Finally, Death of the 3.5 inch floppy disk
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From: Joerg on 5 May 2010 21:15 Stuart Longland wrote: > On Apr 30, 2:07 am, Joerg <inva...(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >> Paul Carpenter wrote: >>> In article <83rugtFvq...(a)mid.individual.net>, inva...(a)invalid.invalid >>> says... >>>> Spehro Pefhany wrote: >>>>> On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:15:21 -0700, Joerg <inva...(a)invalid.invalid> >>>>> wrote: >>>>>> Spehro Pefhany wrote: >>>>>>> On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:49:10 -0700, Joerg <inva...(a)invalid.invalid> >>>>>>> wrote: >>>>>>>> Yes, and that wear is clearly visible. However, the typical disk is used >>>>>>>> as file storage and only once in a while read back, and then only small >>>>>>>> parts of it. >>>>>>> I have an old HP logic analyzer that boots off of a floppy. >>>>>> AFAIK there's also plenty of scopes from Tek and others where that's the >>>>>> only way to get screen shots over to your PC. Unless you bought the now >>>>>> pretty much unobtanium GPIB interface for beaucoup $$$. But mostly I see >>>>>> that with production machines. One floppy slot and absolutely zilch in >>>>>> terms of other interfaces. CNC gear become almost useless without being >>>>>> able to feed data into it. >>>>> Many, maybe most, of them have an old-fashioned serial interface too, >>>>> for which people have cobbed together interfaces so that they can be >>>>> controlled from a central point. There are half a dozen, from several >>>>> different suppliers, in a college machine shop that I'm familiar with- >>>>> used for teaching CNC machining. >>>> Occacionally I have been asked to take a look at a machine shop. Mainly >>>> because it gets messy in there and they'd rather not carry disks around >>>> and worst case get a splotch of gunk or metal chafings into a drive >>>> (happened to me once). But usually there was only one or two of the >>>> machines that had RS232, sometimes none. >>> Some machine shops have very old CNC equipment, last year I had an >>> enquiry to find a spare PDP 11/73 card for one, that MIGHT have had >>> a serial but I dread to think what format of media it might have had. >> I had to coach someone through repair and calibration of a circuit board >> test bed from the 80's. All nicely DOS-based so it worked right off the >> bat :-) > > The AUTOEXEC.BAT no less? :-) Yup, pretty much, a batch file :-) DOS is so remarkably fast. No grding on hard drives, no wait, it's instant. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
From: Andrew Smallshaw on 6 May 2010 11:24 On 2010-05-05, Stuart Longland <redhatter(a)gentoo.org> wrote: > On Apr 27, 9:07?pm, John Tserkezis ><j...(a)techniciansyndrome.org.invalid> wrote: >> >> ?No idea about Vista, but have installed Win7 several times so far, and >> yes, your only option is F6 to look at drive A:. > > Good grief, and here I was thinking Microsoft _finally_ got around to > fixing that. (I mean, cripes... at least look at a flaming CD > fellas?!) That can create problems in the truly general case. Think about it: you are loading drivers for an HBA and want to get them from a CD-ROM, potentially attached to that very same HBA... > I think USB could be difficult due to the fact that the initial loader > (in the case of Windows XP and earlier) started in DOS, loaded the > drivers into RAM then kickstarted the NT kernel from there, but one > would have thought that on modern systems, the BIOS should still at > least allow some access to USB drives. And clearly CD-ROMs are > accessible as it loads the rest of the drivers that way. That would seem the most natural PC way of doing things. I'm not really familiar with the Windows boot process anymore but there has to be _some_ point early on where the BIOS is still readily accessible and kernel modules can easily be loaded. Of course the most elegant way would be to place basic get-you-home drivers on the device itself. Sun managed this twenty years ago with their OpenPROM system, and that didn't even depend on the CPU since they were written in architecture-independent Forth. However that probably requires the kind of centralised planning and authoritative "this is the way it is going to be done" assertion that is difficult to enforce for commodity x86 hardware. The only time I can see you doing it is with a new bus standard: if e.g. PCIe had demanded it manufacturers would have little wriggle room. -- Andrew Smallshaw andrews(a)sdf.lonestar.org
From: Dombo on 6 May 2010 15:39 Andrew Smallshaw schreef: > On 2010-05-05, Stuart Longland <redhatter(a)gentoo.org> wrote: >> On Apr 27, 9:07?pm, John Tserkezis >> <j...(a)techniciansyndrome.org.invalid> wrote: >>> ?No idea about Vista, but have installed Win7 several times so far, and >>> yes, your only option is F6 to look at drive A:. >> Good grief, and here I was thinking Microsoft _finally_ got around to >> fixing that. (I mean, cripes... at least look at a flaming CD >> fellas?!) > > That can create problems in the truly general case. Think about > it: you are loading drivers for an HBA and want to get them from > a CD-ROM, potentially attached to that very same HBA... > >> I think USB could be difficult due to the fact that the initial loader >> (in the case of Windows XP and earlier) started in DOS, loaded the >> drivers into RAM then kickstarted the NT kernel from there, but one >> would have thought that on modern systems, the BIOS should still at >> least allow some access to USB drives. And clearly CD-ROMs are >> accessible as it loads the rest of the drivers that way. > > That would seem the most natural PC way of doing things. I'm not > really familiar with the Windows boot process anymore but there > has to be _some_ point early on where the BIOS is still readily > accessible and kernel modules can easily be loaded. > > Of course the most elegant way would be to place basic get-you-home > drivers on the device itself. That was originally the intention with the IBM PC, e.g. the video card has its own Flash or (EPROM in the old days). Unfortunately it works in real mode only, and standardization for the software interfaces appears to have stopped around 1988. The elderly among us probably still remember Ralf Browns interrupt list.
From: Meindert Sprang on 7 May 2010 03:31 "Dombo" <dombo(a)disposable.invalid> wrote in message news:4be31ae3$0$30719$5fc3050(a)news.tiscali.nl... > ... The elderly among us probably still > remember Ralf Browns interrupt list. I still have it on my server. The windows version (help file) even. But resent the word "elderly" :-) Meindert
From: SG1 on 7 May 2010 03:39
"Meindert Sprang" <ms(a)NOJUNKcustomORSPAMware.nl> wrote in message news:4be3c223$0$22942$e4fe514c(a)news.xs4all.nl... > "Dombo" <dombo(a)disposable.invalid> wrote in message > news:4be31ae3$0$30719$5fc3050(a)news.tiscali.nl... >> ... The elderly among us probably still >> remember Ralf Browns interrupt list. > > I still have it on my server. The windows version (help file) even. But > resent the word "elderly" :-) > > Meindert OK geriatric > > |