 4 floppies, A-D. E was the 1st hard >disk partition in that case. > >The cassette was CAS:, if I recall correctly. I think the cassette was never supported under DOS. I think it was only supported under ROM BASIC and there were special CAS... functions. It wasn't even supported under disk-based BASICA or GWBASIC. HTH ____________________________________________________________ Evandro Menezes Austin, TX USA Tel:+1-512-502-9199 ICQ:7957253 mailto:evandro@geocities.com http://over.to/evandro ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!europa.clark.net!141.211.144.13!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 15:34:39 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 21 Message-ID: <6inbif$fbq3@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ignlf$fpm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <6ii8d7$61n$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <2007.428T2563T6896236@sky.bus.com> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Charlie Gibbs (cgibbs@sky.bus.com) wrote: : In article <6ii8d7$61n$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> : bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au (bmeyer) writes: : >It also contained a lovely example of the kind of error that makes me : >believe that the widespread availability of smell-checkers has actually : >increased the number of mistakes in published documents rather than : >decreased ;-) : Spelling checkers have certainly changed the nature of spelling errors, : if not their number. (Although I do get interesting images when I : think about the smelling of a document...) The "smell checker" is the one that tells you if your writing stinks, right? -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." - Orson Welles Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!uninett.no!nntp.uib.no!gisle From: gisle@gauk.ii.uib.no (Gisle S{lensminde) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 18:27:29 GMT Organization: University of Bergen, Norway Lines: 44 Message-ID: References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: gauk.ii.uib.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: slrn (0.8.8.2 UNIX) In article , Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: >In ye olden post 00093182@bigred.unl.edu (Josh Hesse) spake... >> >>My computer has a Extra Density[ED] drive, and ED diskettes(3.5 only) have >>a 2.88M capacity(4.0M unformatted). Unfortunatly, these seem to be relatively >>rare, and the diskettes are a pain to find, and very expensive if you do >>(2-3 times the cost of a HD diskette) > >Ah yes, the ever-meaningless "unformatted capacity" quote. This one's >right up there with, "Best ---- in its class", "---X max speed CDROMS" >(what's the min speed?) and hard drive makers habit of quoting disk >space in GB meaning 10^9 bytes. Well, at least they don't quote "unfor- >matted capacity" there. Let's see if a 1440K floppy it touted as having >a 2.0MB unformatted capacity, that's a bogus factor of +42%. So a 4GB >(4x2^20) hard drive could be advertised as having an unformatted capacity >of 6GB!!! G being 10^9, of course. Is unformated meaningless? Have you ever tried to tar things directly to a floppy. On most unix systems with a floppy drive, you can write something like: % tar cvf /dev/fd0 ...... Then you put the archive directly to the floppy without any filesystem or other formating. You can also read it back again with % tar xvf /dev/fd0 You don't even need tar, you can direct anything in the same way, but I used have this to move files between the university and my Linux box at home. But unformated capasity _is_ meaningless most of the time. :-)} -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gisle Sælensminde Tlf: 55 34 07 63 Eliasmarken 16 5031 Laksevåg epost: gisle@ii.uib.no Norway UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-was.dfn.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news3.cac.psu.edu!not-for-mail From: viro@riemann.math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 20:19:41 -0400 Organization: -ENOENT Lines: 85 Approved: Who cares? Message-ID: <6ioaat$d8r@riemann.math.psu.edu> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: riemann.math.psu.edu In article , Gisle S{lensminde wrote: [snip] >Is unformated meaningless? Have you ever tried to tar things directly >to a floppy. On most unix systems with a floppy drive, you can write >something like: [snip the obvious] >Then you put the archive directly to the floppy without any filesystem >or other formating. BZZERT! Wrong. "Unformatted" is different from "un-mkfs'ed". Look: when you read the diskette all you can see (well, all that simple reading head can see) is presense/absense of magnetic field change. Thus the simplest method of record would look so: stream of bits: 00001110... surface: +++++-+--... That is: flip == 1, no flip == 0. Problem with this method: too long sequences of zeroes would be to hard to distinguish (accurate timing problems + possible difference in speed of reading and writing). Too bad. Next variant: let's insert ones. That is: surface: ++--++--+-+-+-++-... That's FM (frequency modulation). Better, but we can improve it: let's insert between x and y ~(x|y); that is: 1 for (0,0); 0 for everything else. input: 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 .... after insertion: 010101001010100..... surface: ++--++---++--+++.... That's MFM (M for modified). Why is it better? Because flips (ones) are less frequent. Thus we can use higher density (2 times compared to FM) with the same heads/cables. That's the method used by most floppies. (FM was used on ancient ones - say it, 80K). OK, so each bit corresponds to two, er, postions on the track. Fine. But we need (at least) to a) mark the beginning of the track (with some interval after it) b) mark the beginning of the sector ID; c) write the CHS-coordinates of the sector (interleave, etc.) d) write the size of sector (power of 2; so - logarithm) e) insert some interval (let the controller decide whether it wants to read this sector or not) f) write ECC; g) mark the beginning of data; ------> h) write the sector i) write ECC; j) insert some interval; repeat steps b--j Certainly total capacity of the track is more than amount of actual data written on it. The bigger sectors you use - the less overhead you get. But bigger sectors -> increased chances to get unrecoverable (by ECC) error. You can also decrease the length of intersector (and other) intervals and fit more sectors on the track. Problem: increased chances of 'sector not found' error. This depends on drive/controller (former depends on the quality of diskette). "Unformatted" capacity describes the raw size. "Formatted" means "separated into sectors", not "bearing the filesystem metadata". BTW, floppy drives (at least PC ones) are pretty stupid - everything is done by controller. That is, the data cable is actually 1-bit; controller gets the raw data from the head. As well as controls the head movement directly. Old MFM harddisks were almost identical beasts. They had more heads, but that was the only difference. Later they switched to better encoding - RLL. Technically, MFM is RLL(1,3). That is, between two ones there are no less than 1 and no more than 3 zeroes. FM is RLL(0,1). What was usually called RLL is RLL(2,7). It allows the 3x density compared to FM (or 1.5x compared to MFM). There were no RLL disks - just RLL controllers. You could make low-level format of "MFM" harddisk with RLL controller and get 50% increase of size (OTOH RLL was less tolerant to errors, so some disks worked fine with MFM controllers but gave errors with RLL). The problem with RLL (and MFM) is that data is transmitted by narrow (1-bit), long and unshielded cable. There were attempts to put the disk directly on the card. It was abandoned for the opposite scheme, i.e. RLL controller was moved on the disk. That's IDE. So-called IDE controllers (on the card or motherboard) are plain interfaces between the motherboard (bus) and the real IDE controller (on the disk). Since the data was transmitted by wider cable the speed could be increased (cable between the head and controller is 20 times shorter and better shielded). EIDE/ATAPI controllers are smarter and do some real work (busmastering, packet transfers, arbitration) but that's another story. BTW, if you'll look at Seagate site (ftp.seagate.com/pub/techsuppt) and read the descriptions of their harddisks you'll see that they include the unformatted capacity in the data. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!199.181.164.14!news.seanet.com!nntp.picarefy.com!picarefy!jwbirdsa From: jwbirdsa@picarefy.picarefy.com (James W. Birdsall) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: <1998May5.223036.23307@picarefy.picarefy.com> Organization: Green Tiger Software References: <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 22:30:36 GMT Lines: 19 In article <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> Jan van den Broek writes: >Eugen Mezei writes: > >> 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) >> 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) > >I hate to disagree with you, but I've seen both working on 286's. In fact, the 1.2M 5.25" drive was *introduced* with the AT, at least in the PC world. Was it being used by other systems before that? And anyway it's all just a matter of BIOS or OS support. I have an 8-bit floppy controller that will run 360/720/1.2/1.44 floppies on an XT, and I have an XT clone from about 1990 whose BIOS can run 360/720/1.2. -- James W. Birdsall http://www.picarefy.com/~jwbirdsa/ jwbirdsa@picarefy.com "For it is the doom of men that they forget." -- Merlin Get the Sun-2 Hardware Reference from ftp.picarefy.com:/pub/Sun-Hardware-Ref Sun-2 Hardware Reference Web Page: http://sun-www.picarefy.com/ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news.fh-hannover.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!sun4nl!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!xs4all!xs4all!not-for-mail From: Jan van den Broek Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 5 May 1998 23:17:06 +0200 Organization: Staats Ysbeer Beheer Message-ID: <6invki$9re$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ilq58$9l5$1@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: xs2.xs4all.nl X-XS4ALL-Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 23:17:08 CEST X-Order: Two pints of lager and a packet of crisps, please. X-Question: never, never known not even by many to exist X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #4 Lines: 23 korpela@islay.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela) writes: >I'm not sure about your definition of ancient times, but the original PC >did not have a configurable BIOS. This made me think of the Philips P2120, a XT, _with_ a set-up. Very bad design actually, the power switch next to the eject-button of the disk- drive. One finger fixed on the powerswitch, ten more install disks to go. (It also takes me back to the days when customers were upgrading their memory to 1 Mb, or even 1.5) "After you've add the memory you've to run the set-up", I told them. And they did, DOS-setup, WP, Windows (3.0) whatever, as long as there was setup written on the disk. Met groeten, | Jan van den Broek | balglaas@xs4all.nl | ----------------------------------------+--------------------------------------- | make it so | Make: don't know how to make it. Stop. | ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 23:39:49 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 52 Message-ID: <354F8725.57A694B8@ccw.ch.remove> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.0.27 i486) Gisle S{lensminde wrote: > > In article , Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > > > >Ah yes, the ever-meaningless "unformatted capacity" quote. This one's > >right up there with, "Best ---- in its class", "---X max speed CDROMS" > > Is unformated meaningless? Have you ever tried to tar things directly > to a floppy. On most unix systems with a floppy drive, you can write > something like: > > % tar cvf /dev/fd0 ...... No, that only gives you exactly 1440kByte. Normal (i.e. file system) floppies even have less than 1440k. The unformated is about having no _low_level_ format (fdformat). File system would be _high_level_ format (mkfs). Actually Linux can format 2MB unformated floppies up to 1920k. Don't believe it? See yourself: ----------------- man 4 fd 3.5 inch high density device files: Name Capac. Cyl. Sect. Heads Base minor # ---------------------------------------------------------- fdnH1440 1440K 80 18 2 28 fdnH1600 1600K 80 20 2 124 fdnH1680 1680K 80 21 2 44 fdnH1760 1760K 80 22 2 96 fdnH1840 1840K 80 23 2 116 fdnH1920 1920K 80 24 2 100 n is the drive, 0 or 1 ------------------ That would again be tar capacity. Less with file system. No, I have never looked into the possible problems, nor into how to do it. -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ Lawyers are killing society, perhaps we should return the favour. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!peerfeed.ncal.verio.net!bug.rahul.net!genmagic!usenet From: eqtr0b@deepforest.org (Exil Q Trob) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 6 May 1998 00:42:40 GMT Organization: Leather Gnomes Lines: 19 Message-ID: <6iobm0$hk@cnn.genmagic.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ikil0$c3a$1@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: davidgsmac.genmagic.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.8 (x86 32bit) In article <6ikil0$c3a$1@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu>, jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu says... > >From article <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net>, >by "Craig Thomas" : > >> A is always the floppy drive > B is always the second floppy drive (if you have one) > >Recall that all early IBM PCs had 2 floppy drives! ... and did sensible things with a single drive, so you could do things like copy a diskette. If you don't happen to have a second drive installed, B: is an alias to the same drive as A: -- but with an opportunity to change diskettes whenever you change which letter you use to refer to the drive. David G ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ais.net!uunet!in3.uu.net!xyzzy!nntp From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? X-Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.172.150.50 Message-ID: X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Lines: 29 Sender: nntp@news.boeing.com (Boeing NNTP News Access) Organization: The Boeing Company X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6ig85v$ist@freenet-news.carleton.ca> <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu> <35522544.5817271@news.nabi.net> Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 01:34:57 GMT Hi, Evandro! Evandro Menezes wrote in message <35522544.5817271@news.nabi.net>... >In <6ilbdk$dr$1@flotsam.uits.indiana.edu>, bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian >Wheeler) wrote: > >> Huh? There wasn't ever a MS-DOS 0.3. B is the 2nd floppy drive. >>On older PCs, you could have up to 4 floppies, A-D. E was the 1st hard >>disk partition in that case. >> >>The cassette was CAS:, if I recall correctly. > >I think the cassette was never supported under DOS. I think it was >only supported under ROM BASIC and there were special CAS... >functions. It wasn't even supported under disk-based BASICA or >GWBASIC. Depends on the machine and the DOS uses. PCDOS 3.20, for instance, supported the CASS: device on an original PC, whereas MSDOS 3.20, or PCDOS 3.20 on an AT, did NOT. Other versions may have been different - I just remember doing a "XCOPY C:\*.