Dark Times
63 comments · 95% upvoted · source · other discussions
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Amirium
Jokes aside, I still have my ms dos and windows 3.11 disks... simpler times 🥰
gitty7456
Config.sys and autoexec.bat beg to disagree on “simpler”.
otter_sausage
[deleted]
A handful of things that can be wrong in 2 files vs thousands of kinds of malware, dozens of config files in windows and dozens of spots in the registry plus many, many more files in Windows that could be corrupted.
Save your good config.sys and autoexec.bat on a floppy, make it read-only and you can reinstall your OS in minutes.
bluemitersaw
That's what gets me with this. DOS and Win 3.11 in case in an emergency? Ok
Windows 95???? No such emergency exists.
stackoverflow21
Should have stuck it there with a fridge magnet. For ease of access.
Darkwaxellence
That would have been peak humor for those that know.
Bot-Magnet
Who even remembers where to find the A drive anymore?
cmd_iii
There's a generation of people, completely computer-literate, who have no idea why the main hard drive in their computer starts with "C:\"
CrypticButthole
Mkay. I'm taking Systems Administration courses, and I'm a little ashamed to admit I don't know what C stands for. I'm not sure we covered it in my Windows Desktop class, maybe in the Windows Server class? Fuck, now I feel dumb.
delocx
Early versions of MS-DOS assigned drive letters as follows: the first floppy disk drive was assigned A, the second (if present) was assigned B, the first primary active partition of the first physical disk was assigned C, and so on. Two floppy drives were common because there were several floppy disk standards in use at the time. The rest is a mixture of legacy support (many early programs, and some more recent poorly coded ones, directly referenced a drive letter), and no real need to change it. You can open up your Windows Disk Management and assign drive letters A and B to basically any storage device and it will work just fine; there's only a few very niche times when that might cause a problem, usually with something really old.
Fun little fact, there's nothing that says that a drive (except the OS drive) has to be mounted to a drive letter. You can mount a drive within the folder hierarchy just like you see with Linux or BSD derived OSes.
CrypticButthole
Ahhh! I wasn't as uninformed as I thought I was! I figured it was due to ordering of drives on legacy systems. I had thought you were saying the C actually meant something, and I was digging through my mind trying to figure it out but drawing a blank. Thank you!
delocx
Nope, entirely arbitrary, like a lot of things Windows does...
cmd_iii
It's probably been left that way in the interest of backward compatibility. Like you said earlier, some of the really old apps/games/etc. are expecting A:\ and B:\ to be floppy drives (3.5" or 5.25", depending), C:\ to be the root of the main hard drive, and D:\ (and sometimes E:\) to be CD-ROM drive(s). You also had tape drives, Zip drives, and other storage devices that you had to assign letters to (usually in the BIOS). If you found one of these old devices, and wanted to know if there were data on it, you'd have to hook it up, probably with an adapter (I don't think computers even have serial ports anymore), and assign a drive letter to it.
A lot of places aren't even including removable drives of any sort on their work computers, due to security concerns. My new work computer doesn't even have a CD-ROM drive on it. There are USB slots, but I think they're all disabled in terms of being able to transfer data through them. But, I can map any letter I want to a directory on the server, including A:\ and B:\.
Well, except C:\, of course. That one's already in use.
CrypticButthole
I wrote a program in C++ that uses C:\Windows\Fonts hardcoded. Is there a way to remove the reliance on the C:\ drive holding the Windows directory? %SystemRoot% comes to mind but I don't think that's correct.
[deleted]
%SystemRoot%\Fonts
should be it.
CrypticButthole
Rhighto. And fopen("%SystemRoot%\Fonts\Arial.ttf") would expand %SystemRoot% correctly?
(I could test it, but I don't want to power on my laptop...)
Riegel_Haribo
Registry [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\
"Fonts"="C:\Windows\Fonts"
CrypticButthole
Hmm. It seems extremely inefficient to check the registry for the full fonts directory. I'm more concerned about \Windows\ being mounted elsewhere than C: than \ShellFolders\"Fonts" being set to something else. And does that registry entry update when \Windows\ is mounted to, say, Z:?
Riegel_Haribo
Windows doesn't just get "mounted" to Z: I don't even know that you'd be able to change the default installation directory on windows 10 these days; every update it reinstalls itself and just poorly copies back your settings. Making your own installation directory such as D:\win was dying by windows 98, usually just if you had done many upgrades from 3.1.
Riegel_Haribo
A lot of PCs assigned the drives as follows:
5 1/4" floppy #1: Included
5 1/4" floppy #2: Optional
10MB hard disk: Way expensive; MFM adapter not included
BCProgramming
It doesn't stand for anything. A: and B: were floppy drives on the IBM 5150. Lots of software was written that assumed A: and B: were floppy drives, so when the IBM PC XT added the colossal 10MB Hard disk drive, it became C: even if there was one floppy drive in the system.
Interestingly, CP/M, on which Seattle Computer Products QDOS - which Microsoft bought and turned into MS-DOS/PC-DOS- is built to mimic, pretty much predated hard disk drives, however many of the microcomputers it ran on did not have the same limitations as the original IBM PC, and could have more than two floppy drives, so C: in that context would be a floppy disk drive on CP/M.
CrypticButthole
Man, I need to pick up some legacy computers and fiddle around. This sounds like a damn fun headache.
kozmo403
Hey, look... someone 3D printed the save icon. Neat.
Too bad that's not 98SE, at least as far as I can tell.
k876577
Huh you’d think Microsoft would update that icon
spelunkersbutt
Or even mirror it so it looked like an actual stiffy.
Clown_Unknown
To bad I'm sure there's a handful of people that would have no clue how to use it
Middletoon
Cuz why would anyone have a floppy drive anymore?
Wild_Doogy_Plumm
Cause I still got all my games. I got a retro rig with a 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drive in it.
Clown_Unknown
Why do we still have disks when we can just download everything
gitty7456
Connect to www.microsoft.com or use the QR code and follow the 4k video.
cmd_iii
I found a bunch of 80-column IBM (Hollerith) punch cards in my desk. I wrote on one of them: DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN: Get a shitload of these and START OVER! Pinned it to the wall of my cubicle.
Source: Mainframe programmer/DBA.
A40
Put my keys in my pocket, the boot disk in the drawer...
RyanNO2
lol
ApathyWithToast
I thought the first forms of memory were on rolls of tapes, not floppies.
quelar
Punch cards, the tape came later.
ApathyWithToast
What’s the circa on punch cards? 1930’s-50’s?
quelar
Started a long time back, popular starting the 30's
ApathyWithToast
Before Turing I guess
hikermick
Where's the other eleven disks?
wetwillies420
Back in my day, floppy disks were actually floppy.
chrysrobyn
I think it’s time.
With COVID as high as it is, with politics so far off the rails, with the wage gap so high, let’s put the Sacred Recovery Disk into action.
JeremyJaLa
They make decent coasters, in a pinch.
WickedLiquid
At first, it thought it was held by a magnet clip. Figured, nah, that's too funny to be real. Then I scrolled back, and upvote it.
AmirmahdiAlimadadi
Oh God, I have all of them
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