Evening Reading

by Garnett Lee, Jan 11, 2011 5:00pm PST

Well, it turned out that my gut feeling about Oregon was misplaced. Both teams played their hearts out after a slow first quarter, but in the closing minutes Auburn showed how battle-hardened playing in the SEC had made them. Only a few NFL games left too, but boy are there some great match-ups taking shape--big time rivalries like Ravens vs. Steelers and Jets vs. Patriots, two exciting offenses in Falcons vs. Packers, and the Cinderella story Seahawks vs. the Bears.

While we're ticking off the time for the games to arrive this weekend, here's the top video game stories from today on the Shack:

Tiger fans, you've earned this: WAR EAGLE! Enjoy a well-earned championship.

Read all the News

« Previous Story
Daily Filter: January 11, 2011

Next Story »
Neo-Noir Adventure Game 'Gemini Rue' Launching in February

See All Comments | 152 Threads | 3,342 Comments

#1354

Refresh Thread

By: kn1fe x Show Full Post

Reply

want to feel old?

http://superuser.com/questions/231273/for-what-are-the-windows-a-and-b-drives-used-for

Jan 11, 2011 7:55pm PST

toggle
want to feel old? http://superuser.com/questions/231273/for-what-are-the-windows-a-and-b-drives-used-f... : kn1fe
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 142 replies.
- toggle
  "Old"? Floppy drives and disks are still available for sale... : alexvj
  - toggle
    At the brick and mortar stores? : neokolonial
    - I know of several local shops here that sell them, and I think Best Buy has them as well. : Sludgehead
    - If you consider Amazon a "brick and mortar" store... : alexvj
- toggle
  want to feel even older? http://superuser.com/questions/148787/does-core-mean-cpu-or-memory-or-both : the archvile
  - toggle
    I've actually worked on a military system that used a core memory. loading that bitch up from a paper ta... : Colleton
    - When i was going through AF electrical training, I had to hand wind core memory as part of our classes. ... : watcherxp
- floppys are old now? i guess i'm old then :( : jayares
- toggle
  I have successfully gone floppy free. :D I needed on on my old p35 mobo cause it couldnt boot from USB. ;... : ZenzenTen
  - i have an external USB floppy in a box but i doubt i'll ever use it again. : GloriousCow
  - Shit I have not had a floppy in a computer in well over 10 years. : Jimbo Ro
- toggle
  A:\ I remember from when I was a kid (liked computers back then too) but what the hell was B:\? : locater16
  - toggle
    B was the second floppy disk drive. Our tandy didn't have a hard drive, so A: was for the dos boot disk, ... : ryuuseki
    - toggle
      in my mind, A:\ is 5.25 and B:\ is 3.5 : dirge23
      
      this. later we had just B: and not A: : electroly
      
      It was only dual 5.25's for me growing up. First time I had a 3.5 we went from a tandy 1000 sx (http://ww... : ryuuseki
      
      toggle
      That's two new, back in the day it was two 5.25s : bombay
      
      Two low density 5.25s. : cerealSAM2
      
      toggle
      yup..same here : deathofrats
      
      Babies. : bombay
      
      toggle
      This except swapped for me. : noxiousgg
      
      Same here. Don't know why though, the opposite makes more sense. : Skrynkelberg
      
      yeah, this is me too : moshman
      
      yep! : sludge vohaul
  - Secondary floppy. : guido anchovy
  - B:\ was 5 1/4" : Volatris
  - toggle
    The 1st PC I bought was an IBM PC with 128K RAM, 2 5.25" full height floppy drives, VGA card and monitor,... : Colleton
    - toggle
      Remember extended ram vs expanded ram. : bombay
      
      toggle
      I had an Intel Above Board : GloriousCow
      
      Expanded baby. : bombay
- toggle
  oddly, the only time I really used floppy disks was in my computer science class in high school. I do re... : xylopagus
  - Yeah, I had such a strong distrust for them. I used to copy my assignments on two disks and that saved me... : reelbk
  - Yeah, when the zip drives crashed twice a semester, you lost 100x as much shit. : theamazingrand0
- toggle
  I don't remember ever seeing B. Doesn't make me feel too old. I have to admit though, I don't get why the... : K1Bond007
  - win 95-98 run on kind of on top of dos, so it must have continued as backwards compatibility. My first X... : umegastar
  - toggle
    The PC architecture is amazingly backwards-compatible. Even the 64-bit architectures our CPUs are built o... : famine101
    - toggle
      Enterprise-level customers drive that demand, especially in the military and aerospace sectors. : biskits
      