* CASS: /S /E" to backup a hard disk once. Didn't ever have to restore - don't know if it would have worked or not. RwP ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!carnaval.risq.qc.ca!not-for-mail Message-ID: <354FC30A.88C3D7E6@odyssee.net> From: DAN X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers To: Craig Thomas Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 12 Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 01:54:55 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: as51-1-ppp11.cmtl.microtec.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 05 May 1998 21:54:55 EDT Just add another floppy drive and you got B: Craig Thomas wrote: > This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter > on Windoze machines? > > A is always the floppy drive > C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions > D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... > > Why is/was B not used? > > Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) > > -- > craig > Craigths@worldnet.att.net ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news3.cac.psu.edu!not-for-mail From: viro@riemann.math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 6 May 1998 19:05:44 -0400 Organization: -ENOENT Lines: 20 Approved: Who cares? Message-ID: <6iqqc8$eq5@riemann.math.psu.edu> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ioaat$d8r@riemann.math.psu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: riemann.math.psu.edu In article , Gisle S{lensminde wrote: [snip] > >Hmm, you learn somthing new every day. I thought that the MSDOS >filesystem was inefficent (it still is), and was the reason for only >1.44MB, but it was also the encoding. As you understand, I never used it >for more than 1.44MB. Several comments: a) look at mtools (and read the texinfo documentation); b) you could format (and use) diskettes above the 1.44 (BTW, 1.44M is pretty idiotic term: M in question is neither 2^20 nor 10^6 but some weird mix: 1024*1000 bytes). All you need is 1700.COM (DOS TSR that essentailly patched BIOS floppy driver). c) There is a nice article by Peter Gutmann ("Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory"). I don't remember an URL, but you can find it via AltaVista. It discusses these topics (methods of encoding, etc.). It's not that large - ~60K (and major part is devoted to recovering overwritten data/methods of secure deletion). ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-fw.gip.net!news-stock.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!uninett.no!nntp.uib.no!gisle From: gisle@gauk.ii.uib.no (Gisle S{lensminde) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 6 May 1998 20:30:07 GMT Organization: University of Bergen, Norway Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ioaat$d8r@riemann.math.psu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: gauk.ii.uib.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: slrn (0.8.8.2 UNIX) In article <6ioaat$d8r@riemann.math.psu.edu>, Alexander Viro wrote: >In article , >Gisle S{lensminde wrote: >[snip] >>Is unformated meaningless? Have you ever tried to tar things directly >>to a floppy. On most unix systems with a floppy drive, you can write >>something like: >[snip the obvious] > >>Then you put the archive directly to the floppy without any filesystem >>or other formating. > > BZZERT! Wrong. "Unformatted" is different from "un-mkfs'ed". > Hmm, you learn somthing new every day. I thought that the MSDOS filesystem was inefficent (it still is), and was the reason for only 1.44MB, but it was also the encoding. As you understand, I never used it for more than 1.44MB. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gisle Sælensminde Tlf: 55 34 07 63 Eliasmarken 16 5031 Laksevåg epost: gisle@ii.uib.no UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!Supernews60!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: rinaqeb@trbpvgvrf.pbz (Evandro Menezes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 23:37:32 GMT Organization: E&R Lines: 15 Message-ID: <3551f420.702960@news.nabi.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> Reply-To: evandro@geocities.com (Evandro Menezes) NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.6.184.143 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 894498058 7FE11U3.SB88FD006C usenet76.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 In <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu>, 00093182@bigred.unl.edu (Josh Hesse) wrote: >There was a warning with some >software about formatting DD diskettes in a HD drive, because of the different >materials, currents and dimensions used, a DD diskette could be less than >reliable. Just for the sake of precision, they could be unreliably read then in a DD drive. ____________________________________________________________ Evandro Menezes Austin, TX USA Tel:+1-512-502-9199 ICQ:7957253 mailto:evandro@geocities.com http://over.to/evandro ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!the-smith-pc From: p.h.s.3@watdcs.uwaterloo.ca (phs3) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 01:06:44 GMT Organization: Erol's Internet Services Lines: 24 Message-ID: <6ir1i1$cd2$1@winter.news.erols.com> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: akphs.erols.com X-Trace: winter.news.erols.com 894503297 12706 207.96.8.238 (7 May 1998 01:08:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@erols.com X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01 In article , linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) wrote: >I wonder how long it will be until we have variable speed processors? >Think about it. The CPU could run at super accelerated speeds for >short periods of time and then slow back down to allow the excess >heat to dissipate and then speed up again. I wonder what processor >speed will be printed in the ads for such machines. 1GHz Max! CPU! For completeness (and pretty well completely off-thread): earlier laptops had variable-speed processors, using different amounts of power. You could select slow, medium, fast (probably labelled something like fast, faster, turbo thanks to marketroids!). I remember this on a 386 of my acquaintance, at least (an NEC luggable, early "laptop", known within my company at the time -- despite it being the *only* portable computer we had -- as "the craptop"; it was so grim, the datacenter manager, who nominally "owned" it, would let me check it as luggage, hoping it would disappear -- but no self-respecting thief would touch it, apparently. Ah, the bad old days.) ..phsiii Remove dots from userid portion of From: to reply. root@localhost ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.87.106.104!surfnet.nl!ruu.nl!tijger.fys.ruu.nl!usenet From: Rik van Riel Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Sender: usenet@fys.ruu.nl (News system Tijgertje) Message-ID: X-Sender: riel@mirkwood.dummy.home In-Reply-To: <6ir1i1$cd2$1@winter.news.erols.com> Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 09:51:20 GMT X-Nntp-Posting-Host: anx1p5.fys.ruu.nl Reply-To: Rik van Riel Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ir1i1$cd2$1@winter.news.erols.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Organization: Linux memory management wishlist. Lines: 24 On Thu, 7 May 1998, phs3 wrote: > In article , linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) wrote: > >I wonder how long it will be until we have variable speed processors? > >Think about it. The CPU could run at super accelerated speeds for > >short periods of time and then slow back down to allow the excess > >heat to dissipate and then speed up again. I wonder what processor > >speed will be printed in the ads for such machines. 1GHz Max! CPU! > > For completeness (and pretty well completely off-thread): earlier laptops had > variable-speed processors, using different amounts of power. You could select > slow, medium, fast (probably labelled something like fast, faster, turbo > thanks to marketroids!). Linux still uses this system, in that it hlt()s the CPU when there's nothing to be done. This results in big power savings on Laptops and keeps the CPU cooler. Rik. +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ | Linux: - LinuxHQ MM-patches page | Scouting webmaster | | - kswapd ask-him & complain-to guy | Vries cubscout leader | | http://www.phys.uu.nl/~riel/ | | +-------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ ###### From: ivie@cc.usu.edu (Roger Ivie) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: Date: 7 May 98 10:27:07 MDT References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> Organization: Utah State University Lines: 25 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-was.dfn.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.wli.net!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-feed4.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!gronk.provo.novell.com!news.cs.utah.edu!cc.usu.edu!ivie In article , gisle@gauk.ii.uib.no (Gisle S{lensminde) writes: > In article , Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: >>Ah yes, the ever-meaningless "unformatted capacity" quote. This one's >>right up there with, "Best ---- in its class", "---X max speed CDROMS" >>(what's the min speed?) and hard drive makers habit of quoting disk >>space in GB meaning 10^9 bytes. Well, at least they don't quote "unfor- >>matted capacity" there. Let's see if a 1440K floppy it touted as having >>a 2.0MB unformatted capacity, that's a bogus factor of +42%. So a 4GB >>(4x2^20) hard drive could be advertised as having an unformatted capacity >>of 6GB!!! G being 10^9, of course. > > Is unformated meaningless? Have you ever tried to tar things directly > to a floppy. On most unix systems with a floppy drive, you can write > something like: You won't get the unformatted capacity using tar. Unformatted capacity means raw bits on the disk; even tar needs sector headers, gaps, etc. Unformatted capacity isn't entirely meaningless. Not everyone in the known universe is trying to cram things into 512-byte sectors. -- -------------------------+---------------------------------------------------- Roger Ivie | "You got advice for me. Well I'm telling you, ivie@cc.usu.edu | I know nothing and I like it that way" http://cc.usu.edu/~ivie/ | -- Eggplant ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-feed4.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!enews.sgi.com!korova.insync.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!xyzzy!nntp From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? X-Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.172.150.50 Message-ID: X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Lines: 21 Sender: nntp@news.boeing.com (Boeing NNTP News Access) Organization: The Boeing Company X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 18:20:33 GMT Hi, Jan! Jan van den Broek wrote in message <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl>... >Eugen Mezei writes: > >> 1,2 MB/5,25" (only for PC newer than 286) >> 1,44MB/3,5" (only for PC newer than 286) > >I hate to disagree with you, but I've seen both working on 286's. You're right. The 1.2 was introduced, along with DOS 3.0, with the original IBM AT, a 286 based computer. The 1.4 was intro'ed with DOS 3.20 (3.10?) and was also available on the current (at that time) IBM AT. RwP ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!141.211.144.13!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!jobone!dailyplanet.srl.ford.com!eccws1.dearborn.ford.com!longhorn!tph From: tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 7 May 1998 22:30:46 GMT Organization: Mechanist Industries Lines: 37 Message-ID: <6itcmm$k3b4@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ir1i1$cd2$1@winter.news.erols.com> Reply-To: tph@rmi.net NNTP-Posting-Host: cs0053.eld.ford.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] : > In article , linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) wrote: : > >I wonder how long it will be until we have variable speed processors? : > >Think about it. The CPU could run at super accelerated speeds for : > >short periods of time and then slow back down to allow the excess : > >heat to dissipate and then speed up again. I wonder what processor : > >speed will be printed in the ads for such machines. 1GHz Max! CPU! The Motorola PowerPC 750 already has such a feature. It has a "Thermal Assist Unit" which senses the chip temperature. It also has a register that controlls the frequency of instruction fetch; it stores an 8-bit number that tells the instruction unit how many cycles to wait between fetches. Its default value is zero. When the temperature exceeds a programmable threshold, the thermal assist unit starts increasing the instruction-fetch-frequency register. This throttles back the instruction fetch and tends to starve the execution units. Since the execution units go to sleep (i.e. no clocking) when they have no instructions to execute, this reduces power consumption. When the temp drops below threshold, instruction fetch comes up to full speed again. The system clock speed never changes in this scheme, but the chip's power dissipation becomes variable, depending on temperature. This was implemented mostly so that the chip could be used in portables. A typical implementation would set the temperature threshold high when the device is plugged in (so it'd run at full speed), but then lower the threshold for battery-powered operation. -- Tom Harrington --------- tph@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph "Television commercials are a form of religious literature." -Neil Postman Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.122.16.44!news.eskimo.com!zaarain From: zaarain@eskimo.com (Mike Warning) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 8 May 1998 16:57:05 GMT Organization: Eskimo North (206) For-Ever Lines: 15 Message-ID: <6ivdh1$9gb$1@eskinews.eskimo.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354FC30A.88C3D7E6@odyssee.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: eskimo.com In article <354FC30A.88C3D7E6@odyssee.net>, DAN wrote: >Just add another floppy drive and you got B: > >Craig Thomas wrote: > >> This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >> on Windoze machines? It's probably a hold over from DOS. DOS would virtualize a B drive for you if you didn't have one. Do a "dir b:" on a machine with only one floppy and DOS would ask you to insert the disk that you wanted to be "the b: disk". Handy for floppy to floppy copies. NT doesn't do this, I don't know if Win3/Win95 does or not. -Mike ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!woodstock.news.demon.net!demon!news.idt.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 8 May 1998 23:40:52 GMT Message-ID: <6j0564$q1c$6@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: man-049.