Robert Elz <[email protected]> writes: > Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2026 17:35:27 -0500 > From: Greg Troxel <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > > | (I'm 99% sure Sixth and Seventh edition, 1976, 1978ish) had disklabels. > > They didn't - or not if you mean "labels on the disks". Those systems > had "labels" (really partition tables) compiled into the various disk > drivers (one set of partitions for rm03's, another for rk07's, ...) > Those partitions usually overlapped, so different drives (or packs loaded > into drives) could have different partition schemes, but the users needed > to know which /dev entries were valid for a particular disk pack.
Thanks for straightening me out. I now dimly remember the compiled in tables. > Labels written to the drive were a BSD invention (still earlier than > MBR's I think - DOS (no windows at the time) was still generally just > using floppies, if it existed at all). I guess I blurred 1976 and the early 80s! > | The 1st-stage bootloader loaded the first disk block and ran it. > > If you're going far back in time, it was often from tape. Reading > from a disk tends to be a more complex set of operations than a tape. I'm remembering an 11/40 reading from an RK05. Perhaps incorrectly :-)
