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Author Topic: B drive  (Read 4922 times)

ljbirns

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B drive
« on: August 04, 2006, 03:16 PM »
I am curious as to why no drive is named  B.  Why is that ?

Lew
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Josh

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Re: B drive
« Reply #1 on: August 04, 2006, 03:19 PM »
B drive was used back in the days when people had multiple floppy disks. Back in those days, you would have both a 3.5 inch and a 5.25 inch floppy disk drive. Nowadays, its really not needed.

app103

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Re: B drive
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2006, 03:23 PM »
I had a B drive on my P3 for a short time.

I had borrowed my father's external USB Super Floppy drive.

That letter is reserved, just like A, for floppy drives.

ljbirns

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Re: B drive
« Reply #3 on: August 05, 2006, 08:36 AM »
Ok  That make sense. I remember we bought a computer  a long  time ago and we insisted that they add a 3.5 " drive to go along with the 5.25 floppy. I forgot that it was the B drive.

Thanks

I knew I could count on getting the right answer from the collective expertise of our forum

Lew
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mouser

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Re: B drive
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2006, 09:48 AM »
even with one drive, my memory is you could use things like
"copy A:*.* B:"

and what would happen is, after it copied the files from the drive, you would be prompted to swap in a new floppy disk to complete the copy.  So it was a useful kludge for copying things between floppies.

f0dder

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Re: B drive
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2006, 05:15 PM »
Yeah, that sounds right to me, mouser... DOS handled "B:" tweakily when you didn't have a second floppy drive. After harddrives appeared, there wasn't much advantage in having two floppy drives.
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Josh

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Re: B drive
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2006, 05:21 PM »
Are you kidding? Floppies have always had their place until the recordable cd became common place.