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 19 On 1998-05-03 linley@netcom.com(BruceJamesRobertLinley) said: :I wonder how long it will be until we have variable speed :processors? Think about it. The CPU could run at super accelerated :speeds for short periods of time and then slow back down to allow :the excess heat to dissipate and then speed up again. I wonder what :processor speed will be printed in the ads for such machines. 1GHz :Max! CPU! asynchronous processors, bound by memory time and capable of executing instructions so much faster than memory that the theoretical MIPS value is rendered completely meaningless. for an example, you could do worse than check out http://www.dnai.com/~jfox/ and look under MISC there... -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!fu-berlin.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 8 May 1998 23:40:55 GMT Message-ID: <6j0567$q1c$7@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: <1176.428T630T6864051@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-049.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 20 On 1998-05-04 cgibbs@sky.bus.com said: :The other reason you didn't mix 360K and 1.2M 5 1/4-inch diskettes :was that the 1.2M drives would write narrower tracks (so they could :fit 80 tracks where the 360K drives only had 40). They could read :and write 360K format (by stepping to every second track), but if :you tried to overwrite a 360K disk on a 1.2M drive you'd only write :the middle portion of the track; the original data would still be :on the outer edges of the track, and would cause errors when you :subsequently tried to read the disk on a 360K drive. been bitten by that one, but... we believe that the drive heads were actually the same size, but 40 track drives only have to be half as careful where they put tracks. if they miss, you've had it. why do we believe this? because sometimes it worked, and sometimes writing blank new 40 track disks in 80 track drives didn't. -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-koe1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news.fh-hannover.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 9 May 1998 19:57:35 GMT Message-ID: <6j2cff$sj4$8@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: man-155.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 16 On 1998-05-07 ivie@cc.usu.edu(RogerIvie) said: :Unformatted capacity isn't entirely meaningless. Not everyone in :the known universe is trying to cram things into 512-byte sectors. yes, but it's more useful to find it quoted in terms of "max. flkux transitions per inch"; then if you know what you're doing, you can screw a fair bit more capacity out of the outer cylinders by changing the data rate to match. also, that figure is independent of encoding method. 2 btw, what was the point of M FM? was it more compact than MFM? -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 10 May 1998 11:27:00 GMT Message-ID: <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-036.dialup.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980226 (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.32 (i586)) Lines: 12 Rich Clancey wrote: > You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change > the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. Sensible computers could! (Back in my Atari ST days, I had a single-sided A: drive and a double-sided B:; I seem to recall my BOOTB.PRG was something like four instructions. Run it once, then the thing'd go for B: until something trampled on memory...) -- Pete Fenelon, 3 Beckside Gardens, York, YO10 3TX, UK (pete.fenelon@zetnet.co.uk) ``there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas'' ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 10 May 1998 11:27:00 GMT Message-ID: <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-036.dialup.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980226 (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.32 (i586)) Lines: 12 Rich Clancey wrote: > You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change > the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. Sensible computers could! (Back in my Atari ST days, I had a single-sided A: drive and a double-sided B:; I seem to recall my BOOTB.PRG was something like four instructions. Run it once, then the thing'd go for B: until something trampled on memory...) -- Pete Fenelon, 3 Beckside Gardens, York, YO10 3TX, UK (pete.fenelon@zetnet.co.uk) ``there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas'' ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-dc.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!btnet-peer!btnet!news.clara.net!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 11 May 1998 00:34:05 GMT Lines: 16 Message-ID: <6j5h1t$bb5$6@roch.zetnet.co.uk> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ir1i1$cd2$1@winter.news.erols.com> <6itcmm$k3b4@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-085.dialup.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980226 (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.32 (i586)) Tom Harrington wrote: > This was implemented mostly so that the chip could be used in portables. > A typical implementation would set the temperature threshold high when > the device is plugged in (so it'd run at full speed), but then lower > the threshold for battery-powered operation. Apropos of nothing in particular, anyone know why my office PII-233 (on a Supermicro motherboard, IIRC) will sit there recording a CPU temperature of about 46C most of the time, and blip up to about 200C every so often? :) -- are Intel using their own floating point code to calculate the cpu temperature? :) pete -- Pete Fenelon, 3 Beckside Gardens, York, YO10 3TX, UK (pete.fenelon@zetnet.co.uk) ``there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas'' ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.nyu.edu!btnet-peer!btnet-feed1!btnet!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 11 May 1998 00:35:41 GMT Lines: 9 Message-ID: <6j5h4t$bb5$7@roch.zetnet.co.uk> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6ir1i1$cd2$1@winter.news.erols.com> <6itcmm$k3b4@eccws1.dearborn.ford.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-085.dialup.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980226 (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.32 (i586)) In article , linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) wrote: >speed will be printed in the ads for such machines. 1GHz Max! CPU! IBM already have processors clocking at over 1GHz in the labs. pete -- Pete Fenelon, 3 Beckside Gardens, York, YO10 3TX, UK (pete.fenelon@zetnet.co.uk) ``there's no room for enigmas in built-up areas'' ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!bluesheep.flibble.org!not-for-mail From: Simon Oke Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 13 May 1998 11:38:21 +0100 Organization: North Road Networks Message-ID: <86vhramp5u.fsf@redcow.flibble.org> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354b9e1e.24059710@news.ox.ac.uk> <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ihb6q$nj8$1@xs2.xs4all.nl> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: redcow.flibble.org X-NNTP-Posting-Host: bluesheep.flibble.org:194.217.125.22 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 895056421 nnrp-08:16063 NO-IDENT bluesheep.flibble.org:194.217.125.22 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.6.2/Emacs 20.2 Lines: 16 Pete Fenelon writes: > Rich Clancey wrote: > > You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change > > the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. > > Sensible computers could! (Back in my Atari ST days, I had a single-sided > A: drive and a double-sided B:; I seem to recall my BOOTB.PRG was > something like four instructions. Run it once, then the thing'd go for B: > until something trampled on memory...) That's why the rest of us never relied on such programs, but got out the soldering iron and put in a DPDT switch :-) -- Don't get mad. Get covered in blood as you disembowel your enemies with a chainsaw. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 13 May 1998 17:31:34 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 26 Message-ID: <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2086.vincent.iastate.edu In article <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk>, Pete Fenelon wrote: >Rich Clancey wrote: >> You never could boot from a B: drive, and rather than change >> the BIOS, they've kept C: for the hard drive with the boot stuff on it. >Sensible computers could! (Back in my Atari ST days, I had a single-sided >A: drive and a double-sided B:; I seem to recall my BOOTB.PRG was >something like four instructions. Run it once, then the thing'd go for B: >until something trampled on memory...) The mac largely didn't distinguish between it's floppies. It would try to boot from the internal, and if it found no disk, from the external. BUt it took it farther: the disks were (are) kept track of by name, allowing the use of a program/system disk, and a data disk, with only one drive. When a disk was ejected, it's structure and name remaiend on the desk top. WHen it needed a known disk not in either drive, it would ask for the disk, which could be put into either drive. rick -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 13 May 1998 17:35:11 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 35 Message-ID: <6jclkf$or6$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <1176.428T630T6864051@sky.bus.com> <35502334.5289319@news.nabi.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2086.vincent.iastate.edu In article <35502334.5289319@news.nabi.net>, Evandro Menezes wrote: >>The other reason you didn't mix 360K and 1.2M 5 1/4-inch diskettes >>was that the 1.2M drives would write narrower tracks (so they could >>fit 80 tracks where the 360K drives only had 40). They could read >>and write 360K format (by stepping to every second track), but if >>you tried to overwrite a 360K disk on a 1.2M drive you'd only write >>the middle portion of the track; the original data would still be >>on the outer edges of the track, and would cause errors when you >>subsequently tried to read the disk on a 360K drive. >Not at all! DOS was smart enough to detect a DD disk and instruct the >BIOS to reset its parameters for 40-track operation. Basically, it >skipped one track for a step in 40-track mode with an 80-track drive. >The possible compatibility problems were due to different head >geometries and therefore magnetic fields being recorded differently, >which might cause problems with old or worn off DD drives. Old? or brand new, out of the box. I was at olivetti when they were fighting with this. THey finally spent a fortune (at least by my standards) to do some magneto-photo work of some kind, and figured out that the 720k disks (not the same as the 1.2M) had a naarrower erase head. Thus formatting a demagentized disk on the 720, writing, and moving to a 360 to read worked. The porblem was when data was written over that written by the 360--it didn't get fully erased, and the 360 head picked up both sets of data. rick -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-was.dfn.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Pete Fenelon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 13 May 1998 18:56:51 GMT Message-ID: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6iios2$rt@crcnis3.unl.edu> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-201.dialup.zetnet.co.uk User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980226 (UNIX) (Linux/2.0.32 (i586)) Lines: 12 Rick Hawkins wrote: > BUt it took it farther: the disks were (are) kept track of by name, > allowing the use of a program/system disk, and a data disk, with only > one drive. When a disk was ejected, it's structure and name remaiend on > the desk top. WHen it needed a known disk not in either drive, it would > ask for the disk, which could be put into either drive. The Amiga did the same. (or very similar). My knowledge of Amigas is rather limited, as I once lived in a house with four STs and one Amiga; most of what I remember of them was the fact that their floppy drives made an ungodly racket! pete ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!feeder.qis.net!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!digex!cyclone.mbnet.mb.ca!canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca!tribune.usask.ca!news.uregina.ca!not-for-mail From: bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 13 May 1998 23:36:25 GMT Organization: University of Regina, Dept. of Computer Science Lines: 43 Message-ID: <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: borealis.cs.uregina.ca In article <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu>, Rick Hawkins wrote: [...] >The mac largely didn't distinguish between it's floppies. It would try >to boot from the internal, and if it found no disk, from the external. Actually the reverse, isn't it? It tries the floppy first, and if it's not a boot disk it (*Amazing*!) ejects the disk and tries to boot from the hard drive (probably CD-ROM before the internal drive these days too). >BUt it took it farther: the disks were (are) kept track of by name, >allowing the use of a program/system disk, and a data disk, with only >one drive. When a disk was ejected, it's structure and name remaiend on >the desk top. WHen it needed a known disk not in either drive, it would >ask for the disk, which could be put into either drive. Amigas work this way too (except that the drive information is purged once the last reference to the disk is deleted - if you eject the disk with a shell cd'ed to a directory on it, the disk icon remains on the screen until you cd to another drive, then it vanishes). Going by disk names is really nice, except when you have more than one disk with the same name - the computer can tell them apart (a serial number written when the disk is formatted), but you can't. I once had a pile of disks named "System" that I was trying to make consistant, and when I tried to shut down the Mac kept demanding "Insert disk System in any drive". I eventually had to just power off and paperclip the disk out of the computer (another advantage the Amiga has is the eject button - the disadvantage being that you can eject a disk while it's being written to, but a) most people aren't that stupid, and b) it is robust enough to suspend the operation and politely demand the disk back so it can finish). (The Amiga 1200 also had something long overdue in most computers - a lower lip on the disk drive that stuck out, so you can just rest the disk on the edge and push it in, you don't have to 'aim' it. The best I've seen recently are drive slots which are kind of sculpted to kind of 'funnel' the disks into the drive, but that doesn't really work that well.) -- John Bayko (Tau). bayko@cs.uregina.ca http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~bayko ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 15 May 1998 15:27:25 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 34 Message-ID: <6jhmst$kh8$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2086.vincent.iastate.edu In article <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, John Bayko wrote: >In article <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu>, > Rick Hawkins wrote: >[...] >>The mac largely didn't distinguish between it's floppies. It would try >>to boot from the internal, and if it found no disk, from the external. > Actually the reverse, isn't it? It tries the floppy first, and if >it's not a boot disk it (*Amazing*!) ejects the disk and tries to boot >from the hard drive (probably CD-ROM before the internal drive these >days too). yes. I was referring to the external floppy as the second try . . . > Going by disk names is really nice, except when you have more than >one disk with the same name - the computer can tell them apart (a >serial number written when the disk is formatted), but you can't. I >once had a pile of disks named "System" that I was trying to make >consistant, and when I tried to shut down the Mac kept demanding >"Insert disk System in any drive". I eventually had to just power off >and paperclip the disk out of the computer (another advantage the >Amiga has is the eject button - the disadvantage being that you can >eject a disk while it's being written to, but a) most people aren't >that stupid, are you sure? If there's one thing that 5 years of practicing law taught me, it's that there's no lower bound to human intelligence . . . :) -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!btnet-peer!btnet!newsfeed.internetmci.com!141.211.144.13!