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Oh. That’s too bad. The first 3.5” drive I ever had was in an LC II. Before that I had only used a 5.25 in a PC XT or something like that. Being able to have i
by MBCook 2y ago
Oh. That’s too bad.
The first 3.5” drive I ever had was in an LC II. Before that I had only used a 5.25 in a PC XT or something like that. Being able to have it suck a disc in or ejecting a disc and having it pop out with that great mechanical noise was fantastic.
Because my age I thought all drives were like that. The first time I used a Windows PC (3.0?) I was surprised that you had to push the disc in by hand and that it didn’t just show up on the desktop in Windows. I had to be introduced to the concept of drive letters. Seemed relatively barbaric to young me.
Of course within about two years I was asking for my own PC for all the great games. So that didn’t last all that long.
- pvg 2y agoHah, yes my childhood experience with these was similar. There was your typical 8 bitter 5.25" floppy with its floppiness and rattly drives and make-it-double-sided-with-a-hole-punch diy-ness. And then there was the 3.5" hard plastic square, straight out of Star Wars. A robot would eat it and regurgitate it for you on command.
- sizeofchar 2y agoThat is really interesting, in that it is the opposite of my childhood understanding. I started with CP/M and DOS, and the first time I came to a Linux machine, I just couldn't understand how someone could work with drives without the letters (dedicated namespaces, right). My thought was that it was a less polished design.
- kmeisthax 2y agoFunnily enough, Microsoft actually planned to add floppy drive auto-mount on Windows 95. But half the drives implemented the signal for "media present" backwards from the other half, and Microsoft couldn't figure out a user-friendly way to make it auto-detect, so they canned it