• Disk compressions, the DOS 6 - 6.22 story

    From paulie420@21:2/150 to All on Thursday, September 24, 2020 18:54:32
    I wanted to do a quick local and fsxNet post about a really cool video that I caught this week. It was neat, because I 100% remember most of all these companies - and in fact I used Stacker and then switched between a few
    until... heck, AFTER this video on BBSes especially everyone kinda moved away from these utilities.

    But anyway, heres a youtube link for "Did Microsoft Steal Disk Compression"
    by the Nostalgia Nerd:
    https://youtu.be/oa3xp1xNwvM

    It discusses Squish, Stack, Stacker, DblSpace, DriveSpace and the other non-PKZIP/ARJ type of disk compressions. I remember, on some 286 machine when
    I was first running a board in Toledo, OH and trying Stacker for the first time...

    And how since on BBSes we already had a ton of .ZIP and .ARJ files there were issues from some way Stacker compressed entire drives and made virtual spaces...the hard disk would get corrupted. Or the boot part anyway... and
    the one part in this video the guy talked about, where since it made drive
    C:\ actually D:\ but you didn't see it... my autoexec.bat and config.sys's
    got all messed up once. I think I lost a drive [data] to that too. :P

    Just super fun stuff. Is anyone old enough [lol], or... did anyone have experience using the hardware type? I think that was before I started
    sniffing around for 'free hard drive space'. :P

    Never really worked on systems running a bunch of already compressed files - but I certainly made use of these tecnologies.

    It's a great watch.
    Screw Microsoft! [Or I guess if $$ is all ya care about, they DID make it cheaper... by screwing the other guys.]

    This stuff has been going on forever, the eating of the smaller fish.

    Cheers guys.. hope you take a watch of this cool video.



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to paulie420 on Friday, September 25, 2020 16:40:06
    On 24 Sep 2020 at 06:54p, paulie420 pondered and said...

    Cheers guys.. hope you take a watch of this cool video.

    Hey thanks for sharing :)

    Yep I'll take a look for sure.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From sPINOZa aNARCHISt@21:1/116 to paulie420 on Friday, September 25, 2020 11:24:35
    all these companies - and in fact I used Stacker and then switched
    between a few until... heck, AFTER this video on BBSes especially
    everyone kinda moved away from these utilities.

    We (a group of SysOps) called Stacker Stakker (dutch), which can be translated to Poor thing.

    Indeed, if your disk was full with .zips or .arjs then these utils were useless.

    Gtx!
    sPINOZa

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: -.sOUNDGARDEn.- <elite.xs4all.nl:*hidden*> (21:1/116)
  • From Black Panther@21:1/186 to sPINOZa aNARCHISt on Friday, September 25, 2020 08:32:10
    On 25 Sep 2020, sPINOZa aNARCHISt said the following...

    We (a group of SysOps) called Stacker Stakker (dutch), which can be translated to Poor thing.

    Back when I was setting up my BBS in 1993, I had an old Sysop tell me to
    never trust software pretending to be hardware. I've lived by that statement all these years and have never been disappointed. :)


    ---

    Black Panther(RCS)
    aka Dan Richter
    Castle Rock BBS
    telnet://bbs.castlerockbbs.com
    http://www.castlerockbbs.com
    http://github.com/DRPanther
    The sparrows are flying again...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/25 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (21:1/186)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Black Panther on Sunday, September 27, 2020 11:21:54
    Back when I was setting up my BBS in 1993, I had an old Sysop tell me to never trust software pretending to be hardware. I've lived by that statement all these years and have never been disappointed. :)

    Does a VPS count?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Black Panther@21:1/186 to Adept on Sunday, September 27, 2020 13:54:20
    On 27 Sep 2020, Adept said the following...

    Back when I was setting up my BBS in 1993, I had an old Sysop tell me never trust software pretending to be hardware. I've lived by that statement all these years and have never been disappointed. :)

    Does a VPS count?

    Nope, because you're still on hardware.