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!newsfeed.nyu.edu!newsfeed.sgi.net!news.sgi.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <355C9FA3.CD91C692@usa.net> From: Drayth X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 63 Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 19:59:03 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: dap-146-126.untn.sgi.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 15:59:03 EDT John Bayko wrote: > > In article <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu>, > Rick Hawkins wrote: > [...] > >The mac largely didn't distinguish between it's floppies. It would try > >to boot from the internal, and if it found no disk, from the external. > > Actually the reverse, isn't it? It tries the floppy first, and if > it's not a boot disk it (*Amazing*!) ejects the disk and tries to boot > from the hard drive (probably CD-ROM before the internal drive these > days too). > > >BUt it took it farther: the disks were (are) kept track of by name, > >allowing the use of a program/system disk, and a data disk, with only > >one drive. When a disk was ejected, it's structure and name remaiend on > >the desk top. WHen it needed a known disk not in either drive, it would > >ask for the disk, which could be put into either drive. > > Amigas work this way too (except that the drive information is > purged once the last reference to the disk is deleted - if you eject > the disk with a shell cd'ed to a directory on it, the disk icon remains > on the screen until you cd to another drive, then it vanishes). > Going by disk names is really nice, except when you have more than > one disk with the same name - the computer can tell them apart (a > serial number written when the disk is formatted), but you can't. I > once had a pile of disks named "System" that I was trying to make > consistant, and when I tried to shut down the Mac kept demanding > "Insert disk System in any drive". I eventually had to just power off > and paperclip the disk out of the computer (another advantage the > Amiga has is the eject button - the disadvantage being that you can > eject a disk while it's being written to, but a) most people aren't > that stupid, and b) it is robust enough to suspend the operation and > politely demand the disk back so it can finish). > (The Amiga 1200 also had something long overdue in most computers - > a lower lip on the disk drive that stuck out, so you can just rest the > disk on the edge and push it in, you don't have to 'aim' it. The best > I've seen recently are drive slots which are kind of sculpted to kind > of 'funnel' the disks into the drive, but that doesn't really work > that well.) After they went out of business, whatever happened to Amigas, I agree they were ahead of most others. But I haven't seen them around much anymore, did they go strictly into media applications? ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed.nntp.acc.ca!cyclone.mbnet.mb.ca!canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca!tribune.usask.ca!news.uregina.ca!not-for-mail From: bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 15 May 1998 23:11:02 GMT Organization: University of Regina, Dept. of Computer Science Lines: 22 Message-ID: <6jii26$6bc$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <6jhmst$kh8$1@news.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: borealis.cs.uregina.ca In article <6jhmst$kh8$1@news.iastate.edu>, Rick Hawkins wrote: >In article <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca>, >John Bayko wrote: [...] >>and paperclip the disk out of the computer (another advantage the >>Amiga has is the eject button - the disadvantage being that you can >>eject a disk while it's being written to, but a) most people aren't >>that stupid, > >are you sure? If there's one thing that 5 years of practicing law >taught me, it's that there's no lower bound to human intelligence . . . >:) You're right, I should have qualified that - in fact, *I've* been that stupid a couple of times, which is how I found out what happens when you do. -- John Bayko (Tau). bayko@cs.uregina.ca http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~bayko ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.nyu.edu!cyclone.mbnet.mb.ca!canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca!tribune.usask.ca!news.uregina.ca!not-for-mail From: bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca (John Bayko) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 15 May 1998 23:23:37 GMT Organization: University of Regina, Dept. of Computer Science Lines: 31 Message-ID: <6jiipp$gbm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <355C9FA3.CD91C692@usa.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: borealis.cs.uregina.ca In article <355C9FA3.CD91C692@usa.net>, Drayth wrote: [...] > After they went out of business, whatever happened to Amigas, I agree >they were ahead of most others. But I haven't seen them around much >anymore, did they go strictly into media applications? They were bought by a German company (Escom), which itself went out of business, and then bought by Gateway, which it trying to figure out what they can do with this technology. Coincidentally, they were going to announce their plans for the platform today (May 15), but up to now they've only confirmed that they're updating the OS and have licensed the designs to clone makers (there's a handful of them). The sad thing is that the company folded just about a year before they were about to introduce their future graphics architecture - the company had licensed the designs of one of the HP PA-RISC CPUs (a 7000 series, I think) and were rewiring the core to act as a 3D graphics coprocessor. The CPU/GPU could have been used by itself in very low end systems (a video game console for example), and as an accellerator in the higher end systems. It would be outdated today in the face of the multimedia processors out now, but it would have been a real breakthrough in price/performance for the day. For such a badly managed company (and understaffed R&D department) they had some brilliant engineers. All that design and effort went to waste. The OS is still promising though, with some new development. -- John Bayko (Tau). bayko@cs.uregina.ca http://www.cs.uregina.ca/~bayko ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk (Robert Billing) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sat, 16 May 98 07:33:18 GMT Message-ID: <895303998snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <355C9FA3.CD91C692@usa.net> <6jiipp$gbm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 895320215 mail2news:21169 mail2news mail2news.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Mail2News-Path: news.demon.net!post-11.mail.demon.net!post.mail.demon.net![158.152.132.30] X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 19 In article <6jiipp$gbm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca "John Bayko" writes: > The OS is still promising though, with some new development. OB trivia. The kernel of the OS is in fact Tripos written in BCPL by Richards, the inventor of BCPL. This is why some very low level functions require BCPL strings as parameters, with the byte count in the first byte, rather than null terminated C strings. -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!uni-erlangen.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 16 May 1998 22:18:29 GMT Message-ID: <6jl3bl$och$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: <895303998snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-199.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Trace: irk.zetnet.co.uk 895357109 24977 194.247.40.252 (16 May 1998 22:18:29 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 May 1998 22:18:29 GMT X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 20 On 1998-05-16 unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk said: :bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca "John Bayko" writes: :> The OS is still promising though, with some new development. :OB trivia. The kernel of the OS is in fact Tripos written in BCPL by :Richards, the inventor of BCPL. :This is why some very low level functions require BCPL strings as :parameters, with the byte count in the first byte, rather than null :terminated C strings. in one issue of "byte", some guy enthused wildly about how the lowest level of the Amiga OS was written in an almost OOP way, where everything was based on nodes of doubly-linked lists. was that tripos' structure? and how much did that owe to the structure of streams in OS6? -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Robert Billing Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sun, 17 May 98 05:58:27 GMT Message-ID: <895384707snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <895303998snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <6jl3bl$och$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 895429614 mail2news:5309 mail2news mail2news.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Mail2News-Path: news.demon.net!post-20.mail.demon.net!post.mail.demon.net!tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 17 In article <6jl3bl$och$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> lisard@zetnet.co.uk writes: > level of the Amiga OS was written in an almost OOP way, where everything > was based on nodes of doubly-linked lists. was that tripos' structure? > and how much did that owe to the structure of streams in OS6? I think that is the Tripos structure, and I suspect that it is earlier than OS6. I remember going to a lecture by Richards about the structure of Tripos in about 1976 or 77, so how does that compare? -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mail2news.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: Robert Billing Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sun, 17 May 98 05:58:27 GMT Message-ID: <895384707snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> References: <895303998snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <6jl3bl$och$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> Reply-To: unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Trace: mail2news.demon.co.uk 895429614 mail2news:5309 mail2news mail2news.demon.co.uk X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Mail2News-Path: news.demon.net!post-20.mail.demon.net!post.mail.demon.net!tnglwood.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.29 Lines: 17 In article <6jl3bl$och$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> lisard@zetnet.co.uk writes: > level of the Amiga OS was written in an almost OOP way, where everything > was based on nodes of doubly-linked lists. was that tripos' structure? > and how much did that owe to the structure of streams in OS6? I think that is the Tripos structure, and I suspect that it is earlier than OS6. I remember going to a lecture by Richards about the structure of Tripos in about 1976 or 77, so how does that compare? -- I am Robert Billing, Christian, inventor, traveller, cook and animal lover, I live near 0:46W 51:22N. http://www.tnglwood.demon.co.uk/ "Bother," said Pooh, "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three" ###### From: t92etr@student.tdb.uu.se Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 18 May 1998 13:15:32 GMT Organization: Uppsala Universitet Lines: 33 Message-ID: <6jpc9k$n7d$1@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> References: <895303998snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> <6jl3bl$och$1@irk.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: avior.tdb.uu.se User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980514 (UNIX) (SunOS/5.6 (sun4m)) Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed1.swip.net!genius.dat.hk-r.se!news.ifm.liu.se!Zeke.Update.UU.SE!avior.tdb.uu.se!t92etr lisard@zetnet.co.uk wrote: > On 1998-05-16 unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk said: > :bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca "John Bayko" writes: > :> The OS is still promising though, with some new development. > :OB trivia. The kernel of the OS is in fact Tripos written in BCPL by > :Richards, the inventor of BCPL. > :This is why some very low level functions require BCPL strings as > :parameters, with the byte count in the first byte, rather than null > :terminated C strings. > in one issue of "byte", some guy enthused wildly about how the lowest > level of the Amiga OS was written in an almost OOP way, where everything > was based on nodes of doubly-linked lists. was that tripos' structure? > and how much did that owe to the structure of streams in OS6? The part of AmigaOS that was originally written in BCPL and based on Tripos is dos.library which handles the file-system stuff. The part that the guy in "Byte" talked about was almost certainly Exec which is the lowest level of AmigaOS. Exec was, AFAIK, written in a mixture of C and assembler and isn't based on anything else as far as I know. -- Erik Trulsson t92etr@student.tdb.uu.se ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!not-for-mail From: Buck Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 13:46:45 +0200 Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) Lines: 25 Message-ID: <35601FA5.72AEC891@iiic.ethz.ch> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <355C9FA3.CD91C692@usa.net> <6jiipp$gbm$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <895303998snz@tnglwood.demon.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: rif20.iiic.ethz.ch Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u) Robert Billing wrote: > OB trivia. The kernel of the OS is in fact Tripos written in BCPL by > Richards, the inventor of BCPL. The legend goes that before the official release, the original OS wasn't working at all. So they locked in one programmer with a copy of Tripos and one week later he came out with the finished version of AmigaDOS 1.0. Could explain some things... ;) > This is why some very low level functions require BCPL strings as > parameters, with the byte count in the first byte, rather than null > terminated C strings. > That's true for the old OS Versions, where some of the basic OS-functions were written in BCPL. Since OS 2.04, the whole OS has been written in C and every remnant of BCPL has been removed. (Maybe they left something for backward-combatibility, but I'm not sure about that). buck ---------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga multitasking - Can act as a paper weight AND a door stop ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news.idt.net!netnews.com!howland.erols.