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!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!202.14.100.1!status.gen.nz!kcbbs!riplin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as From: riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) Date: 4 May 98 19:44:21 GMT Message-ID: <3298123.71061.6524@kcbbs.gen.nz> References: <354C87F2.3EB02053@concentric.net> Organization: Kappa Crucis Unix BBS, Auckland, New Zealand Lines: 16 In message <<354C87F2.3EB02053@concentric.net>> Shogun44 writes: > > 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 ." And, because it was badly implemented, it coused more problems than it was worth. It was OK if you didn't use SHARE and could put up with new files only being created on the original directory and not on the JOINed directory, but was otherwise worse than useless. It would also screw some software that grubbed around at low level on the disk. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news-was.dfn.de!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.gte.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!202.14.100.1!status.gen.nz!kcbbs!riplin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as From: riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) Date: 5 May 98 03:19:20 GMT Message-ID: <3298124.11960.3919@kcbbs.gen.nz> References: <354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove> Organization: Kappa Crucis Unix BBS, Auckland, New Zealand Lines: 26 In message <<354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove>> Neil Franklin writes: > > 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. IBM PCs (pre-XT) also had a cassette tape port so a diskette less system was usable, or no worse than contempory Ataris and Apples without diskettes. > > 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. At least DRI's Concurrent-CP/M-86 could be configured to give any drive-letter combination required. I have one machine here: A: First hard drive 50Mb B: First diskette C: 2nd drive 50Mb D: 3rd drive 20Mb (not just a partition) E: 2nd diskette C: is hard coded into MS-DOS for no apparent reason. ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!202.14.100.1!status.gen.nz!kcbbs!riplin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as From: riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) Date: 5 May 98 20:44:30 GMT Message-ID: <3298124.74670.22656@kcbbs.gen.nz> References: <6ikfe6$8mr$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> Organization: Kappa Crucis Unix BBS, Auckland, New Zealand Lines: 20 In message <<6ikfe6$8mr$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au>> bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au writes: > > 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. When I added a third diskette, an 80 track DD 720Kb device, it went on as D: after the hard drive. But then I guess it depends on the device drivers used. If the diskette card has its own BIOS supporting 4 drives then this will come in before DOS and before the drive letters are assigned. If the 3rd and 4th diskette support come from drivers loaded in CONFIG.SYS then it is after DOS has taken the letters it wants and 3rd and 4th use whatever is left over. ###### 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 Message-ID: <1998May6.222857.29103@picarefy.picarefy.com> Organization: Green Tiger Software References: <6ikfe6$8mr$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au> <3298124.74670.22656@kcbbs.gen.nz> Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 22:28:57 GMT Lines: 57 In article <3298124.74670.22656@kcbbs.gen.nz> riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) writes: >In message <<6ikfe6$8mr$1@wombat.cs.monash.edu.au>> bmeyer@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au writes: >> >> 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. > >When I added a third diskette, an 80 track DD 720Kb device, >it went on as D: after the hard drive. But then I guess >it depends on the device drivers used. > >If the diskette card has its own BIOS supporting 4 drives >then this will come in before DOS and before the drive >letters are assigned. If the 3rd and 4th diskette support >come from drivers loaded in CONFIG.SYS then it is after >DOS has taken the letters it wants and 3rd and 4th use >whatever is left over. Actually, the full order of letter assignment was even more complicated than that. In a "classic" DOS (e.g. 3.3), it went like this: 1) BIOS-supported floppies (numbered 0, 1, ...), and if there wasn't a second floppy the one drive became both A and B virtually. I never had a no-floppy system so I don't know what happened then. 2) the primary partition on the first BIOS-supported hard drive (0x80). Since the BIOS only knew how to boot from the first hard drive and if you were booting DOS, it had to be from the primary partition, this is how 'C' became so completely associated with the boot hard drive. 3) the primary partition on the second BIOS-supported hard drive (0x81). 