    ---

    Black Panther(RCS)
    aka Dan Richter
    Castle Rock BBS
    telnet://bbs.castlerockbbs.com
    http://www.castlerockbbs.com
    http://github.com/DRPanther
    The sparrows are flying again...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/25 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (21:1/186)
  • From sPINOZa aNARCHISt@21:1/116 to Black Panther on Monday, September 28, 2020 11:38:57
    Back when I was setting up my BBS in 1993, I had an old Sysop tell me to never trust software pretending to be hardware. I've lived by that

    And never use a hammer to compress your software ....

    gtx!
    sPI

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: -.sOUNDGARDEn.- <elite.xs4all.nl:*hidden*> (21:1/116)
  • From Black Panther@21:1/186 to sPINOZa aNARCHISt on Monday, September 28, 2020 04:12:32
    On 28 Sep 2020, sPINOZa aNARCHISt said the following...

    Back when I was setting up my BBS in 1993, I had an old Sysop tell me never trust software pretending to be hardware. I've lived by that

    And never use a hammer to compress your software ....

    But it works so well! ;)

    Years ago, when my Dad got his first computer, I had told him he shouldn't stand the 3.5" floppy disks on end, as all of the information would fall to
    one side and the computer wouldn't be able to read it. Up until he died 2
    years ago, he always made sure to keep his floppy disks lying flat. ;)


    ---

    Black Panther(RCS)
    aka Dan Richter
    Castle Rock BBS
    telnet://bbs.castlerockbbs.com
    http://www.castlerockbbs.com
    http://github.com/DRPanther
    The sparrows are flying again...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/25 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (21:1/186)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Black Panther on Monday, September 28, 2020 12:06:46
    Does a VPS count?

    Nope, because you're still on hardware.

    So, is "software pretending to be hardware" just about the advertising?

    I always thought of the drive-space-doubling programs as being, "Compresses various things on your hard drive so that you have more space", and avoided them because it sounded like something that was somewhere between snake oil
    and something only moderately useful (if I had drive space issues that compression would help, I'd probably just compress files myself.). And generally had some negative side effects.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From apam@21:1/126 to Adept on Monday, September 28, 2020 22:26:00
    On Mon Sep 28 12:06:00 2020, Adept wrote to Black Panther <=-

    Does a VPS count?

    Nope, because you're still on hardware.

    So, is "software pretending to be hardware" just about the advertising?

    I always thought of the drive-space-doubling programs as being, "Compresses various things on your hard drive so that you have more space", and avoided them because it sounded like something that was somewhere between snake oil and something only moderately useful (if I had drive space issues that compression would help, I'd probably just compress files myself.). And generally had some negative side effects.

    I had a friend at school who tried to convince me that Double Space utilized previously unused parts of your hard disk to increase the size... not compression. Now I am older and somewhat wiser, I wonder if he was "trolling" me. I don't know if trolling was a thing back then, but I didn't know about it.

    Andrew



    === TitanMail/winnt v1.0.7


    --- TitanFTN (Linux/x86_64)
    * Origin: Wunderlust BBS - wunderlust.ddns.net:2023 (21:1/126)
  • From echicken@21:1/164 to apam on Monday, September 28, 2020 09:11:26
    Re: Re: Disk compressions, the DOS 6 - 6.22 story
    By: apam to Adept on Mon Sep 28 2020 22:26:00

    I had a friend at school who tried to convince me that Double Space
    utilized previously unused parts
    of your hard disk to increase the size... not compression. Now I am older
    and somewhat wiser, I
    wonder if he was "trolling" me. I don't know if trolling was a thing back
    then, but I didn't know
    about it.

    Pulling someone's leg is a tradition as old as humankind, even if it's gone by different names over the years.

    ---
    echicken
    electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com
    * Origin: electronic chicken bbs - bbs.electronicchicken.com (21:1/164)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Black Panther on Monday, September 28, 2020 16:23:53
    would fall to one side and the computer wouldn't be able to read it. Up until he died 2 years ago, he always made sure to keep his floppy disks lying flat. ;)

    ...okay, now I know who I can put down in the "evil" column.

    (Though maybe just chaotic neutral, if we're going D&D (not that I'm an expert).)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to apam on Monday, September 28, 2020 16:34:53
    I had a friend at school who tried to convince me that Double Space utilized previously unused parts of your hard disk to increase the
    size... not compression. Now I am older and somewhat wiser, I wonder if
    he was "trolling" me. I don't know if trolling was a thing back then,
    but I didn't know about it.

    Given what I remember of their advertising (which, admittedly, is very little and probably wrong), I could definitely also see that going either way.