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 21 May 1998 14:24:58 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 30 Message-ID: <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2086.vincent.iastate.edu In article <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk>, Pete Fenelon wrote: >Rick Hawkins wrote: >> BUt it took it farther: the disks were (are) kept track of by name, >> allowing the use of a program/system disk, and a data disk, with only >> one drive. When a disk was ejected, it's structure and name remaiend on >> the desk top. WHen it needed a known disk not in either drive, it would >> ask for the disk, which could be put into either drive. >The Amiga did the same. (or very similar). My knowledge of Amigas is rather >limited, as I once lived in a house with four STs and one Amiga; most of what >I remember of them was the fact that their floppy drives made an >ungodly racket! Ahh, but the early mac drives, the 400k model, sang pleasant tunes :) To take advantage of the extra distance on the outer tracks, more sectors were used in the outer than inner tracks. The 400k drives did this by changing the rotational speed of the drive, resulting in a changing tone hummed by the machine. The 800k and later drives instead change the read/write speed, which will make the drive last longer, I suppose, but just isn't the same. rick -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!howland.erols.net!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 00:00:50 GMT Organization: . Lines: 13 Message-ID: <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-17.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) told us > Ahh, but the early mac drives, the 400k model, sang pleasant tunes :) > To take advantage of the extra distance on the outer tracks, more > sectors were used in the outer than inner tracks. The 400k drives did > this by changing the rotational speed of the drive, resulting in a > changing tone hummed by the machine. The 800k and later drives instead > change the read/write speed, which will make the drive last longer, I > suppose, but just isn't the same. Am I mistaken, or is this the way commodore 64 disks also worked? (I mean putting more data on the outer tracks) ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ix.netcom.com!linley From: linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: Organization: Megami no Belldandy-sama no deshi References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 00:12:13 GMT Lines: 29 Sender: linley@netcom17.netcom.com In ye olden post lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) spake... >rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) told us > >> Ahh, but the early mac drives, the 400k model, sang pleasant tunes :) >> To take advantage of the extra distance on the outer tracks, more >> sectors were used in the outer than inner tracks. The 400k drives did >> this by changing the rotational speed of the drive, resulting in a >> changing tone hummed by the machine. The 800k and later drives instead >> change the read/write speed, which will make the drive last longer, I >> suppose, but just isn't the same. > >Am I mistaken, or is this the way commodore 64 disks also worked? >(I mean putting more data on the outer tracks) Commodore floppies did put more sectors ou the outer tracks but *not* by changeing the angular velocity. The data rate to the head was varied (higher data rate on the outer tracks). Hmmm. Did this make data on the outer tracks less stable by having each bit written with a shorter magnetic pulse? Macs, though did vary the angular velocity of the 400/800K floppies. The built-in 8-bit audio DAC was used to control the motor speed. Consequently, one could not play sounds on the Mac while accessing the floppy! -- Bruce James Robert Linley | +---+---+--_ | "Tea is always bitter... but linley@netcom.com | | |NV | UT | blood is warm and sweet." Programmer, Fortunet Inc. | \ CA \ |___ | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA ----------> \*| AZ | - Miyu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.shreve.net!not-for-mail From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 22:56:19 -0500 Organization: Phillips Enterprises Lines: 50 Message-ID: <6k85ji$d3h$1@news.shreve.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6j42u4$1ss$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.214.45.246 X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Hi, John! John Bayko wrote in message <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca>... >In article <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu>, > Rick Hawkins wrote: >[...] >>The mac largely didn't distinguish between it's floppies. It would try >>to boot from the internal, and if it found no disk, from the external. > > Actually the reverse, isn't it? It tries the floppy first, and if >it's not a boot disk it (*Amazing*!) ejects the disk and tries to boot >from the hard drive (probably CD-ROM before the internal drive these >days too). No, the boot sequence that works for ANY Macintosh up to the Power Macs (and through, AFAIK) is: Internal Floppy #0 (only on single-floppy Macs) Internal Floppy #1 (upper on SE, right on Mac IIs with the big case) Exernal Floppy Device set as startup device (SE and later) HD20 #0 (floppy-port interfaced external HD for Mac 512K - used on othes) HD20 #1 HD20 #2 HD20 #3 Internal IDE Hard Disk SCSI ID 6 SCSI ID 5 SCSI ID 4 SCSI ID 3 SCSI ID 2 SCSI ID 1 SCSI ID 0 and repeat ... Note: The "Device set as startup device" includes, as possibilities, ANY of the SCSI IDs and also any of the HD20s for those devices that support HD20's. AND - Not all Macs support ALL devices (as in 512K Macs didn't support SCSI, the older SCSI-only Macs don't support IDE, the LCIII only supported one floppy drive, etc.) RwP ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!Supernews73!supernews.com!Supernews69!not-for-mail From: wess@gtii.com (Wes Szumera) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 11:56:01 GMT Organization: Definite Lack Of Lines: 29 Approved: CIA@FBI.MIL Message-ID: <6kbma8$3fp$1@supernews.com> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <354E7086.5F360101@maqs.net> Reply-To: wess@gtii.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.154.70.141 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: 896097416 88UCK0SMG468DD09AC usenet76.supernews.com X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 charles wrote: >Craig Thomas wrote: >> >> This might be a ridiculous question, but why isn't B used as a drive letter >> on Windoze machines? It is, but you have to have a dual floppy drive system. Once, long ago, we tended to have a program and a data disk. Program in A, data in b:. This is before harddisks. B: is being reserved to keep from freaking out old timers. Dual floppies are not what you call a selling feature these days. >> >> A is always the floppy drive >> C is at least 1 of the hard drive partitions >> D and above are the CD/DVD, Removable storage, other drives... >> >> Why is/was B not used? >> >> Don't tell me 'cause B=Bill, either;-) >> >> -- >> craig >> Craigths@worldnet.att.net >B: was anouther name for the A: drive in a single floppy machine and >used if you needed to copy to a second disk. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 25 May 1998 16:56:44 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 19 Message-ID: <6kc7sc$ukm$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2087.vincent.iastate.edu In article , Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: >Macs, though did vary the angular velocity of the 400/800K floppies. The >built-in 8-bit audio DAC was used to control the motor speed. Consequently, >one could not play sounds on the Mac while accessing the floppy! And I always assumed that it was because the machine was busy, and had stopped doing everything else. But I'm pretty sure that it was only the 400k drives that did this; I don't recall the mac plus's i knews singing. rick -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsxfer3.itd.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 25 May 1998 17:00:08 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 22 Message-ID: <6kc82o$scl$1@news.iastate.edu> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jdapp$7va$1@sue.cc.uregina.ca> <6k85ji$d3h$1@news.shreve.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv2087.vincent.iastate.edu In article <6k85ji$d3h$1@news.shreve.net>, Ralph Wade Phillips wrote: > Note: The "Device set as startup device" includes, as >possibilities, ANY of the SCSI IDs and also any of the HD20s for those >devices that support HD20's. And, on the Classic, the internal rom-disk. I set it to this once out of curiosity. If it had allowed external drivers, I probably would have kept it. It descrives the startup disk as something like "somewhere within the silicon" . . . Why they never did this on any of the portable models, I haven't a clue. Seems rather obvious to me . . . -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 19:42:11 GMT Organization: . Message-ID: <3576beae.7799134@news.innet.be> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-48.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes Lines: 13 peterk@combo.ganesha.com (Dr. Peter Kittel) told us > In article linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: > >Commodore floppies did put more sectors ou the outer tracks but *not* > >by changeing the angular velocity. The data rate to the head was varied > >(higher data rate on the outer tracks). > > Yes, and this all by pure 6502 software, no own hardware involved. Didn't they use to have an extra processor in each disk drive, hence the high price of the drives compared to "standard" ones, or was that another computer? ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!xyzzy!not-for-mail From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? X-Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.172.150.50 Message-ID: X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Lines: 37 Sender: nntp@news.boeing.com (Boeing NNTP News Access) Organization: The Boeing Company X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kc7sc$ukm$1@news.iastate.edu> Date: Mon, 25 May 1998 20:04:05 GMT Hi, Rick! Rick Hawkins wrote in message <6kc7sc$ukm$1@news.iastate.edu>... >In article , >Bruce James Robert Linley wrote: > >>Macs, though did vary the angular velocity of the 400/800K floppies. The >>built-in 8-bit audio DAC was used to control the motor speed. Consequently, >>one could not play sounds on the Mac while accessing the floppy! > >And I always assumed that it was because the machine was busy, and had >stopped doing everything else. > >But I'm pretty sure that it was only the 400k drives that did this; I >don't recall the mac plus's i knews singing. Well, the 800K floppy didn't "sing" like the 400K floppy, but it DID vary in speed - audible when you were doing a disk copy (what was MORE audible was the increasing step rate .... on the 800K disk drives.) I'd record one for ya, as a .WAV file, if I could still find a 800K floppy (would be no problem to use on my SE/30, since it still has the external floppy port AND ROM support for said 800K disk drive ... ) RwP > >rick >-- >R E HAWKINS >rhawkins@iastate.edu > >These opinions will not be those of ISU until they pay my retainer. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!newsfeed.nacamar.de!europa.clark.net!208.134.241.18!newsfeed.internetmci.com!199.0.154.208!ais.net!news.indiana.edu!not-for-mail From: bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 26 May 1998 14:00:27 GMT Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Message-ID: <6kehtr$3qv$2@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <3576beae.7799134@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: torgo.educ.indiana.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 Lines: 21 In article <3576beae.7799134@news.innet.be>, lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) writes: > peterk@combo.ganesha.com (Dr. Peter Kittel) told us > >> In article linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: >> >Commodore floppies did put more sectors ou the outer tracks but *not* >> >by changeing the angular velocity. The data rate to the head was varied >> >(higher data rate on the outer tracks). >> >> Yes, and this all by pure 6502 software, no own hardware involved. > > Didn't they use to have an extra processor in each disk drive, > hence the high price of the drives compared to "standard" ones, > or was that another computer? > Yup. There was a processor in each drive...16K of ram too. some fastloaders would put code in the drive's ram and run it from there. Kinda cool, really. Brian Wheeler bdwheele@indiana.edu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!nsw.nntp.telstra.net!nsw.nnrp.telstra.net!not-for-mail From: das@picknowl.com.au (David Simpson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 15:11:48 GMT Organization: Telstra Internet Browse Server Lines: 32 Message-ID: <356c706b.12037747@news.picknowl.com.au> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <3576beae.7799134@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.24.76.63 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/16.451 On Mon, 25 May 1998 19:42:11 GMT, lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) wrote: >peterk@combo.ganesha.com (Dr. Peter Kittel) told us > >> In article linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: >> >Commodore floppies did put more sectors ou the outer tracks but *not* >> >by changeing the angular velocity. The data rate to the head was varied >> >(higher data rate on the outer tracks). >> >> Yes, and this all by pure 6502 software, no own hardware involved. > >Didn't they use to have an extra processor in each disk drive, >hence the high price of the drives compared to "standard" ones, >or was that another computer? The interface was serial at 2000 baud. The interpreting was done by the drive hence the processor in the drive case. Sort of a precursor to today's IDE drives obviously. Patience was a Commodore 1541 floppy nowadays it's a 1.4M floppy. As an historical aside Amstrad CPC 464 and 6128 tape drives ran at the same speed as the Commodore disk drive recording and reading data at 2000 baud. They also had a slower setting, for greater reliability, of 1000 baud. This was, however, a big improvement over Commodore and TRS80 tapes which recorded at 300 baud. Now that's slow. David Simpson das@picknowl.com.au =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= You know you're getting older when... you're having sex with someone half your age and it's legal. ###### Date: 27 May 98 12:40:52 -0800 From: "Charlie Gibbs" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? References: Message-ID: <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Lines: 17 