3a)Since the typical MFM/RLL/ESDI disk controller only supported two disks, I don't know what happened if you had more than two BIOS-supported disks, but I suppose it went on assigning letters to primary partitions until it ran out of disks. 4) the logical drives in the extended partition on disk 0x80, in order. 5) the logical drives in the extended partition on disk 0x81, in order. 5a)Presumably logical drives in extended partitions on additional BIOS- supported disks would be given letters here. 6) Any drivers loaded from CONFIG.SYS, including CD-ROM drives, RAM disks, non-BIOS-supported floppies and hard disks, etc. 7) Any remaining letters (up to LASTDRIVE (? -- don't remember exactly what this parameter in CONFIG.SYS was called anymore) or Z) were available for network drives. Of course, any program that wanted to go into DOS's data structures and rearrange drive letters could do so, and wasn't even necessarily limited to 26 drives. I'm told that some versions of the Netware client used things like '[' and ']' as drive "letters" for their own purposes. -- 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.belnet.be!news-penn.gip.net!news-stock.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!202.14.100.1!status.gen.nz!kcbbs!riplin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as From: riplin@kcbbs.gen.nz (Richard Plinston) Date: 10 May 98 02:34:38 GMT Message-ID: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> References: Organization: Kappa Crucis Unix BBS, Auckland, New Zealand Lines: 25 In message <> "Ralph Wade Phillips" writes: > > 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. Support was in BIOS. Access via 0x15 with AH set to 0 (turn on), 1 (turn off), 2 (read data block), or 4 (write data block). The PC Jr also had cassette port, but not the XT or AT. It is interesting that you 'remember' doing an XCOPY of C: hard drive to cassette, was this on a PC which didn't support a hard drive or on an XT which didn't have a cassette port ? OK, it could have been Jr, or a PC with a non-IBM hard drive add-on, but wouldn't this most likely have been a diskette ? Apart from anything else the cassette tape probably only took 100Kb or so. ###### Message-ID: <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 04:26:07 -0700 From: rcasady X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.48.52.28 Lines: 37 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!204.71.1.51!spamkiller.internetmci.com!pull-feed.internetmci.com!news.lh.net!207.48.52.28 Richard Plinston wrote: > In message <> "Ralph Wade Phillips" writes: > > > > 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. > > Support was in BIOS. Access via 0x15 with AH set to 0 (turn on), > 1 (turn off), 2 (read data block), or 4 (write data block). > > The PC Jr also had cassette port, but not the XT or AT. > > It is interesting that you 'remember' doing an XCOPY of C: > hard drive to cassette, was this on a PC which didn't > support a hard drive or on an XT which didn't have a > cassette port ? > > OK, it could have been Jr, or a PC with a non-IBM hard > drive add-on, but wouldn't this most likely have been a > diskette ? > > Apart from anything else the cassette tape probably only > took 100Kb or so. I missed the origination of this, and , this is, no doubt far off a topic I don't understand, but my Win 3.11 box has a 5 1/4 B. drive. I don't ever boot from it , no reason to try, but windows has no beef with it..B prompt comes up when you ask. I seldom put a disk in it, but it works and I have some 5 1/4 discs (games, mostly), that never bothered to copy to 31/2. Richard Casady ###### From: lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 09:12:28 GMT Organization: . Lines: 33 Message-ID: <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02a-194-7-47-73.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 Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!sackheads.org!ibm.net!news.freedom2surf.net!btnet-peer!btnet!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!warm.news.pipex.net!join.news.pipex.net!pipex!krypton.inbe.net!INbe.net!not-for-mail rcasady said > I missed the origination of this, and , this is, no doubt far off a topic I don't > understand, but my Win 3.11 box has a 5 1/4 B. drive. I don't ever boot from it , no reason to An attempt to grab all aspects toghether in one place: Even if you only have one floppy, the B drive letter is still reserved for a floppy. Doesn't seem illogical, knowing that a standard floppy controller can handle two drives: if you ever add one, your other drive letters don't change. As long as you have only one drive, the system still uses the B letter in a useful way: it means "the same drive as A:, but give me a chance to insert another disk first". In other words: "copy A:some.fil B:" reads the file from the diskette it finds there, then prompts you to insert another disk, and writes the file to that disk. It's with *hard drive* letters that thing are a little less logical (imo). Assume you have two harddisks, each with three partitions. Your default drive letters would be: C - disk 1, partition 1 D - disk 2, partition 1 E - disk 1, partition 2 F - disk 1, partition 3 G - disk 2, partition 2 H - disk 2, partition 3 Where's the logic in that? It definitely confused some programs when I added a second harddisk. Some programs? No, *most*: most of my data files and a lot of programs were on D:, and suddenly moved to E:. ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as Date: 17 May 1998 22:59:58 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 35 Message-ID: References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) asked us: > It's with *hard drive* letters that thing are a little less > logical (imo). Assume you have two harddisks, each with three > partitions. Your default drive letters would be: > C - disk 1, partition 1 > D - disk 2, partition 1 > E - disk 1, partition 2 > F - disk 1, partition 3 > G - disk 2, partition 2 > H - disk 2, partition 3 > Where's the logic in that? It definitely confused some programs > when I added a second harddisk. Some programs? No, *most*: most > of my data files and a lot of programs were on D:, and suddenly > moved to E:. You must have missed my post at the beginning of this thread, that was <354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove>, from 3rd of May. Anyway here an repeat of the relevant bit (expanded): In the days pre DOS 3.3 (?) there only existed primary partitions (those you call partition 1). And there cound be up to 2 hard disks (BIOS HDs that is, SCSI and EIDE can do more). Now anyone who had 2 had then as C: and D:, so when extended partitions were added they had to be numbered from after the last primary partion, else D: would have moved -> instant trouble after upgrading DOS. Yes, it is backwards compatibility striking once again. -- 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!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!btnet-peer!btnet!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 Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 18:46:18 GMT Organization: . Lines: 68 Message-ID: <356169b6.1990412@news.innet.be> References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-110.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 Neil Franklin wrote: > You must have missed my post at the beginning of this thread, that was > <354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove>, from 3rd of May. An acute but brief case of poor newsfeed, I guess. It hasn't shown up on my server (which is rather uncommon for this ISP, though it does happen occasionally). I've got a watch filter on this thread since more than a week ago, and I keep all posts with downloaded bodies for three months, so I should still have a copy of yours if it had turned up. It's hard to believe that it would have expired before I put up that filter, because today I can still see posts of 5/5. > Anyway here an repeat of the relevant bit (expanded): > > In the days pre DOS 3.3 (?) there only existed primary partitions I think 3.30 is correct. > (those you call partition 1). And there cound be up to 2 hard disks > (BIOS HDs that is, SCSI and EIDE can do more). > > Now anyone who had 2 had then as C: and D:, so when extended > partitions were added they had to be numbered from after the last > primary partion, else D: would have moved -> instant trouble after > upgrading DOS. > > Yes, it is backwards compatibility striking once again. I prefer to have a slightly different opinion. Let's assume we're microsoft: for those people moving from pre-3.3, since their version didn't do extended partitions, it wouldn't make any difference (assuming there wouldn't be any extended partitions on their disks, except through the help of third-party utilities that probably wouldn't be compatible with 3.3 anyway). For microsoft (especially because of the way they have always treated third-party stuff), the behaviour I would have expected would have been to just ignore the possibility of existing partitions, and letter the drives like they found them. Sounds like they tried to be "good" that time - but IIRC there never even existed something like a DOS _upgrade_ before at least version 5, or maybe 6 (OK, they also said once that _everything_ was an upgrade and the only _full_ versions were the OEM's). I'm not exactly known for my good memory: what was that thing called again that came with Seagate drives? (digging through a box of years old disks) Ontrack Disk Manager? Did it allow you to use larger primary partitions, or extra partitions, or both? I used it on an ST-251 for some time but that's so long ago that I don't remember the exact details. (I hope the 251 was the 40M one and the 225 was 20M, and not the other way around.) I do remember I once reformatted my HD and stopped using disk manager, but I don't remember whether that was for compatibility reasons, or just to clean up - nor what version of DOS I was running at the time. Might well have been DOS 4.0 (the backup of the OnTrack disk I found was labelled 1990, and I found a DOS 4 boot disk labelled that year too - turns out to be a good thing I used to put years on my disks). BTW (this is getting long again), wasn't it DOS 4 that automatically reformatted your harddisk when you started setup? The word "upgrade" wasn't yet in MS's dictionary in those days... I also seem to remember not running DOS 4 for very long because that was the version where MS introduced the "instability" feature, that's grown to such a success in win95 ;) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!woodstock.news.demon.net!demon!howland.erols.