    My view of it, from my very colored by years of reading fact-checking things, is that it claimed double the space, and I went, "...but how?".

    But for all I know, I may have just read an article about it that questioned it. Not really sure all the information that my kid-self took in.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Black Panther@21:1/186 to Adept on Monday, September 28, 2020 13:28:24
    On 28 Sep 2020, Adept said the following...

    ...okay, now I know who I can put down in the "evil" column.

    (Though maybe just chaotic neutral, if we're going D&D (not that I'm an expert).)

    Hahaha. He was also one that would keep his important documents in the
    Recycle Bin on Windows, so that he could recycle them later when he needed them... :)


    ---

    Black Panther(RCS)
    aka Dan Richter
    Castle Rock BBS
    telnet://bbs.castlerockbbs.com
    http://www.castlerockbbs.com
    http://github.com/DRPanther
    The sparrows are flying again...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/25 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (21:1/186)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to sPINOZa aNARCHISt on Saturday, September 26, 2020 12:57:00
    Indeed, if your disk was full with .zips or .arjs then these utils were useless.

    There was a clown here trying to flog (sell), stock MFM drives on an RLL controller, with stacker/superstor, as 240Mb drives... <chuckle>

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Adept on Monday, September 28, 2020 15:31:00
    Adept wrote to Black Panther <=-

    I always thought of the drive-space-doubling programs as being, "Compresses various things on your hard drive so that you have more space", and avoided them because it sounded like something that was somewhere between snake oil and something only moderately useful

    There was a period of time where they were helpful. My co-sysop in
    the '90s worked for AddStor, the makers of SuperStor. It created a
    compressed container file that became your C: drive, and depending on
    the file formats, could reclaim 15-20% of your space. Files that were
    already compressed didn't benefit from disk compression, though -
    they already were compressed.

    I had a ton of text files that compressed nicely, as did my message
    area files.

    The problem was that the container was one file that stored all of
    your files. Lose that one file, lose all of your files.

    Microsoft ended up killing the market when they included DoubleSpace.
    I'm pretty sure it was AddStor (or STAC?) that sued Microsoft for
    copyright infringement, claiming that MS brought them in to talk
    about a purchase, and snarfed their IP to make their own compression
    play.





    (if I
    had drive space issues that compression would help, I'd probably just compress files myself.). And generally had some negative side effects.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to apam on Monday, September 28, 2020 15:32:00
    apam wrote to Adept <=-

    I had a friend at school who tried to convince me that Double Space utilized previously unused parts of your hard disk to increase the
    size... not compression. Now I am older and somewhat wiser, I wonder if
    he was "trolling" me. I don't know if trolling was a thing back then,
    but I didn't know about it.

    Drivespace notched the hard drive, but you had to flip the drive over
    yourself.




    ... Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
    --- MultiMail/XT v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From sPINOZa aNARCHISt@21:1/116 to Spectre on Tuesday, September 29, 2020 17:06:51
    There was a clown here trying to flog (sell), stock MFM drives on an RLL controller, with stacker/superstor, as 240Mb drives... <chuckle>

    Hehe, reminds me of trying to get a 30 MB MFM drive and a 60 MB RLL drive working together in a XT ... The result was a 386 with 90 MB IDE drive ....

    The 386 machine is still alive, but the drive isn't.

    I also remember "discounters" selling systems advertised with a HD twice as big without mentioning that this neat software was installed on it and if you
    were lucky you also had a board with fake cache mem on it.

    Those were the days!
    sPI

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: -.sOUNDGARDEn.- <elite.xs4all.nl:*hidden*> (21:1/116)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Black Panther on Wednesday, September 30, 2020 12:49:47
    Hahaha. He was also one that would keep his important documents in the Recycle Bin on Windows, so that he could recycle them later when he
    needed them... :)

    It _is_ a good idea to recycle good ideas, so it does only seem natural.

    But, sheesh, evil. :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tuesday, October 06, 2020 21:29:30
    Drivespace notched the hard drive, but you had to flip the drive over
    yourself.

    I still have a hard time believing that taking a hole punch to a 5.25" floppy doubles your available space.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From vorlon@21:1/195.1 to Adept on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 09:58:20
    Drivespace notched the hard drive, but you had to flip the
    drive over yourself.

    I still have a hard time believing that taking a hole punch to a
    5.25" floppy doubles your available space.

