DeMoN LaG wrote:
>
> "Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED], on 03 Dec 2001:
>
> > I retired the summer after the first version of W-95 came out. We
> > mostly used Windows 3.1.1. at the four high schools were the only
> > ones allowed to try W-95. Am I remembering wrong but didn't the
> > very first version of W-95 actually come out in 93 or 94? I am
> > asking not stating as fact. so don't get wound up if I am wrong.
> > Anyway it gives you an idea of how long since I have looked at DOS.
>
> The first version of Windows 95 came out in 95
August 95 was the first official release.
> >
> > I used On-Track software to setup and initialize new Hard drives
> > when I had to replace Hard drives.
>
> Why not use FDISK?
Fdisk is destructive of data. I use Linux fdisk and Partition Magic to
avoid data loss.
> >
> > Everyone was using a utility called something like Drive Space or
> > Double Space that would let you hold 40megs of info on a 20 meg
> > hard drive. Using this utility though at the time, the hard drives
> > tended to fail in a short period of time and need replacing.
>
> Completely unrelated. First, Doublespace was a compression program.
> Saying a 20 meg drive could hold 40 megs was like saying a 40 meg file
> will zip to 20 megs. If you stored nothing but .exe files which don't
> tend to compress well on it, you would see a loss of space on the drive.
Executables, like text files compress very well. Four to one compression
is seen at times. This is why software download files are usually
compressed. The trouble with Doublespace was that it was hard to recover
a damaged file system.
> Doublespace could not cause a drive to mechanically fail, any more than
> any other program that reads and writes to the disk can cause it to
> fail.
> >
> > I was replacing Floppy or Hard drives in DOS/Windows machines about
> > every two to three weeks.
>
> Then there was something wrong with the working environment. I have a
> floppy drive from '92 that is working perfectly fine still. I have two
> old Seagate hard drives of 428 and ~150 megs that both work fine.
Actually, drive failures are more likely today than they were in 1995.
In 1980 when I went into the disk industry, the development pace was not
so frantic as now and drives tended to be pretty reliable. Today, I
don't trust the drive makers. I left the disk industry in 1996 and am
glad of it. I watched a whole product line go out with tail dragger
heads. They were very crash prone. Curiously, I still have a couple of
engineering prototypes from just before the tail draggers that work. The
couple of tail draggers I have crashed long ago.
Chuck
--
... The times have been,
That, when the brains were out,
the man would die. ... Macbeth
Chuck Simmons [EMAIL PROTECTED]