      I somewhat disagree with that, having worked in both. The major systems, esp in Aerospace are unix CATI... : bombay
- toggle
  I had some fond memories with A:\ : The Grolar Bear
  - fond memories of sticking my 3.5" in it. : shirif
- my a: and b: drives are 600 gig hdds :( : harold.johnson
- toggle
  Did Macs ever have drive letters? If so when did they loose them? : TemporalParadox
  - Macs never had drive letters; back in the original Mac OS, the user couldn't even type in a path, as all ... : the archvile
  - I only used OS 7 and later but looking at Finder's history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finder_(software)... : rosewood
  - nope, neither did AmigaOS (drives were accessible there by their device handle or volume name) drive l... : Toraz Chryx
- toggle
  In college, they required us to carry a floppy with us at all times in my Engineering program. Good times... : invisible_kid
  - "If you lose your disc or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That w... : gyokuro
- toggle
  A: was the 3.5" and the B was the huge ass floppie disks. : coraldayton
  - toggle
    Shit, there were bigger ones than that. Anyone remember 8" floppies? : jdcope
    - toggle
      You're shitting me, right? : coraldayton
      
      Nope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk#Disk_formats Watch Wargames again. Pretty sure the ... : jdcope
    - Yep, read the thread, I brought them up earlier. : bombay
- this brought a tear to my eye : zerog83
- oh wow :/ : orgcaptainnemo
- I feel old because I don't see a button to select my answer :( : not work safe
- toggle
  DF0: and DF1: FTW. : stuka
  - /mnt/floppy : theamazingrand0
  - Haha : bombay
  - sup Amiga buddy : Toraz Chryx
- Haha, I remember using 8" floppies, let alone reel to reel. : bombay
- toggle
  floppies are the "i had to walk to school uphill both ways with no shoes" of my generation : devpaul
  - ahahaha : shirif
  - I think of reel to reel that way. : bombay
  - toggle
    I've always felt like having to configure custom autoexec.bat files and deal with conflicting IRQ address... : Vincent Grayson
    - Don't forget config.sys : bombay
    - toggle
      aah yes, freeing enough memory so Wing Commander would run... : devpaul
      
      toggle
      Those were the days. Fucking around with which segment to load emm386 for the most mem. : bombay
      
      toggle
      HELL YEAH FUCKING WING COMMANDER! : ejectorpod
      
      toggle
      Oh yeah, those were awesome times. Not enough conventional memory to load. FUCK YOU I HAVE KILRATHI T... : bombay
      
      toggle
      The amazing thing to me is how we all learned how to deal with IRQ conflicts and freeing up memory before... : exigence7
      
      toggle
      Computer shopper and the like. : bombay
      
      I thought IWTOO! : ejectorpod
      
      totally. Its amazing how you picked it up. : disembodied potato
      
      I'm having flashbacks : Cliffzorz
      
      Wing Command and Commander Keen. : DHAvatar
    - toggle
      but honestly, you kind of had to KNOW things back then. The mainboard manual didn't have a bunch of total... : fatman
      
      "bootdisk master" was a line item on my resume until last year. : MikkleThePickle
  - toggle
    installing windows 95 on floppies took fucking forever : sticman77
    - toggle
      Office was worse. : bombay
      
      toggle
      Nothing beat police quest 4 (I think it was 4). It was like 12 disks. Literally. : exigence7
      
      those graphics blew me away at the time though! shit's like photographs, ma! : devpaul
      
      #2242
      
      Refresh Thread
      
      By: bombay x Show Full Post
      
      Reply
      
      Office was 24 x 3 and 1/2 floppies. And you had to randomly re-insert odd disks.
      
      Please insert disk 10, after you had finished disk 20.
      
