10 Oct
2012
10 Oct
'12
6:46 a.m.
QUINZE MIL FLOPPIES??? Que voces vao fazer com
tanto disquete assim?!
He's obviously building a 21.6 Gigabyte RAID Array using a proven
storage medium with a long track record, rather than these modern
hocus-pocus terabyte drives that use pure magic to record anything
and you never know where on the media it will actually land. Won't
hold all of bitsavers by any means, but will hold like an eighth of it.
15000 floppies, times 1.44 Mbyte each, gives 21.6 Gigabytes.
Oh, wait, he needs at least one drive for redundancy.
Actual capacity = 14999 * 1.44 Mbytes. The 15000th drive carries the
parity stripe, just in case any of the other drives ever fail.
Tim.
10 Oct
10 Oct
7:07 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Shoppa, Tim <tshoppa at wmata.com> wrote:
I think you're on the right track. My guess is that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
Camiel
QUINZE MIL
FLOPPIES??? Que voces vao fazer com tanto disquete assim?!
He's obviously building a 21.6 Gigabyte RAID Array using a proven
storage medium with a long track record, rather than these modern
hocus-pocus terabyte drives that use pure magic to record anything
and you never know where on the media it will actually land. Won't
hold all of bitsavers by any means, but will hold like an eighth of it. 
7:16 a.m.
On 10 October 2012 12:07, Camiel Vanderhoeven <iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
I think you're on the right track. My guess is
that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
Maybe they want to restore a very large Windows 3.1 backup?
--
Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems: "The Future Begins Tomorrow"
Visit us at: http://www.yoyodyne-propulsion.net
--------
"I'd like to hold off judgement on a thing like that, sir, until all
the facts are in. "
General "Buck" Turgidson
1:17 p.m.
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 7:16 AM, John Many Jars
<john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
On 10 October 2012 12:07, Camiel Vanderhoeven
<iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
Testing a Windows 8 floppy install?
-ethan
I think you're on the right track. My guess
is that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
Maybe they want to restore a very large Windows 3.1 backup? 
2:48 p.m.
On 10 October 2012 18:17, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 7:16 AM, John Many Jars
<john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
Badoom-tish!
Actually, I think that was my favourite answer so far... :?)
2nd place, Rich's linguistics lesson. 3rd place, Fred's speculation on
connecting them all up at once to a single computer.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
On 10 October 2012 12:07, Camiel Vanderhoeven
<iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
Testing a Windows 8 floppy install? I think you're on the right track. My guess
is that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
Maybe they want to restore a very large Windows 3.1 backup? 
8:20 p.m.
On 10/10/12 2:48 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
On 10 October 2012 18:17, Ethan Dicks<ethan.dicks
at gmail.com> wrote:
I mark my ballot similarly to Liam.
--Toby
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 7:16 AM, John Many Jars
<john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
Badoom-tish!
Actually, I think that was my favourite answer so far... :?)
2nd place, Rich's linguistics lesson. 3rd place, Fred's speculation on
connecting them all up at once to a single computer.
On 10 October 2012 12:07, Camiel
Vanderhoeven<iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
Testing a Windows 8 floppy install? I think you're on the right track. My guess
is that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
Maybe they want to restore a very large Windows 3.1 backup? 
11 Oct
11 Oct
9:01 a.m.
On 10/10/2012 12:17 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 7:16 AM, John Many Jars
<john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
I'm liking these responses... that's the second time in this thread I've
started typing a message and someone else has beaten me to it :-)
I started over-thinking it and wondering if any installer has let you
select a completely different source of media on-the-fly, though? (Normally
it's "take the media out, put the next in the set back in the same drive")
I suppose you could hook up 15,000 floppy drives to a box 'o tricks that
made the whole lot look like a DVD drive with continuous data blocks,
though, and then plug that into a PC...
cheers
Jules
On 10 October 2012 12:07, Camiel
Vanderhoeven<iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote:
Testing a Windows 8 floppy install? I think you're on the right track. My guess
is that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
Maybe they want to restore a very large Windows 3.1 backup?
9:42 a.m.
On 11 October 2012 14:01, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
I started over-thinking it and wondering if any installer has let you select
a completely different source of media on-the-fly, though? (Normally it's
"take the media out, put the next in the set back in the same drive")
Classic MacOS was that smart, although some custom-written install
programs weren't.