X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.skybus.com Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!204.244.4.2!news.westel.com!news.skybus.com!204.244.247.115 In article linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: >But the exact opposite was true. DD floppies would fail more often on >Macs than on PCs because Macs were trying to stuff 800K onto a floppy >certified to support 720K. Later, I recall seeing floppies advertised >as being "Mac Certified". These, of course, costed more. Meanwhile, the Amiga reads and writes entire tracks at a time and splits out the sectors in software; by getting rid of inter-sector gaps it reliably puts 880K on those same floppies using the same bit density as IBM format - which provides the added bonus of being able to also read and write IBM 720K format. -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!ix.netcom.com!linley From: linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: Organization: Megami no Belldandy-sama no deshi References: <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 16:23:56 GMT Lines: 22 Sender: linley@netcom10.netcom.com In ye olden post bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au spake... > >You should take a look at the way the VAV was implemented in the original >Mac.... it had a Woz-ish elegance to it, which would have made the extra >cost about 50 cents or so. And it _does_ have the advantage of keeping >all bits the same length in time as well as in space --- which, due to the >inherently analogue nature of the disk heads and thus the limit on the >slope of signal flanks, should allow for either a slightly more robust >(if they disk is _slower_ on the outer tracks) or a slightly higher speed >(if instead the disk is _faster_ on the _inner_ tracks) than a pure software >solution. But the exact opposite was true. DD floppies would fail more often on Macs than on PCs because Macs were trying to stuff 800K onto a floppy certified to support 720K. Later, I recall seeing floppies advertised as being "Mac Certified". These, of course, costed more. -- Bruce James Robert Linley | +---+---+--_ | "Tea is always bitter... but linley@netcom.com | | |NV | UT | blood is warm and sweet." Programmer, Fortunet Inc. | \ CA \ |___ | Las Vegas, Nevada, USA ----------> \*| AZ | - Miyu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news.idt.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!wn3feed!135.173.83.25!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!dpeschel From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 27 May 1998 20:21:03 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 13 Message-ID: <6khsjf$17j0$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> References: <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: saul10.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 896300463 40544 (None) 140.142.64.4 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: dpeschel In article <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com>, Charlie Gibbs wrote: >Meanwhile, the Amiga reads and writes entire tracks at a time and >splits out the sectors in software; by getting rid of inter-sector >gaps it reliably puts 880K on those same floppies using the same >bit density as IBM format - which provides the added bonus of being >able to also read and write IBM 720K format. Is this basically the same method that IBM-compatible systems use to put 1.6 megabytes on a 1.4-meg floppy? -- Derek ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!194.72.7.126!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 27 May 1998 20:21:06 GMT Message-ID: <6khsji$8kb$3@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: <6kc7sc$ukm$1@news.iastate.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: man-025.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Trace: irk.zetnet.co.uk 896300466 8843 194.247.41.31 (27 May 1998 20:21:06 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 May 1998 20:21:06 GMT X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X Lines: 23 On 1998-05-25 rhawkins@iastate.edu(RickHawkins) said: :>Macs, though did vary the angular velocity of the 400/800K :>floppies. The built-in 8-bit audio DAC was used to control the :>motor speed. Consequently, one could not play sounds on the Mac :>while accessing the floppy! :And I always assumed that it was because the machine was busy, and :had stopped doing everything else. :But I'm pretty sure that it was only the 400k drives that did this; :I don't recall the mac plus's i knews singing. well, this is just a guess, because we never spent more than two minutes in front of a mac with a 400k or 800k disk drive - but we read somewhere that whilst all the pre-1.44Mb-floppy macs varied the drive speed, in the 400k drive it was done using the DAC, but by the time the 800k floppy came out they had switched to a different type of floppy drive that did the speed changes itself, thus freeing the Mac from the responsibility. could this explain the sudden lack of harmony...? -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!europa.clark.net!194.162.162.196!newsfeed.nacamar.de!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.clara.net!peer.news.zetnet.net!zetnet.co.uk!not-for-mail From: lisard@zetnet.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 27 May 1998 20:21:08 GMT Lines: 19 Message-ID: <6khsjk$8kb$4@irk.zetnet.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: man-025.dialup.zetnet.co.uk X-Trace: irk.zetnet.co.uk 896300468 8843 194.247.41.31 (27 May 1998 20:21:08 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: 27 May 1998 20:21:08 GMT X-Everything: Net-Tamer V 1.08X On 1998-05-23 linley@netcom.com(BruceJamesRobertLinley) said: :Commodore floppies did put more sectors ou the outer tracks but :*not* by changeing the angular velocity. The data rate to the head :was varied (higher data rate on the outer tracks). Hmmm. Did this :make data on the outer tracks less stable by having each bit :written with a shorter magnetic pulse? unlikely, since it's the flux transition (from one polarity to the other) that produces the pulses which are converted back into a bit stream by the drive electronics. no matter how the data rate varied, the transition from high to low would still be virtually instantaneous, and wouldn't affect the reliability from that point of view - what would screw things up is cramming too many transitions together on the disk track. -- Communa (together) we remember... we'll see you falling you know soft spoken changes nothing to sing within her... ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news-was.dfn.de!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mel.connect.com.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!towncrier.cc.monash.edu.au!wombat.cs.monash.edu.au!not-for-mail From: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 28 May 1998 00:45:29 +1000 Organization: This is innd taking over... Lines: 33 Message-ID: <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> Reply-To: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au NNTP-Posting-Host: modem05.cs.monash.edu.au X-NNTP-Posting-User: root peterk@combo.ganesha.com (Dr. Peter Kittel) writes: >In article linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: >>Macs, though did vary the angular velocity of the 400/800K floppies. >Seems to me that this little software trick in the Commodores (not >only in the C64, but also in the predecessing CBM floppy drives) >is a bit cheaper to build than such variable speed Apple drives. You should take a look at the way the VAV was implemented in the original Mac.... it had a Woz-ish elegance to it, which would have made the extra cost about 50 cents or so. And it _does_ have the advantage of keeping all bits the same length in time as well as in space --- which, due to the inherently analogue nature of the disk heads and thus the limit on the slope of signal flanks, should allow for either a slightly more robust (if they disk is _slower_ on the outer tracks) or a slightly higher speed (if instead the disk is _faster_ on the _inner_ tracks) than a pure software solution. But seeing as the serial floppies from C= were famous for a) their slowness (which was mainly an interface problem, but that doesn't matter for the user), and b) their complexity (a 1541 attached to a C64 had more processing power than the C64 itself!), the point seems a bit moot. Bernie -- ============================================================================ "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy... ...let's go exploring" Calvin's final words, on December 31st, 1995 ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news-lond.gip.net!news-stkh.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed1.funet.fi!news.cs.hut.fi!learnet.freenet.hut.fi!not-for-mail From: "S. T." Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 28 May 98 02:52:50 +0300 Organization: Freenet Finland Message-ID: <356CD182.MD-0.198.no@spam.he.re> References: <355C9FA3.CD91C692@usa.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: dialin-0-16.evitech.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: MicroDot-II/AmigaOS 0.198 Lines: 58 Drayth (mindscrew@usa.net) wrote on Fri, 15 May 1998 19:59:03 GMT: > John Bayko wrote: > > > > In article <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu>, > > Rick Hawkins wrote: > > > > >BUt it took it farther: the disks were (are) kept track of by name, > > >allowing the use of a program/system disk, and a data disk, with only > > >one drive. When a disk was ejected, it's structure and name remaiend on > > >the desk top. WHen it needed a known disk not in either drive, it would > > >ask for the disk, which could be put into either drive. > > > > Amigas work this way too (except that the drive information is > > purged once the last reference to the disk is deleted - if you eject > > the disk with a shell cd'ed to a directory on it, the disk icon remains > > on the screen until you cd to another drive, then it vanishes). > > Going by disk names is really nice, except when you have more than > > one disk with the same name - the computer can tell them apart (a > > serial number written when the disk is formatted), but you can't. I The computer can't necessarily either, if something refers by the disk's name. There's no way of knowing which disk is meant. > > once had a pile of disks named "System" that I was trying to make > > consistant, and when I tried to shut down the Mac kept demanding > > "Insert disk System in any drive". I eventually had to just power off > > and paperclip the disk out of the computer (another advantage the > > Amiga has is the eject button - the disadvantage being that you can > > eject a disk while it's being written to, but a) most people aren't > > that stupid, and b) it is robust enough to suspend the operation and > > politely demand the disk back so it can finish). I'd prefer both. Auto-ejecting floppy drive would be cool. :) After all, I already have auto-ejecting CD-drives. > > (The Amiga 1200 also had something long overdue in most computers - > > a lower lip on the disk drive that stuck out, so you can just rest the > > disk on the edge and push it in, you don't have to 'aim' it. The best IIRC A500 also had it. But yes, you could just shove the disk in. > After they went out of business, whatever happened to Amigas, I agree After /who/ went out of business? Escom bought Amiga after the liquidation of CBM, went bust, Gateway 2000 bought Amiga International (or whatever its name was), and several companies now have licensing deals on manufacturing Amiga "clones". AmigaOS 4.0 should be out in November (IIRC) (see www.amigainc.com). I've heard that the company that bought the Commodore name (Tulip) has also declared bankruptcy. If that isn't sort-of-hilarious I don't know what is. :) > they were ahead of most others. But I haven't seen them around much > anymore, did they go strictly into media applications? The US video market has probably drained Europe of any "extra" big-box Amigas (now there's an ambiguous word: my A1200 is for most intents a "big-box Amiga", since it's in a tower case and even has Zorro slots). ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!server6.netnews.ja.net!server4.netnews.ja.net!doc.ic.ac.uk!gatsby.u-net.com!not-for-mail From: David Wragg Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 28 May 1998 21:23:20 +0000 Organization: Dept. of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK. Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: getsetgo.doc.ic.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.108) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/XEmacs 20.4 - "Emerald" linley@netcom.com (Bruce James Robert Linley) writes: > But the exact opposite was true. DD floppies would fail more often on > Macs than on PCs because Macs were trying to stuff 800K onto a floppy > certified to support 720K. Later, I recall seeing floppies advertised > as being "Mac Certified". These, of course, costed more. As I recall, typical boxes of "720K" floppy would say something like this on the side: Unformatted Capacity 1.0MB IBM PC formatted capacity 720KB Apple Macintosh formatted capacity 800KB I don't recall ever seeing a box of floppies ever saying anything like "certified for 720KB", or ever seeing Mac floppies distinguished before the days of preformatted floppies. I'm not saying it didn't happen (I have never been a Mac owner, so I had no real incentive to notice), but I don't think I could have been terribly common in the UK at least. -- Dave Wragg ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!masternews.telia.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!158.43.192.17!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 21:28:16 GMT Organization: . Lines: 40 Message-ID: <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be> References: <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> <6khsjf$17j0$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-109.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) told us > In article <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com>, > Charlie Gibbs wrote: > > >Meanwhile, the Amiga reads and writes entire tracks at a time and > >splits out the sectors in software; by getting rid of inter-sector > >gaps it reliably puts 880K on those same floppies using the same > >bit density as IBM format - which provides the added bonus of being > >able to also read and write IBM 720K format. Fine system, were it not that 1) reading a track at once increases the chance of a read error 2) a single bad sector on an IBM disk may translate to a bad track on an amiga. Some PC disk copy software (read 'illegal' before 'copy') also read and wrote disks that way, to speed up copying (read 'to bypass copy protection schemes with odd sector numbering'). PC OSes do use track writes: when formatting a disk. > Is this basically the same method that IBM-compatible systems use to put 1.6 > megabytes on a 1.4-meg floppy? > > -- Derek Almost: DMF disks use sectors just like other disks, but put more of them on a track by decreasing the inter-sector gap size. The smaller the gap, the more sectors - but also the more likely your controller won't be able to find the start of the next sector after a number of writes, which is (imo) one of the reasons why MS uses them for distribution (assuming you'll never write to them), but won't let you format your own DMF disks. The main reason is, obviously, copy protection. In DOS you need a TSR to be able to read and write DMF, but win95 can handle them without any help, btw. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!199.0.154.208!ais.net!news.indiana.edu!not-for-mail From: bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 29 May 1998 14:27:37 GMT Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington Lines: 73 Message-ID: <6kmgkp$4k0$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> References: <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> <6khsjf$17j0$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: torgo.educ.indiana.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 In article <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be>, lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) writes: > dpeschel@u.washington.edu (D. Peschel) told us > >> In article <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com>, >> Charlie Gibbs wrote: >> >> >Meanwhile, the Amiga reads and writes entire tracks at a time and >> >splits out the sectors in software; by getting rid of inter-sector >> >gaps it reliably puts 880K on those same floppies using the same >> >bit density as IBM format - which provides the added bonus of being >> >able to also read and write IBM 720K format. > > Fine system, were it not that > 1) reading a track at once increases the chance of a read error How? Looking at the timing hole (or whatever the 3.5" equivalent is, and reading the transitions off the disk until you see the timing hole gives you exactly 1 track of MFM data. There are CRCs, etc in that data, so it can be determined if a sector is bad, etc. > 2) a single bad sector on an IBM disk may translate to a bad > track on an amiga. Nope. Its six of one, a half dozen of another. > > Some PC disk copy software (read 'illegal' before 'copy') also > read and wrote disks that way, to speed up copying (read 'to > bypass copy protection schemes with odd sector numbering'). The standard PC floppy controller has *never* had the ability to read or write whole tracks. It is a 'smart' controller which deals with data in a sector-based fashion only. > > PC OSes do use track writes: when formatting a disk. Nope. The controller does the 'track write', but the PC OSes have no ability to control what gets written. The controller writes sector information (I.E CRCs, timing marks, etc) but no data. The data is put onto the disk during a format sector-at-a-time. > >> Is this basically the same method that IBM-compatible systems use to put 1.6 >> megabytes on a 1.4-meg floppy? >> >> -- Derek > > Almost: DMF disks use sectors just like other disks, but put more > of them on a track by decreasing the inter-sector gap size. > > The smaller the gap, the more sectors - but also the more likely > your controller won't be able to find the start of the next > sector after a number of writes, which is (imo) one of the > reasons why MS uses them for distribution (assuming you'll never > write to them), but won't let you format your own DMF disks. > The main reason is, obviously, copy protection. > > In DOS you need a TSR to be able to read and write DMF, but win95 > can handle them without any help, btw. > Its not 'obviously' copy protection. Its to make it cheaper to distribute things on floppies...because there's less floppies to use. If you can read/write DMF disks, what's to stop you from copying them? Nothing. You can read the disks in '95 without additional software, so what's to stop you from copying the files from the disk? Nothing. If it was selected for copy protection reasons, they did a piss poor job implementing it. Brian Wheeler bdwheele@indiana.edu ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!fci-se!fci!masternews.telia.net!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.nyu.edu!rockyd.rockefeller.edu!not-for-mail From: alex*@*rockvax.rockefeller.edu (Alexandre Pechtchanski) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Organization: Rockefeller University Hospital (GCRC), New York Message-ID: <356fd703.8965623@Rockyd> References: <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> <6khsjf$17j0$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be> <6kmgkp$4k0$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 10 Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 15:40:09 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: hospc6.rockefeller.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 11:40:09 EDT On 29 May 1998 14:27:37 GMT, bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) wrote: [ discussing use of DMF diskettes by Microsoft ] >If it was selected for copy protection reasons, they did a piss poor >job implementing it. Which is a valid summation for most Microsoft programming efforts. [ When replying, remove *'s from address ] Alexandre Pechtchanski, Systems Manager, RUH, NY ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.erols.net!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!warm.news.pipex.net!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 21:48:29 GMT Organization: . Lines: 99 Message-ID: <3587272b.20730078@news.innet.be> References: <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> <6khsjf$17j0$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be> <6kmgkp$4k0$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: uu194-7-231-17.unknown.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) told us > In article <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be>, > lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) writes: > > Fine system, were it not that > > 1) reading a track at once increases the chance of a read error > How? Looking at the timing hole (or whatever the 3.5" equivalent > is, and reading the transitions off the disk until you see the timing > hole gives you exactly 1 track of MFM data. There are CRCs, etc in that > data, so it can be determined if a sector is bad, etc. Missing a single bit (I don't mean reading the wrong value, I mean missing it completely - brobably your drive speed would have to be off a bit) would mean everything that follows is shifted: bye bye CRC, and bye bye following sectors. It could be checked and corrected by software, but not without significant CPU load. Don't believe that it can't happen, because (years ago, on my TRS-80, when I was trying to get some data off of bad disks) I've seen it happen time after time, even when just reading a single sector. Imagine what it could do if you were trying to read the entire track. The symptoms were that by reading the sector time and time again with a disk utility and looking at the data, it would always be identical up to around a certain byte, and completely different for each read beyond that. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to discredit any computer type or OS so, I'm just trying to express my doubts in the reliability of a certain way of handling disk reads and writes. All systems certainly have their advantages and disadvantages (usually speed & capacity versus reliability), and we wouldn't know which were the good ones if nobody had ever had the courage to try something that's different from what everyone else uses. > > 2) a single bad sector on an IBM disk may translate to a bad > > track on an amiga. > > Nope. Its six of one, a half dozen of another. If you mean the PC would lock out a range of sectors or a complete track: yes. But a read error in one sector would still leave the data in the rest of the track intact, so data recovery would be a lot easier. And _my_ usual way of handling it is not to lock out the track after an error, but to throw away the disk. > > PC OSes do use track writes: when formatting a disk. > > Nope. The controller does the 'track write', but the PC OSes have > no ability to control what gets written. The controller writes sector > information (I.E CRCs, timing marks, etc) but no data. I'll have to dig up some old books and check it out. The way I remember it the PC would prepare the complete track (sector headers and numbers, data, CRC, inter-sector gaps and all) in memory, and then tell the controller "here's what your track is supposed to look like, now write it please". Or did the TRS-80 do it that way? I'm beginning to doubt, but I thought that controller had a format command, but not a track write (which are essentially the same, except that a 'format' would generate everything on the fly, rather than read it from memory). > The data is > put onto the disk during a format sector-at-a-time. That's completely new to me. > > The main reason is, obviously, copy protection. > Its not 'obviously' copy protection. Its to make it cheaper to > distribute things on floppies...because there's less floppies to use. > If you can read/write DMF disks, what's to stop you from copying them? The point is that with MS software you can write, but not format them. Now we all can have DMF disks as many as we like, as long as we buy them with MS software on it. That also means we couldn't even back up distribution disks (let alone make illegal copies of them) until some third party software (diskimant) came along. When win95 came out, the time it took the smaller pirates (that would otherwise just have xeroxed the labels and copied the disks) to figure out how to format them, could be just enough of a delay to ensure that there were mostly only legal MS disks in the shops. It's just a drop of water in an ocean (it did nothing to prevent copying CD's), but I believe they'd do anything if it could slow down illegal copying. My personal belief is that they originally intended to suport it fully, until some commercial genius thought about disabling it to put sand in some pirates' lunchboxes, and later they just didn't get to reenabling it. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers From: ehrice@his.com (Edward Rice) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: Organization: NDS Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 01:30:41 -0400 References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: pm3-33.his.com Lines: 10 X-Authenticated-User: ehrice Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-xfer.netaxs.com!news4.his.com!user In article <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au>, bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au wrote: > b) their complexity (a 1541 attached to a C64 had more processing power > than the C64 itself!), This was also true of Apple Laserwriter printers hooked up to Macintoshes. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!logbridge.uoregon.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-peer-east.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!fci-se!fci!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!news.chalmers.se!not-for-mail From: tl@cd.chalmers.se (Torbj|rn Lindgren) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 1 Jun 1998 12:12:35 GMT Organization: Chalmers Computer Society, Gothenburg, Sweden Lines: 55 Message-ID: <6ku5rj$dh6$1@nyheter.chalmers.se> References: <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be> <6kmgkp$4k0$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> <3587272b.20730078@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: milou.cd.chalmers.se In article <3587272b.20730078@news.innet.be>, Luc Van der Veken wrote: >bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) told us >> In article <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be>, >> lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) writes: >> > The main reason is, obviously, copy protection. >> Its not 'obviously' copy protection. Its to make it cheaper to >> distribute things on floppies...because there's less floppies to use. >> If you can read/write DMF disks, what's to stop you from copying them? > >The point is that with MS software you can write, but not format >them. Now we all can have DMF disks as many as we like, as long >as we buy them with MS software on it. That also means we >couldn't even back up distribution disks (let alone make illegal >copies of them) until some third party software (diskimant) came >along. The programs were available well before MS started with DMF disks... I suspect even some of the diskcopy programs NOT aimed at copy-protected disks would have handled, even versions that was 2-3 year old at that point! Anything aimed at copying copy-protected disks that was new enough to *handle* 3.5" HD disks at all would easily have copied those disks! The only thing it really did was cut down the distribution and production costs a little, due to less floppy disks. *Others* had actually done the same several years before MS first did it (starting with 360K 5.25" disks many years earlier), none anywhere near as large as MS though :-) >When win95 came out, the time it took the smaller pirates (that >would otherwise just have xeroxed the labels and copied the >disks) to figure out how to format them, could be just enough of >a delay to ensure that there were mostly only legal MS disks in >the shops. If they had done it 5 years or so earlier, perhaps... Naw, probably not, anything using 3.5" disks on PC, even 720K disks, were much to late for making any difference in the duplication process! These programs were easily available (think commercial "only for backup copies" programs for example, and with some contacts it wasn't hard to get them from other sources too), so I strongly doubt that anyone who duplicated more than a few disks didn't have them already. >It's just a drop of water in an ocean (it did nothing to prevent >copying CD's), but I believe they'd do anything if it could slow >down illegal copying. IMNSHO it's *possible* that someone actually thought it would slow down the copying process. I wouldn't call it likely, not even from MS. ###### From: Erik Trulsson Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 3 Jun 1998 16:35:04 GMT Organization: Uppsala Universitet Lines: 21 Message-ID: <6l3tvo$8fs$1@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: zubenelgenubi.tdb.uu.se User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-980514 (UNIX) (SunOS/5.6 (sun4m)) Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!fci-se!fci!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.uu.se!Zeke.Update.UU.SE!zubenelgenubi.tdb.uu.se!t92etr > In article <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au>, > bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au wrote: > > b) their complexity (a 1541 attached to a C64 had more processing power > > than the C64 itself!), Not really. They both had a 1MHz 6510 CPU so they actually had the same amount of processing power. (Except that the C64 had more RAM than the 1541.) -- Erik Trulsson t92etr@student.tdb.uu.se ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 03 Jun 1998 22:31:01 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 28 Message-ID: References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <6l3tvo$8fs$1@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Erik Trulsson writes: > > In article <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au>, > > bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au wrote: > > > b) their complexity (a 1541 attached to a C64 had more processing power > > > than the C64 itself!), > Not really. They both had a 1MHz 6510 CPU so they actually had the same > amount of processing power. (Except that the C64 had more RAM than the > 1541.) The C64 had an 6510. The 1541 had an 6502. The C64 ran at 1.02MHz on NTSC and 0.98MHz on PAL machines. The 1541 ran at 1MHz. The C64 lossed 0.48MHz on NTSC and 0.40MHz on PAL towards video DMA. The 1541 didn't. The C64 user 1/3 of the remaining power for keyboard scanning. The 1541 didn't. That is why some innovative guys calculated fractals on the 1541. -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ WinCE car, crashing soon on a road near you ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsgate.cistron.nl!het.net!