[Coco] Older drives smaller than 1G.

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Chuck Youse <cyouse at serialtechnologies.com>
> On Wed, 2008-10-01 at 22:01 -0500, Sean wrote:
> > ..."Older" drives under 1G...
> > I remember my first 1G IDE drive... In 1997...
> > I think even drives under 100 gig are 'old' now!
> > 
> > Bridging to my other hobby, related to secure data destruction:  A
> > .223 rifle bullet through a 3.5" hard drive looks REALLY cool if you
> > get it through the platters and the case.  Nice multiple eruptions of
> > metal!

Prefer .45 (1911) for close up, and my Marlin (old-fashion lever gun) for range.  (I've got one good eye, and I prefer iron sights, but my .308 has a good old Bushnell).

Sean, that is also one of my own favorite avocations.  But I've got little use for .223.  OK for poodle-shooters.  Works great on disks, no tactical function except when you have a political reason to lose troops (common during 'Nam, pandemic in Iraq).

> *grins* When I was a teenager, I worked for Tandy during the 540MB
> barrier breach.  Had to install special software that would load on
> start that would intercept BIOS calls on PCs to allow access to > 1024
> cylinders... can't for the life of me remember what Western Digital
> shipped with ... 

That was long after I left Tandy (4/86).  As I recall, when I left, the 35 Mb disks were just being introduced for the T6k (though they also worked fine with the 1/3/4 (couldn't use the whole thing at a time, limits to LDOS and LS-DOS), but you could build logical disks out to the edge and use them with different boot disks or tricky reassignments that didn't involve the first volume, and the Color Computer series' -- though that was before the official CoCo HD interface). 

 And no OS-9 version, not even NitrOS-9, has ever approached LS-DOS for ease of configuring hard drives -- nor has had a comparable command shell -- and neither comes close to the Bourne shell, let alone its descendants, the Korn and BASH shells -- Due to product release schedules, I learned the Bourne shell, then the LDOS job control language, then the OS-9 L1 language and the many utilities attached to each.  I love them all, LDOS/LS-DOS will always be my favorite single-user operating system, OS-9 et seq will always be my second favorite multi-user OS (I am and will always be a Unix geek, be it Xenix or Linux -- they coexist in my basement attached by null-modem cables, though the T6k is a bit [extremely] flaky lately and I'm not as good at hardware as I was backalong).
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

"What I know [about the art of the sword] boils down to this:  If you see a guy running at you with a sword, put two rounds in his chest to slow him down, then one into his brain to finish him off".  Aaron Allston, _Sidhe Devil_

The two halves of the ruling Party are arguing over who gets to be the Top this time.  Either wins, Top or Bottom, they both win by the situation.  For us individuals, BOHICA.