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news-backup-west.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!199.45.255.100!coop.net!newsfeed1.global.lmco.com!newsfeed3.global.lmco.com!svlss.lmms.lmco.com!quest.lmtas.lmco.com!C11205026 From: randall.w.thomson@lmtas.lmco.com (Randy Thomson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 19:04:30 GMT Organization: LMTAS Message-ID: <6jq0qe$gep1@quest.lmtas.lmco.com> References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: mac-000024413934.undocumented.lmtas.lmco.com X-Newsreader: News Xpress 2.01 Lines: 35 In article <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be>, lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) wrote: [snip] > >It's with *hard drive* letters that thing are a little less >logical (imo). Assume you have two harddisks, each with three >partitions. Your default drive letters would be: >C - disk 1, partition 1 >D - disk 2, partition 1 >E - disk 1, partition 2 >F - disk 1, partition 3 >G - disk 2, partition 2 >H - disk 2, partition 3 >Where's the logic in that? It definitely confused some programs >when I added a second harddisk. Some programs? No, *most*: most >of my data files and a lot of programs were on D:, and suddenly >moved to E:. > However, if you don't designate the first partition of the second physical drive as a primary partition, you will have C - disk 1, partition 1 D - disk 1, partition 2 E - disk 1, partition 3 F - disk 2, partition 1 G - disk 2, partition 2 H - disk 2, partition 3 Randy Thomson Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems -------------------------------------------- My opinions, not necessarily those of LMTAS, etc., etc., etc.. -------------------------------------------- ###### Path: ccw.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as Date: 18 May 1998 22:40:04 +0200 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 90 Message-ID: <67j3cnyz.fsf@chonsp.franklin.lugs.ch> References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> <356169b6.1990412@news.innet.be> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) wrote: > Neil Franklin wrote: > > You must have missed my post at the beginning of this thread, that was > > <354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove>, from 3rd of May. > > An acute but brief case of poor newsfeed, I guess. It hasn't > shown up on my server (which is rather uncommon for this ISP, > though it does happen occasionally). Hey I know that one! I am just getting really used to having an reliable news feed. The last one I had played russian roulette with the posts, ca 5..20% loss, POM dependant. Not to mention those server dead for 3 days specials. > > Now anyone who had 2 had then as C: and D:, so when extended > > partitions were added they had to be numbered from after the last > > primary partion, else D: would have moved -> instant trouble after > > upgrading DOS. > > > > Yes, it is backwards compatibility striking once again. > > I prefer to have a slightly different opinion. Let's assume we're > microsoft: for those people moving from pre-3.3, since their > version didn't do extended partitions, it wouldn't make any > difference (assuming there wouldn't be any extended partitions on > their disks, except through the help of third-party utilities > that probably wouldn't be compatible with 3.3 anyway). It would make an difference: for those with 2 drives. They have got used to them (their only (retro-named primary) partions) being C: and D:. > For microsoft (especially because of the way they have always > treated third-party stuff), the behaviour I would have expected > would have been to just ignore the possibility of existing > partitions, and letter the drives like they found them. > Sounds like they tried to be "good" that time Well that is what they did: number them as they found them. That is: "Oh an drive 0x80, its got an DOS partition, C:", later "Oh an second drive 0x81, its got an DOS partition, D:", and then new: " opps we nearly forgot them new extended thingemies...". > - but IIRC there > never even existed something like a DOS _upgrade_ before at least > version 5, or maybe 6 (OK, they also said once that _everything_ > was an upgrade and the only _full_ versions were the OEM's). I only started with 3.3. And the next version I used was 5.0, which was available as upgrade. So I will stay out of that one. > I'm not exactly known for my good memory: A funny definition of bad memory. > what was that thing > called again that came with Seagate drives? (digging through a > box of years old disks) Ontrack Disk