Recently (within the last year or so), I've started to notice people online referring to a PC optical drive as a "player" (as in, wondering whether they should add a "DVD player" to their new PC build). I feel like this is my new pet peeve.. A DVD player is a stand-alone device meant to play DVD movies on a TV; a PC optical drive is not a "player".

But I did a search online, and I saw at least one ad online for an external USB blu-ray drive with the word "player" in the description..

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because when you're watching a movie disc on your PC, it's the software that does the playing of the video. The optical drive is just reading the data, and you could also be using the optical disc to install software, rip movies, etc., which are activities that don't count as "playing" something.

Nightfox

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nightfox to All on Wed Apr 23 2025 15:06:39

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel

If it only plays discs, then it'a "player". If you can write to a disc, then it's a "burner" or "writer". The term, "optical drive" merely refers to the type of supported media.

Now, go decompress. :)
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Recently (within the last year or so), I've started to notice people online referring to a PC optical drive as a "player" (as in, wondering whether they should add a "DVD player" to their new PC build). I feel like this is my new pet peeve.. A DVD player is a stand-alone device meant to play DVD movies on a TV; a PC optical drive is not a "player".

Shrug, same thing variation on application. I get it might be your pet peeve, but so long as someone still knows what you're talking about does it matter?

ST

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Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Mortar M. to Nightfox on Wed Apr 23 2025 08:19 pm

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel

If it only plays discs, then it'a "player". If you can write to a disc, then it's a "burner" or "writer". The term, "optical drive" merely refers to the type of supported media.

For an optical ROM drive for a computer (which doesn't write), I've never heard anyone call it a "player" until recently.

Now, go decompress. :)

Yeah :) I just thought it was odd when I saw people refer to it that way.

Nightfox

Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: StormTrooper to Nightfox on Thu Apr 24 2025 01:09 am

Shrug, same thing variation on application. I get it might be your pet peeve, but so long as someone still knows what you're talking about does it matter?

I dunno.. Maybe it's just a technicality, but on a computer, I think video playback really only happens in the software - so the software program you're running is the "player", and the optical drive is only reading the data (thus the drive isn't the "player").

Just a linguistic pet peeve, similar to how some people say things like "could care less" or using the incorrect their/they're/there. :)

Nightfox

On Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:06:39 -0700
"Nightfox" (21:1/137) <Nightfox@f137.n1.z21.fidonet> wrote:

Recently (within the last year or so), I've started to notice people
online referring to a PC optical drive as a "player" (as in,
wondering whether they should add a "DVD player" to their new PC
build). I feel like this is my new pet peeve.. A DVD player is a stand-alone device meant to play DVD movies on a TV; a PC optical
drive is not a "player".

But I did a search online, and I saw at least one ad online for an
external USB blu-ray drive with the word "player" in the description..

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"?
I feel like that's not even really accurate, because when you're
watching a movie disc on your PC, it's the software that does the
playing of the video. The optical drive is just reading the data,
and you could also be using the optical disc to install software, rip
movies, etc., which are activities that don't count as "playing"
something.

If it's DVD-ROM or CD-ROM then yes, it would be a player since you can
only play from it. That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where. Then again, where
are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all. So
many conundrums when it comes to computer hardware.
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In a tangentially related "old man yells at cloud" issue:

KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10 years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I've come to terms with the change but I don't really like it.

At work, the legacy system I work on refers to storage in base 2 so a KB=1024 but interacts with newer services that are base 10 where KB=1000 so there's a headache of conversions.

Anyway, I don't really understand why that all changed. I've heard people mention HDD storage manufacturers using base 10 as marketing and it stuck but that seems like an odd reason to upend everything.

...that's the end of my rant on that. I'm probably wrong so take it with a grain of salt. lol



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Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because when you're watching

It totally bugs me when it's acceptable to call things what they aren't!

... A house is a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff

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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: slacker to Nightfox on Thu Apr 24 2025 07:50 am

In a tangentially related "old man yells at cloud" issue:

KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10 years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I've come to terms with the change but I don't really like it.

At work, the legacy system I work on refers to storage in base 2 so a KB=1024 but interacts with newer services that are base 10 where KB=1000 so there's a headache of conversions.

Anyway, I don't really understand why that all changed. I've heard people mention HDD storage manufacturers using base 10 as marketing and it stuck but that seems like an odd reason to upend everything.

That bugs me too. I remember the same, where KB was 1024 bytes, and so on. I've heard that about HDD manufacturers doing that as a marketing term. But I've also heard some people say Microsoft and IBM started it with KB being 1024 bytes & such, and that they were wrong all along. I don't know what's correct now.

One thing I've noticed is that Windows still uses the base 2 sizes for that, but Mac OS uses base 10. So if you look at a file's size on Windows, and the same file on a Mac, Mac OS will make it seem like the file is a bit bigger because it uses base 10 to report its file size (unless you look at the number of bytes, rather than megabytes/gigabytes/etc.).

