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.
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.
Who even remembers where to find the A drive anymore?
cmd_iii 13 points · Jan 2022
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 4 points · Jan 2022
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.
BCProgramming 2 points · Jan 2022
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 1 points · Jan 2022
Man, I need to pick up some legacy computers and fiddle around. This sounds like a damn fun headache.