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Thu, 04 Jun 1998 18:19:40 GMT Organization: . Message-ID: <3577c34d.803485@news.innet.be> References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <6l3tvo$8fs$1@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-228.uunet.be Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 X-No-Archive: yes Lines: 18 Neil Franklin told us > The C64 lossed 0.48MHz on NTSC and 0.40MHz on PAL towards video DMA. > The 1541 didn't. I'm not completely with you there: do you mean DMA stopped the processor some 40-48% of the time? > That is why some innovative guys calculated fractals on the 1541. So you could actually download your own code to it's RAM, and let it run there? That makes the 1541 diskdrive an extension computer, instead of a computer extension :) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news.pn.com!nntp.pn.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!news.optus.net.au!wombat.cs.monash.edu.au!not-for-mail From: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 4 Jun 1998 23:08:30 +1000 Organization: This is innd taking over... Lines: 21 Message-ID: <6l668e$i46$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> References: <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <6l3tvo$8fs$1@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> Reply-To: bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au NNTP-Posting-Host: modem12.cs.monash.edu.au Erik Trulsson writes: >> In article <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au>, >> bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au wrote: >> > b) their complexity (a 1541 attached to a C64 had more processing power >> > than the C64 itself!), >Not really. They both had a 1MHz 6510 CPU so they actually had the same >amount of processing power. (Except that the C64 had more RAM than the >1541.) But the 6510 in the floppy wasn't kicked off the bus all the time by the video processor ;-) Bernie -- ============================================================================ "It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy... ...let's go exploring" Calvin's final words, on December 31st, 1995 ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: 05 Jun 1998 23:22:59 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <6l3tvo$8fs$1@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> <3577c34d.803485@news.innet.be> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) writes: > Neil Franklin told us > > The C64 lossed 0.48MHz on NTSC and 0.40MHz on PAL towards video DMA. > > The 1541 didn't. > I'm not completely with you there: do you mean DMA stopped the > processor some 40-48% of the time? Yes! Exactly that. That was even worse than them cheapo PCs today, that use UMA video to save the dedicated video RAMs. They just rediscovered this cost cutting trick that was used by many early microcomputers, including the C64. > > That is why some innovative guys calculated fractals on the 1541. > > So you could actually download your own code to it's RAM, and let > it run there? Yes, the 1541 had ist own 2kByte of SRAM. Of this 5*256Bytes were reserved as read/write buffers. These could also have sectors read into them from disk and then executed instead of sending them to the computer. > That makes the 1541 diskdrive an extension computer, instead of a > computer extension :) Actually it was even wierder. The C64 and the 1541 were connected by something called the Serial IEC Bus. This was an cut down version of the IEEE 488 Bus (quasi an low powered (max 100kByte/s) SCSI bus) used in the Commodore CBM computers. But unlike SCSI drives that get block read/write commands sent over the bus, the 1541 and the CBM drives actually had the file system code run on the drives processor 6502 and the C64 or CBM sent file open/read/write/close commands to it. Sort of makes the 1541 the slowest (2kbit/s) file server in history. BTW: the CBM drives allowed multiple computers, but the users had to avoid resource collision. Also an C64 could sent to its printer (also Serial IEC Bus connected) an print command, followed by an read command to the disk and then the 2 of them would print out autonomously, while the C64 was used for some other program (usually an game). Actually the floppy and printer crashed after doing this, requiring an reset, but the CBM devices continued working after this hack. -- private: Neil.Franklin@ccw.ch.remove http://www.ccw.ch/Neil.Franklin/ office: franklin@arch.ethz.ch.remove http://caad.arch.ethz.ch/~franklin/ WinCE car, crashing soon on a road near you ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newsfeed.skynet.be!newscore.univie.ac.at!btnet-peer!btnet!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!greenaum.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: sam@greenaum.demon.co.ARSE!ARSE!ARSE!uk (Sam.) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 23:04:01 GMT Organization: Nope Message-ID: <3599835c.2212389@158.152.254.65> References: <354BF1EC.E0243C74@hotmail.com> <6ioaat$d8r@riemann.math.psu.edu> <00003587F0DF.NO_UCE@mauve.demon.co.uk> <6m9go6$1bc@p850ug1.demon.co.uk> <6m9s94$a5m@steklov.math.psu.edu> <6mbpf5$pb@p850ug1.demon.co.uk> Reply-To: sam@greenaum.demon.co.ARSE!ARSE!ARSE!uk NNTP-Posting-Host: greenaum.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: greenaum.demon.co.uk:194.222.71.189 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 898729455 nnrp-01:27131 NO-IDENT greenaum.demon.co.uk:194.222.71.189 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 12 The real reason they made hard cards was as a sort of plug-and-play for people who couldn't upgrade some other way. Finding a matched drive for your controller and existing drive might have been a problem. Thus, hard cards were SCSI, so they wouldn't conflict with any other drives or require BIOS support. It was a compatability issue, not a performance one. -------------------------------------------------------------------- I dunno about this infinite number of monleys being able to type the collected works of Shakespeare. Just to get a single Shakespeare paragraph correct would require a whole lot of monkeys. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!199.181.164.14!news.seanet.com!nntp.picarefy.com!picarefy!jwbirdsa From: jwbirdsa@picarefy.picarefy.com (James W. Birdsall) Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter? Message-ID: <1998Jun25.003228.6565@picarefy.picarefy.com> Organization: Green Tiger Software References: <6m9s94$a5m@steklov.math.psu.edu> <6mbpf5$pb@p850ug1.demon.co.uk> <3599835c.2212389@158.152.254.65> Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 00:32:28 GMT Lines: 33 In article <3599835c.2212389@158.152.254.65> sam@greenaum.demon.co.ARSE!ARSE!ARSE!uk writes: >The real reason they made hard cards was as a sort of plug-and-play >for people who couldn't upgrade some other way. Finding a matched >drive for your controller and existing drive might have been a >problem. Actually, I think it was primarily an issue of drive bays. It was typical at the time for cases to have only two or three bays, and for machines to have two floppy drives already. >Thus, hard cards were SCSI, so they wouldn't conflict with >any other drives or require BIOS support. Depends on the hardcard. I have the original Plus Hardcard, a whopping ten megs. Internally, it's a RLL drive, but it pretends to be an exact geometry match for the original XT hard disk. It has a ROM onboard with BIOS extensions and that's the *only* way to get at the disk, short of disassembling the ROM and writing your own driver. It can be jumpered to be the only drive, or a secondary drive, but either way it does not live at the normal port addresses of the XT hard disk controller. I know that later Plus Hardcards relied on drivers supplied with the hardware, but I still doubt that they were actually SCSI. At that time, SCSI controllers were expensive and embedded SCSI drives almost nonexistent. I suspect that internally they were still RLL, since that technology was widely available and relatively cheap. Due to the reliance on device drivers, they could in fact be anything Plus wanted to make them. -- James W. Birdsall http://www.picarefy.com/~jwbirdsa/ jwbirdsa@picarefy.com "For it is the doom of men that they forget." -- Merlin Get the Sun-2 Hardware Reference from ftp.picarefy.com:/pub/Sun-Hardware-Ref Sun-2 Hardware Reference Web Page: http://sun-www.picarefy.com/ ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!u3.farm.idt.net!not-for-mail From: Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as a drive letter?/Disk Errors Date: 31 May 1998 10:02:58 GMT Organization: IDT Internet Services Lines: 102 Message-ID: <6kr9si$sr9@nnrp4.farm.idt.net> References: <6ig58c$pre@bgtnsc01.worldnet.att.net> <6jcldm$qgp$1@news.iastate.edu> <6jcqdj$6ld$1@roch.zetnet.co.uk> <6k1dfq$89p$1@news.iastate.edu> <356d10fb.20722617@news.innet.be> <6kh8u9$4jd$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <772.451T2623T7605452@sky.bus.com> <6khsjf$17j0$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be> <6kmgkp$4k0$1@jetsam.uits.indiana.edu> <3587272b.20730078@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: u3.farm.idt.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA release 961025] Luc Van der Veken wrote: : bdwheele@indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) told us : > In article <3570ad91.2438005@news.innet.be>, : > lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) writes: : > > Fine system, were it not that : > > 1) reading a track at once increases the chance of a read error : > How? Looking at the timing hole (or whatever the 3.5" equivalent : > is, and reading the transitions off the disk until you see the timing : > hole gives you exactly 1 track of MFM data. There are CRCs, etc in that : > data, so it can be determined if a sector is bad, etc. : Missing a single bit (I don't mean reading the wrong value, I : mean missing it completely - brobably your drive speed would have : to be off a bit) would mean everything that follows is shifted: : bye bye CRC, and bye bye following sectors. : It could be checked and corrected by software, but not without : significant CPU load. : Don't believe that it can't happen, because (years ago, on my : TRS-80, when I was trying to get some data off of bad disks) I've : seen it happen time after time, even when just reading a single : sector. Imagine what it could do if you were trying to read the : entire track. : The symptoms were that by reading the sector time and time again : with a disk utility and looking at the data, it would always be : identical up to around a certain byte, and completely different : for each read beyond that. I had this problem about a week ago. I was making container files out of 2 RX-50 floppies (400K, 10 sectors/track, 80 tracks, 512 bytes/sector, 5 1/4") and there were a few bad sectors, most of which I could get by retrying. On the first floppy of this set of 2, there were 3 blocks that could not be read, even by disk utilities; the only way to get anything was to address the controller directly with a quick assembly-language program, which showed a CRC error on each read (but the "read with retries" function could do many retries each second, whereas the O/S would seek to track zero and pause after each error, which was noisy and slow). The data (dumped a block at a time) was the same up to a point, then varied randomly after that point; but on another bad block, only 3 bits varied in the entire 512. bytes and the others were the same from read to read. That block was easy to restore since it contained plain text; also, the bytes containing the bad bits were all read correctly on one of the retries, but at no time were all the bad bits read correctly. BTW the system is a DEC Pro 350 (~PDP 11/23), and the disk was initialized in 1984. [snip] : > > PC OSes do use track writes: when formatting a disk. : > : > Nope. The controller does the 'track write', but the PC OSes have : > no ability to control what gets written. The controller writes sector : > information (I.E CRCs, timing marks, etc) but no data. : I'll have to dig up some old books and check it out. : The way I remember it the PC would prepare the complete track : (sector headers and numbers, data, CRC, inter-sector gaps and : all) in memory, and then tell the controller "here's what your : track is supposed to look like, now write it please". : Or did the TRS-80 do it that way? I'm beginning to doubt, but I I don't know how the TRS-80 did it, but the PC did and does do a diskette format in the above manner; you can format a diskette to any strange or custom format just by altering the table in memory with the fill (data) character, gap sizes, sectors per track, etc. (use INT 1Eh or address the controller directly) and doing and INT 13h/function 5 call to format a specified track with whatever interleave is desired. But speaking of Z80/8080 systems, on the DEC Rainbow 100, which is a dual processor system (Z80A+8088; it can have program code executed by either one just as easily), all disk I/O is done by the Z80A only, for whatever reason. Also (back to the original topic), both Rainbows (under CP/M or MS-DOS) use A: and B: as the first two floppies. C: is reserved for the hard disk under MS/PC-DOS, but on Rainbow MS-DOS (V2.01 or 2.05) one can add a second dual floppy drive which will be assigned to C: and D:; a RAMdisk will be E: regardless of whether the second dual drive was added. The hard disk, if present, is W: for winchester. On PC DOS systems, if there is only one floppy drive (A:), the B: drive becomes a "phantom" drive (see the online help for DISKCOPY and DISKCOMP) so that one can type DISKCOPY A: B: and be prompted to insert the other diskette (one can also do it with DISKCOPY A: A: but one may prefer to keep the letters separate for the two diskettes). One can also use any command with B: (e.g. DIR B:\) and DOS will ask you to insert the other diskette that is to be B:; the next time you reference A: it will again ask you to change diskettes. It mimics what one would do in a two-diskette system with only one drive. This is not just on older systems, but on current ones; it was less common on the older systems since they usually had two diskette drives, whether 5 1/4" or 3.5". BTW, DISKCOPY copies and DISKCOMP compares everything except the serial number in the boot sector; if one wants to make an exact copy one must copy it after, use a disk utility or Debug script, etc. DISKCOMP will consider two diskettes identical if they only differ in the serial number (generated from the date and time of formatting). -- Nick nickz@tribeca.ios.com IC XC + NI KA