    The comodore 64's 1541 5.25" drive has only one head. So putting the
    notch into a disk and flipping it would work and was a way to gain the
    extra storage space.

    When I had a C64 and the 1541 drive, I did that trick and it worked well.




    \/orlon
    VK3HEG


    --- MagickaBBS v0.15alpha (Linux/armv6l)
    * Origin: \/orlon Empire: Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)
  • From Bucko@21:4/131 to vorlon on Tuesday, October 06, 2020 19:18:56
    On 07 Oct 2020, vorlon said the following...


    The comodore 64's 1541 5.25" drive has only one head. So putting the
    notch into a disk and flipping it would work and was a way to gain the extra storage space.

    When I had a C64 and the 1541 drive, I did that trick and it worked well.




    I used to do that with all of my C64 disks.. In fact my first BBS CNet 10.0
    the front side was the boot disk and the backside was the system disk which
    the BBS ran on.. All 664 blocks of storage.. LOL

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Adept on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 19:30:00
    On 10-06-20 21:29, Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Drivespace notched the hard drive, but you had to flip the drive over
    yourself.

    I still have a hard time believing that taking a hole punch to a 5.25" floppy doubles your available space.

    Certainly did in the Apple II days. ;)


    ... Which way did they go!? I'm they're leader!!
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to vorlon on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 20:10:39
    The comodore 64's 1541 5.25" drive has only one head. So putting the
    notch into a disk and flipping it would work and was a way to gain the extra storage space.

    I guess that does explain it, and I had forgotten the reasoning.

    Though I still don't know why it was so standard to take a hole punch to it rather than the disks just coming with notches on each side.

    I assume there's a reason, though it could be the disappointing, "They
    charged more for that" answer.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Vk3jed on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 20:23:09
    I still have a hard time believing that taking a hole punch to a 5.25 floppy doubles your available space.

    Certainly did in the Apple II days. ;)

    My brother was looking into some Apple II stuff, and learning about how the screens display by showing the first line, then a middle line, then a bottom line, and repeating that until the screen is filled.

    And evidently in the code, it's not that coders were choosing random lines
    for some reason -- those three, far apart, lines really, oh, 0, 1, and 2 in
    the order of display.

    Because reasons. That I'm sure there's an answer for out there, but probably only Woz could explain why it was a good design decision given the
    constraints of the time.

    And, man, imagine the math one would have to do in order to properly keep
    track of objects on the screen.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Charles Pierson@21:4/111 to Adept on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 16:58:58
    Thus spake Adept:
    The comodore 64's 1541 5.25" drive has only one head. So putting the
    notch into a disk and flipping it would work and was a way to gain the
    extra storage space.

    I guess that does explain it, and I had forgotten the reasoning.

    Though I still don't know why it was so standard to take a hole punch to it rather than the disks just coming with notches on each side.

    I assume there's a reason, though it could be the disappointing, "They charged more for that" answer.

    That actually was basically it. Officially, the double sided disks were "tested" on both sides. Single sided disks you took a chance on whether the flip side would work or not. I personally never ran into one that didn't work,
    although there was a higher chance of bad tracks.
    So let it be written, So let it be done.
    --- AfterShock/Android 1.6.7
    * Origin: HOUSTON, TX (21:4/111)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Adept on Thursday, October 08, 2020 15:44:00
    On 10-07-20 20:23, Adept wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    My brother was looking into some Apple II stuff, and learning about how the screens display by showing the first line, then a middle line, then
    a bottom line, and repeating that until the screen is filled.

    And evidently in the code, it's not that coders were choosing random
    lines for some reason -- those three, far apart, lines really, oh, 0,
    1, and 2 in the order of display.

    Yeah that does ring a bell when seeing screens load, especially graphics.

    Because reasons. That I'm sure there's an answer for out there, but probably only Woz could explain why it was a good design decision given the constraints of the time.

    Would be interesting to know, but I'm sure there's be a reasonable (and interesting!) reason for this behaviour. It's interesting what designers had to work around. Today, it's likely some chip manufacturer can do it in brute force with a gazillion onboard transistors. :)

    And, man, imagine the math one would have to do in order to properly
    keep track of objects on the screen.

