5 ms·

You haven't lived until you installed an operating system from 38 floppy disks. Slackware and OS/2 for example My lord those were fun days. Especially fun whe

You haven't lived until you installed an operating system from 38 floppy disks. Slackware and OS/2 for example My lord those were fun days. Especially fun when you got to OS/2 Disk 21 and it died, or Slackware Xwindows Floppy 4 and you started hearing that disk drive kurchunking and you just knew you were dead in the water.

system2 4y ago
I remember installing windows 95 from floppy disk. It was only 13 disks but with MSDOS it would go up to 16. Some drivers here and there, 20+ disk installation would take hours.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  In the early 1990s you could get Linux distributions on floppy (if you didn't have a CD-ROM drive yet) -- I remember one that had over 30 disks.
phpisthebest 4y ago
Windows 10 Floppy Install... Please Insert Disk 1 of 4166
- grishka 4y ago
  You'd probably only need a third of that if you opt to not install any of the .net/UWP stuff though.
Swizec 4y ago
My friend got Settlers 2 on CD for his birthday. My computer didn’t have a CD drive. Solution? Copy the installed game from his computer onto 30 floppy disks. Carefully reconstruct the installation on my computer. It worked.
rcarmo 4y ago
Slackware yes, OS/2 Warp I had the good fortune to only get on CD. But those Mac System 6 disks…
flyinghamster 4y ago
SCO Xenix was every bit as bad, and yes, I did the Slackware "download floppy images, make a stack of floppies, spend hours installing" dance as well. I remember being very relieved by the rise of CD-ROM and CD-R.
- linker3000 4y ago
  ISTR a couple of boot floppies was enough to get the attached Wangtek drive spinning so you could bootstrap a DC600 tape and load from there. I don't recall if this was an official implementation or something we cooked up. Oh yes, and there was the floppy way too.
  - blantonl 4y ago
    It was a great feeling when we were able to bootstrap a CDROM drive.
- rvba 4y ago
  Buffer overflows when burning CDs was a big pain too. I am not sure if those early CD writers even had buffers - but they were so expensive back then, that I didnt have one. There was "that one guy" who had it and was supplying pirated stuff for whole neighborhood.
fortran77 4y ago
I installed SCO Unix from 96 floppy disks dozens of times.
davidw 4y ago
Bonus points for downloading all those slackware floppies over a 14.4 modem.
lizknope 4y ago
I installed Slackware in the fall of 1994. I only had about 10 blank floppies so I would go to the computer lab and download the "A" base system, then wipe those, go back to the computer lab, download and install the "AP" application set, and so on for the development tools, X Windows System, and more. It took most of the weekend but it was amazing having a Unix system on my Pentium 90. I had a brand new IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM which was not supported yet. About 6 months later it was and I started ordering the multi CD set from Walnut Creek cdrom.com every 6 months or so to get new distributions.
- rconti 4y ago
  I was actually able to dual-boot and install from hard disk when I installed slackware in .. August 95? But, zmodem on a 14.4k modem meant each download took 12-13 minutes, so it was an entire weekend of just walking around the house with a kitchen timer and kicking off a new 'disk' each time it buzzed.
romwell 4y ago
> hearing that disk drive kurchunking That's the best onomatopoeia I've seen in a while, and it brings the feeling of instant dread
Tor3 4y ago
It's not less painful to install and set up an IRIX system with a couple dozen CDs.. (except that CDs didn't often fail to read). In fact it was so tiring that after the first couple of times I would always just copy the CDs to a disk on another computer and point the installation there, one directory at the time (fortunately SGI machines could NFS-mount filesystems from the monitor)
noneeeed 4y ago
I remember helping out at school to install Lotus Smartsuite on a room full of PCs from floppies. The box was about 2 foot long. We had to relay them from one PC to the next so we could install them all roughly at the same time.

system2 4y ago

I remember installing windows 95 from floppy disk. It was only 13 disks but with MSDOS it would go up to 16. Some drivers here and there, 20+ disk installation would take hours.

jhbadger 4y ago
In the early 1990s you could get Linux distributions on floppy (if you didn't have a CD-ROM drive yet) -- I remember one that had over 30 disks.

phpisthebest 4y ago

Windows 10 Floppy Install... Please Insert Disk 1 of 4166

grishka 4y ago
You'd probably only need a third of that if you opt to not install any of the .net/UWP stuff though.

Swizec 4y ago

My friend got Settlers 2 on CD for his birthday. My computer didn’t have a CD drive. Solution? Copy the installed game from his computer onto 30 floppy disks. Carefully reconstruct the installation on my computer. It worked.

rcarmo 4y ago

Slackware yes, OS/2 Warp I had the good fortune to only get on CD. But those Mac System 6 disks…

flyinghamster 4y ago

SCO Xenix was every bit as bad, and yes, I did the Slackware "download floppy images, make a stack of floppies, spend hours installing" dance as well. I remember being very relieved by the rise of CD-ROM and CD-R.

linker3000 4y ago
ISTR a couple of boot floppies was enough to get the attached Wangtek drive spinning so you could bootstrap a DC600 tape and load from there. I don't recall if this was an official implementation or something we cooked up. Oh yes, and there was the floppy way too.
- blantonl 4y ago
  It was a great feeling when we were able to bootstrap a CDROM drive.
rvba 4y ago
Buffer overflows when burning CDs was a big pain too. I am not sure if those early CD writers even had buffers - but they were so expensive back then, that I didnt have one. There was "that one guy" who had it and was supplying pirated stuff for whole neighborhood.

fortran77 4y ago

I installed SCO Unix from 96 floppy disks dozens of times.

davidw 4y ago

Bonus points for downloading all those slackware floppies over a 14.4 modem.

lizknope 4y ago

I installed Slackware in the fall of 1994. I only had about 10 blank floppies so I would go to the computer lab and download the "A" base system, then wipe those, go back to the computer lab, download and install the "AP" application set, and so on for the development tools, X Windows System, and more. It took most of the weekend but it was amazing having a Unix system on my Pentium 90. I had a brand new IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM which was not supported yet. About 6 months later it was and I started ordering the multi CD set from Walnut Creek cdrom.com every 6 months or so to get new distributions.

rconti 4y ago
I was actually able to dual-boot and install from hard disk when I installed slackware in .. August 95? But, zmodem on a 14.4k modem meant each download took 12-13 minutes, so it was an entire weekend of just walking around the house with a kitchen timer and kicking off a new 'disk' each time it buzzed.

romwell 4y ago

> hearing that disk drive kurchunking That's the best onomatopoeia I've seen in a while, and it brings the feeling of instant dread

Tor3 4y ago

It's not less painful to install and set up an IRIX system with a couple dozen CDs.. (except that CDs didn't often fail to read). In fact it was so tiring that after the first couple of times I would always just copy the CDs to a disk on another computer and point the installation there, one directory at the time (fortunately SGI machines could NFS-mount filesystems from the monitor)

noneeeed 4y ago

I remember helping out at school to install Lotus Smartsuite on a room full of PCs from floppies. The box was about 2 foot long. We had to relay them from one PC to the next so we could install them all roughly at the same time.