Manager? Did it allow you to > use larger primary partitions, or extra partitions, or both? I > used it on an ST-251 for some time but that's so long ago that I > don't remember the exact details. Yes, Ontrack. I also had an ST-251 in my 80286-12. DOS 3.3 only did 32 MByte C:. Then the Ontrack added an device=something.bin that took the rest of the disk and presented it as D: (or as E: if DOS had found 2 drives). > (I hope the 251 was the 40M one > and the 225 was 20M, and not the other way around.) Yes, 251 40M, 225 20M. > I also seem to remember not running DOS 4 for very long because > that was the version where MS introduced the "instability" > feature, that's grown to such a success in win95 ;) Instable and bloatware, both introed at the same time. -- 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 ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!ais.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!xyzzy!nntp From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as X-Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.172.150.50 Message-ID: X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Lines: 44 Sender: nntp@news.boeing.com (Boeing NNTP News Access) Organization: The Boeing Company X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:18:32 GMT Hi, Luc! Luc Van der Veken wrote in message <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be>... (stuff pruned for brevity )> >It's with *hard drive* letters that thing are a little less >logical (imo). Assume you have two harddisks, each with three >partitions. Your default drive letters would be: >C - disk 1, partition 1 >D - disk 2, partition 1 >E - disk 1, partition 2 >F - disk 1, partition 3 >G - disk 2, partition 2 >H - disk 2, partition 3 >Where's the logic in that? It definitely confused some programs >when I added a second harddisk. Some programs? No, *most*: most >of my data files and a lot of programs were on D:, and suddenly >moved to E:. > First hard disk primary partition. Second hard disk primary partition. Third hard disk primary partition (on BIOSes that find more than two hard disks) Etc. First hard disk SECONDARY partition, logical drives in sequence. SECOND hard disk SECONDARY partition, logical drives in sequence. Repeat. Drives that are loaded with a CONFIG.SYS driver - as per the CONFIG.SYS driver. Makes sense to me. What DOESN'T make sense is why you started the SECOND drive with a primary partition, instead of an EXTENDED partition. With extended partitions on all but the boot disk, the drive letters come in the sequence you expect ... RwP ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news.idt.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!199.0.154.208!ais.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!xyzzy!nntp From: "Ralph Wade Phillips" Subject: Re: Stupid Question: Why isn't B used as X-Nntp-Posting-Host: 129.172.150.50 Message-ID: X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Lines: 53 Sender: nntp@news.boeing.com (Boeing NNTP News Access) Organization: The Boeing Company X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:21:25 GMT Hi, Neil! Neil Franklin wrote in message ... >lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) asked us: >> It's with *hard drive* letters that thing are a little less >> logical (imo). Assume you have two harddisks, each with three >> partitions. Your default drive letters would be: >> C - disk 1, partition 1 >> D - disk 2, partition 1 >> E - disk 1, partition 2 >> F - disk 1, partition 3 >> G - disk 2, partition 2 >> H - disk 2, partition 3 >> Where's the logic in that? It definitely confused some programs >> when I added a second harddisk. Some programs? No, *most*: most >> of my data files and a lot of programs were on D:, and suddenly >> moved to E:. > >You must have missed my post at the beginning of this thread, that was ><354CE710.54DDC73D@ccw.ch.remove>, from 3rd of May. > >Anyway here an repeat of the relevant bit (expanded): > >In the days pre DOS 3.3 (?) there only existed primary partitions >(those you call partition 1). And there cound be up to 2 hard disks >(BIOS HDs that is, SCSI and EIDE can do more). Nope. DOS 2.1 did support EXTENDED partitions. At least, you could partition a 20meg drive into 15/5 or 10/10 to avoid the problems with >16meg logical drives (didn't properly find bad spots due to failures in the logic Microsoft used to store the bad spot in the FAT ... ) Did that several times with 2.1x PCDOS - same code in the 2.1x MSDOS releases. Also had customers with Zenith Z100's running ZDos (MSDOS for Zenith non-PC clones) with up to 16(!!) partitions, 8 meg each, for ZDos 1.25. RwP > >Now anyone who had 2 had then as C: and D:, so when extended >partitions were added they had to be numbered from after the last >primary partion, else D: would have moved -> instant trouble after >upgrading DOS. > >Yes, it is backwards compatibility striking once again. > >-- >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!news-penn.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!194.72.7.126!btnet-peer!btnet!