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#51
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On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 01:43:14 -0700, DevilsPGD
wrote: In message "Joe" wrote: "Trent©" wrote You need a controller also...and many boards don't come with a floppy controller anymore. Are you on drugs or just plain stupid. Go to newegg.com and look threw the approximately 300 mobos they sell and tell me which ones do not come with a floppy controller. You're correct here, I've yet to see any ATX motherboard without a floppy controller. Doesn't mean they're not out there! lol MSI makes a bunch of 'em. And...I don't keep track of the big boys. But I think they were tryin' it at one point...and went back to the old way 'cause people couldn't be sold on the idea. Have a nice one... Trent© Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876! |
#52
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On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 01:43:22 -0700, DevilsPGD
wrote: In message kony wrote: It'd be a whole lot easier if MS would just fix their software. IMO, there is no excuse for an OS that can start booting from a drive but then "lose" itself. At the very least they could've allowed alternate sources for the driver. There are a couple things Microsoft could do to the installer that would solve this problem instantly. Am I missing something here? What does MSFT have to do with anything...when the drive hasn't even been partitioned yet...when first purchased? Have a nice one... Trent© Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876! |
#53
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On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 15:36:39 GMT, kony wrote:
They are many new prebuilts sold without a floppy these days but they would never need one as they are using dvd or cd drives you can boot from and not SATA or SCSI drives that need you to install drivers. Untrue, practically every system has the potential to need a floppy drive for one thing or another, if not several things. Common examples - User buys new HDD or has questionable/failing HDD, needs make diagnostic floppy. CDROM may incude simple setup help but not the diagnostics. I think what yer sayin' is...he needs to make a diagnostic DISK. Why couldn't it be a diagnostic CD? Motherboard bios gets scrambled but boot block still works. System might boot to floppy to reflash bios but there is NO other way without pulling EPROM (AFAIK). Why couldn't it boot from a cd? I don't understand. One of myriad other utilites are in compressed self-extracting archives will automatically pop up a "make floppy" dialog with no option to output elsewhere. User can make a floppy or quit, no 3rd choice. That will change when support for floppies is eliminated. And it will be...soon. After all, the floppy drive is simply a channel...and, yes... can be set to be the first accessed. Once we have a DEPENDABLE alternative, the change will take place. Jump drives might be it...with a USB port as the first boot device. BTW...as you probably know...jump drives are up to 1 gig now...and climbing! Have a nice one... Trent© Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876! |
#54
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On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 04:45:39 GMT, Trent©
wrote: Common examples - User buys new HDD or has questionable/failing HDD, needs make diagnostic floppy. CDROM may incude simple setup help but not the diagnostics. I think what yer sayin' is...he needs to make a diagnostic DISK. Why couldn't it be a diagnostic CD? Sure, if one both knows how and wants to go to the trouble of compiling it every time. Often though it's simplified such that user puts int he original CD and is given choice "insert floppy", then they make the floppy or they don't. Whether the floppy maker has dumped the files to a temp directory or it's a Winimage self-extrator or another method, the user will have to figure that out and go from there, IF possible, else they need to make the floppy first in order to make the CD FROM that floppy. Motherboard bios gets scrambled but boot block still works. System might boot to floppy to reflash bios but there is NO other way without pulling EPROM (AFAIK). Why couldn't it boot from a cd? I don't understand. Boot block has provisions for floppy boot, not IDE/ATAPI/USB/etc. It can't boot from anything else because the bios isn't in working order, hence the whole reason to reflash. One of myriad other utilites are in compressed self-extracting archives will automatically pop up a "make floppy" dialog with no option to output elsewhere. User can make a floppy or quit, no 3rd choice. That will change when support for floppies is eliminated. And it will be...soon. But, that is no guarantee that legacy software will be updated. Some people could instead argue... do away with optical drives, you have a floppy and HDD. Others will argue "but I need to read CDs". Yeah, and if you have floppys or programs that use floppies, you need them too. After all, the floppy drive is simply a channel...and, yes... can be set to be the first accessed. Once we have a DEPENDABLE alternative, the change will take place. No, it's not just a channel, it's a legacy channel that the Super I/O uses, while IDE isn't. There's the difference, more bios code needed for IDE to work, and it's not in a boot block. The floppy is certainly inferior in speed and capacity but neither is absolutely necessary in it's typical role. Jump drives might be it...with a USB port as the first boot device. Sure, I like 'em, they're handy, faster and higher capacity and price isn't bad either, BUT, 1) Not all boards will boot from any, let alone all of 'em. 2) Utilities are over-simplified and you make a floppy or nothing. "Some day" you might be able to make something else besides a floppy... for ALL your needs. When that day comes, we'll have a viable alternative. The day hasn't come yet. BTW...as you probably know...jump drives are up to 1 gig now...and climbing! Yep... I'm just waiting for cheap UDMA capable CompactFlash cards though, there are a lot of systems I could convert over to flash for OS once most of the drawbacks are gone. Even so, in a full, normally size system I'd still throw a floppy drive in, because (not anticipating need for one) (never needing one) |
#55
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On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:56:18 GMT, kony wrote:
I think what yer sayin' is...he needs to make a diagnostic DISK. Why couldn't it be a diagnostic CD? Sure, if one both knows how and wants to go to the trouble of compiling it every time. Compiling? Again...I don't understand. Or did you mean 'creating'? You certainly don't compile a floppy. Often though it's simplified such that user puts int he original CD and is given choice "insert floppy", then they make the floppy or they don't. That's simply a procedure. That procedure could easily be changed...actually, to the way its done now for a floppy. Put in a floppy...format it...make it bootable if you want. Put in a cd...format it...make it bootable if you want. Whether the floppy maker has dumped the files to a temp directory or it's a Winimage self-extrator or another method, the user will have to figure that out and go from there, IF possible, else they need to make the floppy first in order to make the CD FROM that floppy. Again...that's simply the current procedure. We now get whatever we need from the computer in order to make our own boot floppy. The same could be done with a CD...or with any OTHER boot drive or device. The only given is that the device would need the capability to write...so that a medium could be created. That's really all the floppy does that a cdrom doesn't do...write. We'd need a standard where every computer comes with a cdrw...and no floppy. Personally, I can't see that happening...only because the cd is too bulky. I think you'll see a trend to making a USB port a boot port. Motherboard bios gets scrambled but boot block still works. System might boot to floppy to reflash bios but there is NO other way without pulling EPROM (AFAIK). Why couldn't it boot from a cd? I don't understand. Boot block has provisions for floppy boot, not IDE/ATAPI/USB/etc. It can't boot from anything else because the bios isn't in working order, hence the whole reason to reflash. That's simply a minor technicality...that could easily be changed. That will change when support for floppies is eliminated. And it will be...soon. But, that is no guarantee that legacy software will be updated. Some people could instead argue... do away with optical drives, you have a floppy and HDD. Others will argue "but I need to read CDs". Yeah, and if you have floppys or programs that use floppies, you need them too. Legacy will simply fall by the wayside...like its always done. What yer point? I've got a machine sitting here that wants to boot from the 5 1/4 drive!! lol And I've got DOS 3.3 indexing programs that no longer work on most machines. Even things like Win95 have become dinosaurs. Actually...even today...a corrupt BIOS could be recovered from the other BIOS on the board. After all, the floppy drive is simply a channel...and, yes... can be set to be the first accessed. Once we have a DEPENDABLE alternative, the change will take place. No, it's not just a channel, it's a legacy channel that the Super I/O uses, while IDE isn't. Again...a mere technicality. There's the difference, more bios code needed for IDE to work, and it's not in a boot block. The floppy is certainly inferior in speed and capacity but neither is absolutely necessary in it's typical role. Most machines boot just fine from a CD. Just think how much more a boot device could provide if it wasn't limited to 1.4 meg. Jump drives might be it...with a USB port as the first boot device. Sure, I like 'em, they're handy, faster and higher capacity and price isn't bad either, BUT, 1) Not all boards will boot from any, let alone all of 'em. Do you remember when they finally put a 'swap boot drive' option into most BIOS? Its just a matter of new programming in the BIOS. After all, that's how we now get the option to boot from a cd. 2) Utilities are over-simplified and you make a floppy or nothing. "Some day" you might be able to make something else besides a floppy... for ALL your needs. When that day comes, we'll have a viable alternative. The day hasn't come yet. Sure it has. Most of us have that option now. BTW...as you probably know...jump drives are up to 1 gig now...and climbing! Yep... I'm just waiting for cheap UDMA capable CompactFlash cards though, there are a lot of systems I could convert over to flash for OS once most of the drawbacks are gone. Even so, in a full, normally size system I'd still throw a floppy drive in, because (not anticipating need for one) (never needing one) Floppies have outlived their usefulness. At the very beginning, their purpose WASN'T to boot a machine (although it truly WAS...before machines had hard drives in 'em.) Their main purpose was to carry data...programs, etc...from one machine to the other...and easily. The jump drive is taking over that job...and may even make a cd burner obsolete. Why burn a cd...when you can drag-n-drop to a jump?...a jump that has more capacity than a cd. The world she is a changin'! lol I'm gonna try settin' up a machine this weekend with a jump drive as a paging file. Have a nice one... Trent© Budweiser: Helping ugly people have sex since 1876! |
#56
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In message kony
wrote: Motherboard bios gets scrambled but boot block still works. System might boot to floppy to reflash bios but there is NO other way without pulling EPROM (AFAIK). Why couldn't it boot from a cd? I don't understand. Boot block has provisions for floppy boot, not IDE/ATAPI/USB/etc. It can't boot from anything else because the bios isn't in working order, hence the whole reason to reflash. Sure, for existing motherboards. Typically the easiest way is to have a BIOS which isn't flashable which has the tools to recover the flashable BIOS. If it can operate a floppy there is no reason why it couldn't be designed to operate a USB disk as well. -- I'm sorry sir, you can't park your van on the diving board. |
#57
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In message Trent©
wrote: On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 01:43:22 -0700, DevilsPGD wrote: In message kony wrote: It'd be a whole lot easier if MS would just fix their software. IMO, there is no excuse for an OS that can start booting from a drive but then "lose" itself. At the very least they could've allowed alternate sources for the driver. There are a couple things Microsoft could do to the installer that would solve this problem instantly. Am I missing something here? What does MSFT have to do with anything...when the drive hasn't even been partitioned yet...when first purchased? When you build a new system, pop in a shiny new WinXP CD, you have the option to load drive controller drivers before the install partitions and formats for you. However, the installer ONLY looks on the primary floppy drive, and it does so using hardware (not BIOS) calls. In other words, a bootable CDROM can emulate a write-only floppy from DOS' point of view, but the NT installer accesses the floppy directly rather then asking the BIOS for Drive A. This should change. The installer should check all drives visible to it at this point (and it should have already loaded all of the internal drivers) I know with 100% certainty that the WinXP installer can see USB flash drives because when you get to the partitioning screen it lists the USB drives, their sizes and current partition states, and it appears to offer the ability to install to an external harddrive. I don't have any flash drives large enough, but if I'm ever bored enough I'll try installing WinXP to a removable drive and see if I can get it working. -- I'm sorry sir, you can't park your van on the diving board. |
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