      Jan 11, 2011 9:44pm PST
      
      toggle
      Office was 24 x 3 and 1/2 floppies. And you had to randomly re-insert odd disks. Please insert disk 10,... : bombay
      
      toggle
      haha man thank god I never had to do that. I did install Windows 95 off floppies though. That was about 1... : thecray
      
      It was hell, this was my first real IT job too. The previous guy had screwed up all the disk assays, so... : bombay
      
      Literally?? : moshman
  - no, encyclopedias are. You mean you used to have to buy 24 physical books with dated information to find... : deathofrats
  - toggle
    Actually that would be cassette drives. Freeeeep brooooop freeeeeep froooooooonk 20 minutes later.... : creeping-judas
    - toggle
      20 minutes later... TIME OUT ERROR : Arcanum
      
      toggle
      It was worse with reel to reel, physical device error. FUCK. : bombay
      
      toggle
      Punch cards, which could get jammed and mangled. Mind, anything before cassette is before my time (and... : Arcanum
      
      I used punch as well, but that was just computer club stuff and old school mainframe support (even in the... : bombay
      
      toggle
      ALSO THIS. Ah, my old Atari 800xl... How it vexed me so. : creeping-judas
      
      toggle
      i had an 65XL, waiting 20 minutes for Bruce Lee to load was still worth it though :P; few years later I g... : devpaul
      
      International Karate + a little later was also the pimp. Bruce Lee reminded me. : creeping-judas
      
      toggle
      I ran home from school and played Bruce Lee every day for about a year on my c64 Load "$" ,8,1 = fun ... : Cubictoast
      
      Haha. I loved questron on it, archon too before it. Wasn't called that, but I can't recall what the name ... : bombay
      
      toggle
      Oh yeah. Remember typing in the games from the back of byte, and screwing up a line and spending hours ... : bombay
      
      toggle
      That and STart and STrom... Almost lost it when my local store started carrying the European mags that... : creeping-judas
      
      Hell yeah, no more typing. And oh them memories, ST commands. : bombay
      
      toggle
      I swear I remember that quite a few of those games had fucked up code and never worked in the first place... : Cubictoast
      
      Yeah, they'd have mis prints and then you'd spend hours, even days finding the bugs. But, I miss BYTE, ... : bombay
    - toggle
      VIC 20! : Cubictoast
      
      Ah yeah, used to mess around a lot. Major memories of LA and San Diego computer clubs back in the day. : bombay
  - config.sys + autoexec.bat = more memories!!!11 : Theos
  - Back in my day, we recorded programs from our TRS-80's to our Radio Shack tape players and weeee liked it... : Goto10
- Jesus tapdancing christ. :( : thetangent
- You're only as old as the floppy you feel.. oh.. : biofrog
- http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/12/ lol : Arctic Fox
- toggle
  Pshaw, I remember using one of these: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/hardware/commodore_c64_tape-rec... : Nixx2004
  - And I said 'pshaw', I must be old. :( : Nixx2004
  - I remember doing the same on my tandy co-co, but it was just a store bought one with earphone jack. http... : watcherxp
- :....( : timaste
- toggle
  I wonder how many NT4 machines are still running : Downforce
  - toggle
    A better question is how many VAX/VMS systems. They are still my most fav, you could do so much with DCL ... : bombay
- my first external hard drive was 80 megs and I had no idea how I would fill it all >:( but not using eigh... : cap n KRUNCH
- toggle
  man my old IBM XT had a and b 5 1/4 drives, and a 20 meg HD with a bitchen yellow and black monitor. : -=kodiak=-
  - toggle
    Bah. Showing off with your fancy 20 meg HD. Some of us made do with 10. : master_disaster_17
- toggle
  I remember having to use 5 floppies to install Syndicate and that was well worth it : gimpness
  - toggle
    6 cds for baldur's gate 1. : JuffoWup
    - toggle
      24 3.5" floppies for Windows 3.1 if I recall : grandmasterlee
      
      toggle
      nope, only 8 95 beta more closer to the 24 : watcherxp
      
      One of the Novell Netwares came on at least 30+ /shudder : TrulyVexed
  - I know I'm cutting down my posting but Syndicate was 4 floppies, take it from an ex-idiot software pirate... : abrasion
  - Beneath a Steel Sky came on 15 floppies, Monkey Island 2 came on 11. : Pandilex
- i remember sam n max was something like 10 3.5" disks : hanged_man
- the first game I completed was turrican on a datasette (I think that what it was called, it was actually ... : razorblade79

red	r{...}r	italics	/[...]/
green	g{...}g	bold	b[...]b
blue	b{...}b	quote	q[...]q
yellow	y{...}y	sample	s[...]s
limegreen	l[...]l	underline	_[...]_
orange	n[...]n	strike	-[...]-
multisync	p[...]p	spoiler	o[...]o
olive	e[...]e	code	/{{...}}/