SIlly Question of the Day: A and B drive letters

G

Guest

Hi All,

I've been using PCs back since the days when they had dual floppies, A and
B. 20 mb HDs.and 8MB of RAM were BIG!

Anyway, I built my new PC without a floppy drive, since I can't remember the
last time I had to use one. (Though I can't live without a handful of USB
Jump drives.)

My question is, am I just asking for trouble if I set the drive letters on a
couple of my HD data partitions to A and B? I'll still use the C partition
for the XP O/S, just to be safe.

Thanks,

Phideaux.
 
G

Galen

In phideaux <phideaux> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:
Hi All,

I've been using PCs back since the days when they had dual floppies,
A and B. 20 mb HDs.and 8MB of RAM were BIG!

Anyway, I built my new PC without a floppy drive, since I can't
remember the last time I had to use one. (Though I can't live without
a handful of USB Jump drives.)

My question is, am I just asking for trouble if I set the drive
letters on a couple of my HD data partitions to A and B? I'll still
use the C partition for the XP O/S, just to be safe.

Thanks,

Phideaux.
Click to expand...

I don't know of any specific problems of changing a drive letter to A: or to
B: and I can't say that I've ever tried it. Given that there's things out
there that will surely eventually strive to make a nice floppy for you (even
if you don't really want it to) and the programmer probably set it to A:
drive as the DUH-Fault (and likely threw in an automatic format command) I'd
just say that I'd skip that idea and call it good. (I recall spending about
$400 USD on 4 MB of EDO way back when by the way...) I really can't think of
any reasons why the system would have problems with it though I've never
tried it. I just can't see it as being a very safe choice. Instead I'd
continue to work your way up from C: just to be on the safe side.

Galen
--

"And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability
with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the
very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be
made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby."

Sherlock Holmes
 
G

Guest

My question is, am I just asking for trouble if I set the drive
letters on a
couple of my HD data partitions to A and B? I'll still use the C
partition
for the XP O/S, just to be safe.
Click to expand...


Are A: and B: actually offered to you as choices for drive letter
assignments?
 
P

Pavel

I have bee using B: for my 750 megayte ZIP drive for many years now with out
a problem.
 
M

Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)

In the general interests of keeping your computer compatible with all
programs, you should stay with the accepted practice of drive letter
assignment.. A and B are floppies, whether or not present, and all other
storage mediums follow on from that, C being the primary OS boot drive..
 
S

Sam

Hi All,

I've been using PCs back since the days when they had dual floppies, A and
B. 20 mb HDs.and 8MB of RAM were BIG!

Anyway, I built my new PC without a floppy drive, since I can't remember the
last time I had to use one. (Though I can't live without a handful of USB
Jump drives.)

My question is, am I just asking for trouble if I set the drive letters on a
couple of my HD data partitions to A and B? I'll still use the C partition
for the XP O/S, just to be safe.

Thanks,

Phideaux.
Click to expand...

One of these days you may want to install a SATA hard drive. In that case
you may need to have a floppy drive, unless your motherboard has special
built in support for these drives beyond just the ports. So, you may want
to keep this option open, just in case you need to install a floppy drive
in the future.

Sam
 
S

Sam

One of these days you may want to install a SATA hard drive. In that case
you may need to have a floppy drive, unless your motherboard has special
built in support for these drives beyond just the ports. So, you may want
to keep this option open, just in case you need to install a floppy drive
in the future.

Sam
Click to expand...

I just thought of a second reason to have a floppy drive... BIOS flashes. I
find that doing a BIOS flash from a plain floppy DOS boot disk is more
reliable than using some of the built-in utilities that some motherboard
company's have. But, your mileage may vary.