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.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 Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 19:06:42 GMT Organization: . Lines: 42 Message-ID: <3566d565.11220694@news.innet.be> References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> <356169b6.1990412@news.innet.be> <67j3cnyz.fsf@chonsp.franklin.lugs.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-197.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 Neil Franklin told us > lucvdv@null.net (Luc Van der Veken) wrote: > > .........: for those people moving from pre-3.3, since their > > version didn't do extended partitions, it wouldn't make any > > difference (assuming there wouldn't be any extended partitions on > > their disks, except through the help of third-party utilities > > that probably wouldn't be compatible with 3.3 anyway). > > It would make an difference: for those with 2 drives. They have got > used to them (their only (retro-named primary) partions) being C: and > D:. Let me try that again: assuming they kept the same hard disks, and as far as MS is concerned, there never could have been an extended partition on their C drive (because it wasn't supported) or at best a non-DOS partition - so D would remain D after upgrading, until the C drive was repartitioned. And after repartitioning the boot disk, I don't think anyone would care much which letter was what. > Well that is what they did: number them as they found them. That is: > "Oh an drive 0x80, its got an DOS partition, C:", later "Oh an second > drive 0x81, its got an DOS partition, D:", and then new: " opps we > nearly forgot them new extended thingemies...". Sounds like how it may have happened. > Yes, Ontrack. I also had an ST-251 in my 80286-12. DOS 3.3 only did 32 > MByte C:. Then the Ontrack added an device=something.bin that took the > rest of the disk and presented it as D: (or as E: if DOS had found 2 > drives). That's what I wasn't sure of anymore. Maybe, after all, they *did* try to be backward compatible; except that it raises the question: what about other manufacturers with different schemes? BTW, it seems that we were both wrong about something: DOS 2.1 already knew extended partitions (at least, Ralph Wade Phillips says so in ). ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.belnet.be!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!btnet-peer!btnet!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.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 Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 19:06:44 GMT Organization: . Lines: 97 Message-ID: <3565d088.9975494@news.innet.be> References: <3298129.9278.23296@kcbbs.gen.nz> <355D77CE.24658680@webslnger.com> <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: pool02b-194-7-226-197.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 "Ralph Wade Phillips" told us > Hi, Luc! Hi. > First hard disk primary partition. > Second hard disk primary partition. > Third hard disk primary partition (on BIOSes that find more than two > hard disks) > Etc. > > First hard disk SECONDARY partition, logical drives in sequence. > SECOND hard disk SECONDARY partition, logical drives in sequence. > Repeat. > > Drives that are loaded with a CONFIG.SYS driver - as per the > CONFIG.SYS driver. > > Makes sense to me. I *should* have remembered that - I know I read it somewhere. There's a certain degree of logic in it, but I wouldn't use the word sense. Sense *and* logic would mean first disk (all partitions), second disk (all partitions), third disk (all partitions). Disadvantage: changing drive letters when you replace or repartition the first disk. Doesn't sound much different from what happens now if you do the same with your second disk (or add one). Maybe even better would be a multi-character identification scheme: for example c == c1 = hard disk C, partition 1; c2 = partition 2; d1 = disk D, partition 1 etc. But there's no way to make that backward compatible, so we can only daydream about it. And, (I exaggerated somewhat in my other post), with win95 or NT it shouldn't be a problem: you can tell them what drive letter to assign to which partition (system properties / device manager tab in '95, or Disk Administrator in NT). > > What DOESN'T make sense is why you started the SECOND drive with a > primary partition, instead of an EXTENDED partition. With extended > partitions on all but the boot disk, the drive letters come in the sequence > you expect ... It makes perfect sense imho: both disks are bootable (the 2nd one only to DOS7), and my most important data files are stored on both of them. Normally you'd make a backup once per day for example, with disk-to-disk you can easily throw in an extra one every hour. The price of harddisks is no longer a reason to stop you from doing it: I wanted to do some CD-R mastering but needed about 1 extra gig on top of the 2.5 I had to do it, instead of 1 I bought 6.5G for approx. $275: almost $100 less than what I paid for the 2.5G drive two years ago. In pre-PC