the B: drive?

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Developwebsites

so whats the deal with it?
is it gone for good?
is it going to be used for something else?
If I install a DVD, can I use it thru the B: drive?
It seems 1.44mb A: floppies are disappearing as well.
With Syquest, JAZ and ZIP gone, and LS-120, Orb and Shark not popular,
the only external media left seems to be CD-R and now the DVD.

Have DVD standards problems been resolved?
Which ones are the most popular?
 
so whats the deal with it?
is it gone for good?
is it going to be used for something else?
If I install a DVD, can I use it thru the B: drive?
It seems 1.44mb A: floppies are disappearing as well.
With Syquest, JAZ and ZIP gone, and LS-120, Orb and Shark not popular,
the only external media left seems to be CD-R and now the DVD.
Click to expand...

The idea of drive letters is starting to disappear. It's still a kludge
left over from the CP/M days. Win2K/XP have the capability of merging
multiple drives into one letter through RAID or mount points (a mount
points lets you make a drive look like a directory under another drive,
NTFS only. Sort of like the JOIN command back in the DOS days). I think
we'll eventually evolve into the Unix/Linux type of just having
directories or folders, with the underlying drive letters being invisible
or non-existent.

Otherwise, A and B are so tied with floppies, that it's unlikely they'll
become available. They are usually only available to removable boot
devices, depending on BIOS and Windows support.
 
so whats the deal with it?
Click to expand...

The B: drive is the second floppy drive.
is it gone for good?
No.

is it going to be used for something else?
Unlikely.

If I install a DVD, can I use it thru the B: drive?
No.

It seems 1.44mb A: floppies are disappearing as well.
Click to expand...

Nope. Some devices have the driver on floppy so you still need a floppy drive.
With Syquest, JAZ and ZIP gone, and LS-120, Orb and Shark not popular,
the only external media left seems to be CD-R and now the DVD.
Click to expand...

And the floppy disk drive.

I had a very old computer with a 10 meg hd. It had DOS 1.x on it so it was partitioned
into four parts, being A:, C:, D:, E:, with the floppy being B:.


-Barry
========
Web page: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~barry.og
Atheist, radio scanner, LIPD information.
 
Barry OGrady said:
(e-mail address removed) wrote

Yep.

Some devices have the driver on floppy so you still need a floppy drive.
Click to expand...

Bullshit. You can always get it off the web
site when they dont come with a CD instead.
 
Bullshit. You can always get it off the web
site when they dont come with a CD instead.
Click to expand...

What's annoying is that you can't specify a drive letter when doing
the "F6 to use additional device drivers" during Windows 2000/XP setup
- only A:
So if you've got a RAID controller you're trying to install to, you
need a floppy. There are kludgy ways around it (slipstreaming) but
it's a colossal pain in the ass (if not completely impossible) for the
average user.

Really annoying, I hope they change(d) that with Longhorn.

-Slash
 
Barry OGrady said:
The B: drive is the second floppy drive.


Nope. Some devices have the driver on floppy so you still need a floppy drive.


And the floppy disk drive.

I had a very old computer with a 10 meg hd. It had DOS 1.x on it so it was partitioned
into four parts, being A:, C:, D:, E:, with the floppy being B:.
Click to expand...
Yeah! Floppy Frenzy!
To keep legacy alive, my A: drive is 5.25" 1.2M, so I can boot virtually
anything (even DOS 1) on my modern machine. So I need the B: drive for the
3.5" 1.44M drive. You know, if you want to play Alley Cat, or Shamus,
they're on 5.25" and need to boot... Any good CMOS setup allows to
"swap floppy drives", reversing A: and B:, so it's possible to boot on
both sizes.

And listen! I've got a 386 here with:
A: 1.2M 5.25"
B: 1.44M 3.5"
C: hard drive
D: 8" (special cable made, and set as 1.2M in BIOS)

With this, I can read old CP/M disks from the late '70s made for various
platforms.
My controller allows to choose which floppy is A:, B: or 3rd (D:).


I strongly believe A: and B: will remain exclusively for floppies, unless
you can "plug'n'play" a CD or DVD drive and boot anything as if it would
be a floppy and erase or change files with standard COPY or DEL commands
for DOS or equivalent for whatever the OS.

Drive letters are here to stay, unless you boot in a true UNIX environment
with all devices in /dev and /devices... Sometimes I feel Microsoft tries
to hide drive letters (especially in a networked environment), so with these
folder names it's not clear to your mind on what physical device you are,
with "My Documents", and all of "My xxxxx" folders. Sometimes you need to
dig quite deep just to get to the C:\ (root) directory, where that should
be the most easily accessible place to feel in control of your machine.

Luc
 
Developwebsites said:
so whats the deal with it?
is it gone for good?
is it going to be used for something else?
If I install a DVD, can I use it thru the B: drive?
It seems 1.44mb A: floppies are disappearing as well.
With Syquest, JAZ and ZIP gone, and LS-120, Orb and Shark not popular,
the only external media left seems to be CD-R and now the DVD.

Have DVD standards problems been resolved?
Which ones are the most popular?
Click to expand...


Hello,

"B:" is reserved (by the system) for floppy use, exclusively.


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>
 
Steve said:
Really? So how come I can map a networked share to B: without any problem?
Click to expand...


Hello, Steve:

I have absolutely no networking experience, whatsoever and thus, am in
no position to argue. Still, I don't see how any non-floppy >physical
drive< could possibly claim "B:"...correct me if I'm wrong, though,
somebody. :-J


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>
 
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