    That would be _ugly_! :)


    ... The easy way is always mined.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Vk3jed on Thursday, October 08, 2020 22:03:23
    Would be interesting to know, but I'm sure there's be a reasonable (and interesting!) reason for this behaviour. It's interesting what
    designers had to work around. Today, it's likely some chip manufacturer can do it in brute force with a gazillion onboard transistors. :)

    Agreed, on both counts.

    It's interesting that, these days, it's almost always a better idea to do things in such a way that the code is clean and easy to read than do it in
    the most efficient way.

    There's always _some_ exceptions, of course, and making elegant hacks is
    always entertaining.

    On the other hand, it's also kind of fun to tinker with an Arduino, even if
    you oftentimes start thinking, "Well, what can I get away with?" because of memory or processing issues.

    Which is both fascinating and incredibly frustrating.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Phoobar@21:2/147 to Adept on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 13:32:25
    Though I still don't know why it was so standard to take a hole punch to it rather than the disks just coming with notches on each side.
    I assume there's a reason, though it could be the disappointing, "They charged more for that" answer.

    That was part of it...but what I remember reading/hearing was that it would make your disk wear out faster.

    Was introduced to the Apple ][ before I could afford a Commodore box I got in 1984 by mail order for $200. We were doing the same thing with the Apple as well.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2020/09/12 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: ACME BBS-0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 (21:2/147)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Adept on Wednesday, October 07, 2020 10:25:00
    I still have a hard time believing that taking a hole punch to a 5.25" floppy doubles your available space.

    Why? You're forgetting single sided drives. You punched an extra hole in the floppy, or disabled the write protect on the drive, flipped your disc et voila double the data :) I'm sure there were others, but the Apple II was notorious for this... but it was only a 140k floppy

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Adept on Thursday, October 08, 2020 16:22:00
    Though I still don't know why it was so standard to take a hole punch to it rather than the disks just coming with notches on each side.

    I don't know the validity, but..

    There was the back of the disc isn't verified, particularly SSDD.

    Also something about the extra padding/stuffing s'posed to sweep
    the surface of the media as it swings passed. When you flip the
    floppy you reverse the rotation so the previous sweeping are essentially put back on the surface.

    In practice I've never seen a SSDD with magnetic media on one side. Maybe in the super early days there might have been.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Spectre on Saturday, October 10, 2020 18:47:00
    On 10-08-20 16:22, Spectre wrote to Adept <=-

    In practice I've never seen a SSDD with magnetic media on one side.
    Maybe in the super early days there might have been.

    Probably would have cost more to retool for that than to simply make all disks physicallyb double sided.


    ... Desperate diseases require desperate remedies.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Vk3jed on Sunday, October 11, 2020 08:53:00
    In practice I've never seen a SSDD with magnetic media on

    Probably would have cost more to retool for that than to simply make
    all disks physicallyb double sided.

    It may well be a throwback to even earlier days of 8" discs... for the type of disc to be noted it would have to existed in some form once.

    Spec


    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: (21:3/101)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Spectre on Sunday, October 11, 2020 20:39:00
    On 10-11-20 08:53, Spectre wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    It may well be a throwback to even earlier days of 8" discs... for the type of disc to be noted it would have to existed in some form once.

    On the drive side, cheaper to produce a drive with only one head, rather than 2. :)


    ... I strive for perfection, what I get is reality.
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Vk3jed on Monday, October 12, 2020 06:39:00
    type of disc to be noted it would have to existed in some form once.

    On the drive side, cheaper to produce a drive with only one head, rather than 2. :)

    While that is definitely true.... I can still conceive even in the face of lack of evidence, that the media existed in some form even for a short time as truely SS... It'd be a case of why do two sides if they only want to use one? Rather than any other driver available at the time.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to Spectre on Tuesday, October 13, 2020 19:29:00
    On 10-12-20 06:39, Spectre wrote to Vk3jed <=-

    type of disc to be noted it would have to existed in some form once.

    On the drive side, cheaper to produce a drive with only one head, rather than 2. :)

    While that is definitely true.... I can still conceive even in the face
    of lack of evidence, that the media existed in some form even for a
    short time as truely SS... It'd be a case of why do two sides if they
    only want to use one? Rather than any other driver available at the
    time.

    Maybe quality control wa an issue in the early days, so they did 2 sides, in the hope that at lerast one would pass QA?


    ... Be less critical more often
    === MultiMail/Win v0.51
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)