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 
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.
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.
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.
Several years ago the music version of this joke was: “You mean Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” :eek:
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…
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]
No, it was the Wheel of Pain™. The standard version used expendable slave children, but I upgraded mine to the Muscular Barbarian drive.
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.
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.
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
It’s now kept with all the B batteries.
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…