days, a floppy drive used to cost more. I used the extra space to store everything twice, make my Linux partition grow from 250M to 1G, and install NT on a separate 2M partition as a third OS (had the space, had to find some use for it - please don't tell MS I installed NT on my home computer from a used CD ;) If the first disk (the oldest) ever dies on me (or windows gets drunk and writes the swap file all over the windows directory or so) I disconnect it, change the jumper on the other one from "slave" to "master", reboot (to DOS7, so I'll have to reinstall win95): 30 - 45 minutes. It will still take a lot of work to get _everything_ running and tuned again, but the most important things will be at hand without having to restore anything - I can even reboot and copy my data to another computer before re-installing anything. On second thought - nah. You need two computers for that, and this is my home one. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I can even just boot from an NT emergency floppy after changing the jumper, and tell it to boot from its new position in the future. I don't really expect that to work, though: too many drive letters in the registry. If both disks become inaccessible at the same time there's still a 'normal' backup (let's hope not too old: CD-RW is veeery sloow, especially with DirectCD), but most likely the disks themselves won't be the reason in that case. Also, it seems (to me) like the logical thing to do is to let /every/ disk start with a primary partition. If you don't want it to be bootable, don't make it bootable (as those are two different things). I think the reason why people don't want a primary partition on their second disk is a result of how MS allocates the drive letters, and not vice versa. Can't someone from the Unix world come to my help here? (or else tell me why what just I said is stupid: I'm always keen to learn something new) ###### Path: ccw.ch!elna.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news.maxwell.syr.edu!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 Date: 19 May 1998 22:19:54 -0400 Organization: -ENOENT Lines: 47 Approved: Who cares? Message-ID: <6jteka$7i3@riemann.math.psu.edu> References: <355ea206.977996@news.innet.be> <3565d088.9975494@news.innet.be> NNTP-Posting-Host: riemann.math.psu.edu In article <3565d088.9975494@news.innet.be>, Luc Van der Veken wrote: [snip] >Also, it seems (to me) like the logical thing to do is to let >/every/ disk start with a primary partition. If you don't want it >to be bootable, don't make it bootable (as those are two >different things). I think the reason why people don't want a >primary partition on their second disk is a result of how MS >allocates the drive letters, and not vice versa. > >Can't someone from the Unix world come to my help here? (or else >tell me why what just I said is stupid: I'm always keen to learn >something new) > Well, first of all, there is no such thing as drive letters in UNIX. You have devices that are mounted on given points in your (single) directory tree. Names of these devices don't really matter - for example, there is an obvious reason to reference the partition on a SCSI disk by combination of adapter+LUN+number of partition. What's more serious - the M$/IBM partitioning is not the only possible one. The idea of primary vs. extended partitions is the kludge trying to fix the bug. Look at the original setup. OK, type 1 == 12bit FAT type 4==FAT16. Ever wondered what's up with types 2 and 3? XENIX root and /usr respectively. Who're the authors of XENIX? Right. The assumption was that there will never be 2 DOS partitions. When they ran out of 32M... They invented the kludge. Quick and dirty - let's declare that the part of the disk is a new disk. Idiocy? Sure. They could extend the MBR to the next sector(s) and keep the number of these sectors in the first one. It would fix the problem. After all, they just needed a way to slice the disk into non-intersecting parts. They could afford the holes in the ordering - see the subject of this thread for proof. All this monstrosity with primary/extended scheme exists _only_ in places where you need a DOS/Windows compatibility. And even there the common way is to get a chunk of disk (a single partition from the DOS point of view) and build the own (non-braindead) partitioning in it. Bootable vs non-bootable is also a non-issue. Loader should be clever enough to detect the partition boundaries at the boot-time. Then it would ask you where do you want to boot from and do it. And _no_ systems except DOS/Win* refuse to boot from arbitrary place. Hell, as soon as the kernel is in memory - what else do you need? You have a list of ranges on the disk. Assign them letters in configurable way and be happy with it. Nah... -- My theory is that someone's Emacs crashed on a very early version of Linux while reading alt.flame and the resulting unholy combination of Elisp and Minix code somehow managed to bootstrap itself and take on an independent existence. -- James Raynard in c.u.b.f.m on nature of Albert Cahalan