Sam
 
S

Star Fleet Admiral Q

FYI - many BIOS manufacturers have utilities that can run from within
Windows, or are on bootable CD's now adays.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"
 
S

Star Fleet Admiral Q

I would tend to agree with Mike Hall (MS-MVP). Stay away from using A: or
B: unless they are truly floppy and/or removable drives, at least until the
mainstay software community no longer stereotype A:/B: as floppy.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"
 
S

Sam

Sometime on, or about Sat, 14 May 2005 17:57:49 -0400, Star Fleet Admiral Q
wrote:
FYI - many BIOS manufacturers have utilities that can run from within
Windows, or are on bootable CD's now adays.
Click to expand...

Except that there are many reported problems when using them. I'd never
think of flashing my BIOS from Windows... too many systems have been hosed
this way. The safest way of doing a BIOS flash, IMHO, is via a DOS boot
disk.

Sam
 
G

GHalleck

Mike said:
In the general interests of keeping your computer compatible with all
programs, you should stay with the accepted practice of drive letter
assignment.. A and B are floppies, whether or not present, and all other
storage mediums follow on from that, C being the primary OS boot drive..
Click to expand...

Just to set the record straight, Drives A and B are assigned to
removable drives because it was a "standard" established by IBM
originally for the IBM-PC machines. Drive C was given to the HD
(and they were 5 MB or 10 MB in those days). And it has been this
way ever since.
 
M

Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)

G

Exactly so.. A and B were the two 5.25 inch floppy drives..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User
 
G

Guest

Thanks all, interesting discussion.

Good point about using a floppy to flash the BIOS. On my old PC, with an
ASUS mobo, I flashed it using their Windows utility, and it was a disaster.
It wouldn't re-boot, or allow me access to the BIOS, it just hung there at
the first initialization check stage. I had to restore the old BIOS and play
with it for hours to get the Flash to take effect.

Phideaux
 
S

Star Fleet Admiral Q

Then how are you going to flash your BIOS if the manufacturer only supplies
a Windows/Linux based flash process?

We've already bought 100's of PC's where the PC manufacturer only supplies a
WinXP/Linux utility to update the BIOS - they no long support DOS based BIOS
updating, as MS no longer supports DOS, Win98 and shortly WinME.

This will be the case as more and more manufacturer's come on board with
mainline technologies.

Shoot, many PC's/Laptop now adays, the BIOS can be entered while in Windows
or Linux, make changes, save them, and decide then whether to reboot to make
them effective or just wait til next boot.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"
 
S

Star Fleet Admiral Q

Yes, those were the days :)

And we thought we were big deals when we got the first 5/10mg (yes megabit)
drives.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

http://www.google.com
Google is your "Friend"
 
S

Sam

Sometime on, or about Mon, 16 May 2005 21:02:22 -0400, Star Fleet Admiral Q
wrote:
Then how are you going to flash your BIOS if the manufacturer only supplies
a Windows/Linux based flash process?

We've already bought 100's of PC's where the PC manufacturer only supplies a
WinXP/Linux utility to update the BIOS - they no long support DOS based BIOS
updating, as MS no longer supports DOS, Win98 and shortly WinME.

This will be the case as more and more manufacturer's come on board with
mainline technologies.

Shoot, many PC's/Laptop now adays, the BIOS can be entered while in Windows
or Linux, make changes, save them, and decide then whether to reboot to make
them effective or just wait til next boot.
Click to expand...

I build all my own PC's so I don't worry about the limitations that a
manufacturer places on me. I've just heard too many horror stories of what
some of these utilities can do. I still think that a pure DOS environment,
with nothing else running in the background, is the safest way of going.

Sam
 
P

Pavel

My first PC had 2k of memory, no hard drive, no floppy drive, no OS. In
order for it to do anything I had to actually enter the code using keyboard
in to memory one byte at a time using a hex editor which was a part of the
mini bios. They came up with a cassette basic at later time that made life
better. The computer was called SOL-20 from Processor technology produced in
1976. It was sold at beginning as a kit where you had to assemble it from
scratch soldering all the components to the motherboard.

I still have it running and here is even a picture of it
http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/sol.html
 

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