[QUOTE=Revtim]
These young’uns today don’t even remember when PCs only had floppies, and no hard disk.
This question about the b: drive comes up every once in a while, and it’s probably the question that most makes me feel old.
[/QUOTE]
How old are you? I am 26. My first computer had two 5.25 floppies and no hard disk. I don’t feel too old 
[QUOTE=PBear42]
To put dates on this, IIRC, dual floppies were the standard from when the IBM-PC was introduced around 1981, till the XT (with a hard drive) was introduced around 1986.
[/QUOTE]
Even back in those days, progress was quite a bit faster than that. The original floppy-only IBM PC appeared in 1981 as you say, but the hard-disk-based PC XT showed up in 1983, the 80286-based PC AT in 1984, and by the time the first 386-based systems shipped in 1986, hard disk drives were already de rigeur for personal computers.
[QUOTE=rjung]
My first home computer was an Atari 800, which had “D1:”, “D2:”, etc. for the different drives (up to 4).
[/QUOTE]
Now you’re talkin’ my language!
I had the 800 with a cassette drive, and eventually I got a floppy drive for it, but not much software came on floppies, mostly on cartridges. I had Star Raiders, of course (still one of the most realistic FPS interfaces in terms of a 3D effect, even if it did make the processor crawl). I had a BASIC cartridge, and a cassette-based game called SCRAM, a nuclear reactor simulator (very timely in those post-Three-Mile-Island days). It took a year to load off the cassette drive.
As has been mentioned before, the B: drive existed before there were harddrives and it made copying or running large programs eaiser.
And for those of you who are really young, back in the day a floppy disk really was floppy. The 5.25 inch floppy disk was quite flexible and by holding one and waving your hand around, it would flop all over the place.
When I was in 8th grade, around 1988, the idea of hard drives really started to catch on. My mom worked in a hotel that had a technology convention and she showed up with a bag full of convention crap (buttons, pens, etc.) This was at a time in our culture where the number of buttons on your denim jacket was in direct correlation to how cool you were. So naturally, I was looking for some good buttons to put on my denim jacket. I found the perfect one. It was clever. It made a sex joke. And it referred to computers. The button was huge and read, “Firm up your floppy” in big blue letters. I was cool.
I don’t know whatever happened to that button.
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus]
What, nobody gonna claim that real programers toggle the bootstrap sequence into the front panel in hexidecimal?
Floppies, pah!
Drum memory, that’s the ticket!
Tris
[/QUOTE]
No, but I can say that my first programming job A Major Airline was coding Assembler Language (ACP/TPF). Each program had to fit into a 1K block. If you were smart you left space at the end of the block for emergencies. If you loaded a program into production and it had problems, you’d have to fix it on the fly (it was considered BAD to fall a program back). Fixing it meant you literally code a hard branch in hexidecimal to the unused part of the 1K block (x47F0bddd where b=base register, and ddd=displacement). You would then correct the problem writing more hex code, and finish it with a another hard branch to the Next Sequential Instruction.
[QUOTE=Johnny L.A.]
Bob Stevens cartoon. An old fighter pilot is telling a story to a group of young fighter pilots.
‘There I was, hanging by my prop…’
‘What’s a prop, sir?’
[/QUOTE]
Several years ago the music version of this joke was: “You mean Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” :eek:
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Humph. I had to grow my own dinosaurs and grind them to get my coal. 
[/QUOTE]
Hah! We wish we had coal-operated computers. My first computer had a wind-up key. When the spring ran down we’d lose processing speed.
I’m only 24, and my first computer was an XT.
I still vividly remember putting in a computer game that I’d gotten from a friend (or wherever, I can’t remember) and the program spitting back “Please upgrade to an AT”.
Ah… those were the days… I owe a lot to those computers…
[QUOTE=Tabby_Cat]
I still vividly remember putting in a computer game that I’d gotten from a friend . . . and the program spitting back “Please upgrade to an AT”.
[/quote]
What a let-down ending for a game. I can see why it didn’t catch on.
Seems a little short, too. I mean sure, the prose is well written, but the game needs some more depth. A helicopter, or a loveable companion robot, or falling hamburger ingredients . . . something.
[Grumpy Old Man]
In my day, processing speed was so slow, instead of the mouse pointer displaying an hourglass, it showed a calendar.
[/Grumpy Old Man]
[Quote=Musicat]
You younguns. Such talk. My first computer was powered by a coal. I mean a windmill. Or a overshot waterwheel. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
[/quote]
[QUOTE=Joey P]
Gee, are you sure it wasn’t mules walking around in a circle attached to a central rotating shaft? Or maybe it was hamsters…nah hamsters arn’t that reliable now are they.
[/QUOTE]
No, it was the Wheel of Pain™. The standard version used expendable slave children, but I upgraded mine to the Muscular Barbarian drive.
[QUOTE=Musicat]
You younguns. <snip>
We didn’t store bytes on floppies, but put each bit on a separate shelf, by the flour grinder. If the mice didn’t get to it first, we could store 9 bits to make a complete byte.
With parity.
[/QUOTE]
Musicat, you were lucky. My university’s storage shelf was so narrow it could only handle 1’s. No zeroes–they were too wide.
I know, I know. Someone had to say it.
[QUOTE=Caractacus Pott]
Musicat, you were lucky. My university’s storage shelf was so narrow it could only handle 1’s. No zeroes–they were too wide.
[/QUOTE]
You had ones? We had to get by with spaces. The Administration said they stacked more easily.
I still have my ZX81 and the 64k memorypack in its extruded aluminum case. It’s right here next to my 23-inch HD LCD monitor. I’m thinking of connecting the two together.
To hijack this thread for a moment and get back to the OP…
Most new consumer motherboards still come with a floppy drive header. Most, if not all, should support two floppy drives. It might be a bit hard to find a floppy cable with two connectors. I haven’t seen one in a few years. That said, I haven’t really been looking for them.
[QUOTE=Seven]
Most new consumer motherboards still come with a floppy drive header. Most, if not all, should support two floppy drives. It might be a bit hard to find a floppy cable with two connectors. I haven’t seen one in a few years. That said, I haven’t really been looking for them.
[/QUOTE]
Then grab an IDC connector and pound it on the cable. Really. I’ve been using hammers and spare blocks of wood to make my own cables for years.
I’ve a clamp tool and a few loose connectors if I REALLY need two floppy drives.
Considering my one floppy drive is disconnected from the computer and in a bag someplace, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. 
My first computer was a VIC-20 and I shortly upgraded to a C-64 and a TRS-80. Then i got smart and bought an AMIGA!!! Bwah hah - I thumbed my nose at the rest of the world for a couple of years until the 386 came and buried us. But there was a day, people, there was a day when AMIGAS RULED THE EARTH!
mm
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
So what happened to the B: drive?
[/QUOTE]
It’s now kept with all the B batteries.
[QUOTE=Fear Itself]
It’s now kept with all the B batteries.
[/QUOTE]
Psst! See post 51!
Anybody ever seen an Actrix “portable” computer? I was suckered into buying one at a computer show in the early '80’s. Z80 CPU, two built-in 5 1/4 floppys, CP/M OS, teeny tiny CRT, fold-down (detatchable?) keyboard in the front, built-in dot-matrix printer and an acoustic-coupled modem on the top. The thing weighed about 30 lbs. and was the size of a stuffed backpack. I look at my ultra-thin Sony VAIO and just laugh…