But in general, classic MacOS said "please insert volume X" and then
looked for a mounted volume by that name in any available drive. So if
you had a twin-floppy Mac with a hard disk, you could install programs
in, if not quite half the time, significantly less. Disk N in drive 1,
disk N+1 in drive 2, then swap N for N+2 while it works on N+1...
Some Amiga stuff was that smart as well, I think; both Amigas and Macs
went through a period when twin-floppy machines were much more
affordable - and much more usable - than hard-disk based ones, and
either of them with twin floppies was far more usable than a PC or
CP/M box with twin floppies, where dumb old text-mode apps looked for
A: and B: and they were not interchangeable.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884
10 Oct
10 Oct
1:25 p.m.
New subject: 'FRAID that Our Museum Need a special help..
On Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Camiel Vanderhoeven wrote:
I think you're on the right track. My guess is
that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
They will need 14 bits of address select for them!
That would handle 16383 drives. Does that mean that they already have
1383 drives already online?
(That is 16383, NOT 16384, because 0000000000000000 is reserved for "NO
DRIVE(S) SELECTED")
The calling protocol for INT13h could only handle 127 floppy drives, since
the high bit of the 8 bit value is reserved for hard disks. Some hardware
mods would be needed, and most versions of INT13h would require some
tweaking.
Isn't MS-DOS limited to 63 drive letters? (and some versions won't let
you go past 'Z'!)
What OS's have a 14 bit (or 16) for the drive number?
Each drive better have motor-on with drive select. Having 15000 drive
motors running might be a problem for the power supply! How much 5V and
12V would be needed for the 'FRAID?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
5:54 p.m.
New subject: 'FRAID that Our Museum Need a special help..
On 10 October 2012 18:25, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
The calling protocol for INT13h could only handle 127
floppy drives, since
the high bit of the 8 bit value is reserved for hard disks. Some hardware
mods would be needed, and most versions of INT13h would require some
tweaking.
Isn't MS-DOS limited to 63 drive letters? (and some versions won't let
you go past 'Z'!)
What OS's have a 14 bit (or 16) for the drive number?
Don't most *nix like system use a 32 bit device number nowdays (those
which still use traditional major/minor device splits), which
depending on the split should give plenty of room.
I wonder what the virtual SCSI adaptor limit is in qemu.... :)
11 Oct
11 Oct
9:19 a.m.
New subject: 'FRAID that Our Museum Need a special help..
On 10/10/2012 12:25 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Camiel Vanderhoeven wrote:
Hmm, maybe they'll put them in a giant ring, each drive plugged into its
own interface module, and drive (n+1) only becomes active when drive (n)
has received a predetermined number of step signals.
Or maybe we'll see a message in a couple of weeks asking for 7,500
new-in-box 486 PCs?
I think you're on the right track. My guess
is that they're building
an on-line software repository to archive the 15,000 diskettes with
software they have, and want to do it using original-era hardware.
They will need 14 bits of address select for them!
10 Oct
10 Oct
1:10 p.m.
> QUINZE MIL FLOPPIES??? Que voces vao fazer
com tanto disquete assim?!
On Wed, 10 Oct 2012, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
15000 floppies, times 1.44 Mbyte each, gives 21.6
Gigabytes.
Only for a truly BOGUS definition of "Gigabyte" (2^10 * 10^6)??!?
For an HONEST definition of Gigabyte (2^30) it is about 20.6
The MARKETING people named those disks "1.44M" because they redefined MB
to be 1024 * 1000. a MB of 1024 K makes them 1.4 M.
I'm willing to bet that EVERYBODY on this list is capable of multiplying
80 * 2 * 18 * 512
Let's get 15,000 (or 15 000 as in the original request) and let's see how
much they REALLY hold!
'FRAID to do so?
One of the casinoes in Vegas makes a big deal out of having "ONE MILLION
DOLLARS!" in cash on display. 20G of floppies would be more fun!
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
11 Oct
11 Oct
9:28 a.m.
On 10/10/2012 12:10 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
One of the casinoes in Vegas makes a big deal out of
having "ONE MILLION
DOLLARS!" in cash on display. 20G of floppies would be more fun!
Particularly if you include the more colorful ones from the more recent
years[1]. 15,000 would cover 175' of an 8' wall, 25 in each column. It'd
make an interesting pixellated mural...
[1] and the more modern ones were such garbage that nobody in their right
mind would trust them for actual data storage!
4336
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12 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
abs＠absd.org -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
iamcamiel＠gmail.com -
john＠yoyodyne-propulsion.net -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
lproven＠gmail.com -
toby＠telegraphics.com.au -
tshoppa＠wmata.com