Nightfox

only play from it. That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where. Then again, where
are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all. So

I suspect... that hard drive is a throw back to them good old days when your HD was the size of a fridge and you had to install the platters in it. In a real sense you inserted platters into the drive mechanism. Probably hung on after the platters became integrated and the devices much smaller..

ST

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KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10
years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I was under the impression, that your KB is still 1024 bytes, while the KiB is the decimalised version being 1000 bytes...

ST

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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: StormTrooper to slacker on Thu Apr 24 2025 11:12 pm

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10 years
or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I was under the impression, that your KB is still 1024 bytes, while the KiB is the decimalised version being 1000 bytes...

I've heard people say it's the other way around.. KB is supposedly supposed to be 1000 bytes and KiB is 1024.

Nightfox

Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: StormTrooper to Nigel Reed on Thu Apr 24 2025 11:10 pm

only play from it. That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where. Then again, where are
3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all. So

I suspect... that hard drive is a throw back to them good old days when your HD was the size of a fridge and you had to install the platters in it. In a real sense you inserted platters into the drive mechanism. Probably hung on after the platters became integrated and the devices much smaller..

I always thought it's called a "drive" because it's the device that "drives" the movement of the discs, similar to how a scrwdriver is the tool that "drives" the movement of a screw when you turn it.

Nightfox

Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nightfox to StormTrooper on Wed Apr 23 2025 22:01:43

Just a linguistic pet peeve, similar to how some people say things like "could care less" or using the incorrect their/they're/there. :)

I feel ya. I've been fighting that battle for decades with onliners, without success. Oddly, they care more about getting their program code syntax right then their English.
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nigel Reed to All on Thu Apr 24 2025 00:16:51

Then again, [why] are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all.

Depends on your perspective. True, the outer shell isn't floppy, but the actual media is.
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On 23 Apr 2025 at 03:06p, Nightfox pondered and said...

Recently (within the last year or so), I've started to notice people online referring to a PC optical drive as a "player" (as in, wondering whether they should add a "DVD player" to their new PC build). I feel like this is my new pet peeve.. A DVD player is a stand-alone device meant to play DVD movies on a TV; a PC optical drive is not a "player".

But I did a search online, and I saw at least one ad online for an external USB blu-ray drive with the word "player" in the description..

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because when you're watching
a movie disc on your PC, it's the software that does the playing of the video. The optical drive is just reading the data, and you could also
be using the optical disc to install software, rip movies, etc., which
are activities that don't count as "playing" something.

I don't think it really matters. Its like when people moved from "USB Drive" to "USB Stick". Also, I knew few people who call them "optical" anything. The key is whether people are misunderstanding what they are.

I think the problem may be if the "player" is also a "burner". If its not, then perhaps its a way to distinguish between a drive which can only real, and one which is read-write.

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On 23 Apr 2025 at 03:06p, Nightfox pondered and said...

Recently (within the last year or so), I've started to notice people online referring to a PC optical drive as a "player" (as in, wondering whether they should add a "DVD player" to their new PC build). I feel like this is my new pet peeve.. A DVD player is a stand-alone device meant to play DVD movies on a TV; a PC optical drive is not a "player".

But I did a search online, and I saw at least one ad online for an external USB blu-ray drive with the word "player" in the description..

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because when you're watching
a movie disc on your PC, it's the software that does the playing of the video. The optical drive is just reading the data, and you could also
be using the optical disc to install software, rip movies, etc., which
are activities that don't count as "playing" something.

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

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On 24 Apr 2025 at 07:50a, slacker pondered and said...

In a tangentially related "old man yells at cloud" issue:

KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10
years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I WILL NOT use the term "kibibyte" or "mebibyte". Refuse to.

Don't change convention.

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Hey Nightfox!

On Thu, Apr 24 2025 20:02:53 -0500, you wrote:

I've heard people say it's the other way around.. KB is supposedly
supposed to be 1000 bytes and KiB is 1024.

FYI, in a quick duckduckgo search.. my first two results conflict each other.

1st result:
Kibibyte = 1
Kilobyte = 1.024

2nd result:
1 kB = 1000 bytes; 1 KiB = 1024 bytes

In any other sense, a "kilo" has always been 1000. So maybe the more common prefixes have been used because it was "close enough". Apparantly, the binary prefixes have been around since 1998? Until recently, they were hardly ever used in normal conversation (and honestly, probably still aren't used much in /normal/ conversation.

Maybe it's just coming a little bit more to the forefront because people care to be much more politically correct these days? I don't know. I will probably continue to use the non-binary prefixes, as it doesn't matter to me much and is easier to remember. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: boraxman to Nightfox on Fri Apr 25 2025 13:35:04

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

Right, that wouldn't be confusing at all. "Hey, hand me that winchester...Not the gun, idiot, the hard drive!"
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Mortar M. wrote to Nightfox <=-

If it only plays discs, then it'a "player". If you can write to a
disc, then it's a "burner" or "writer". The term, "optical drive"
merely refers to the type of supported media.

If it holds a cup, it's a cupholder. :)


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Recently (within the last year or so), I've started to notice people onlin referring to a PC optical drive as a "player" (as in, wondering whether th on your PC, it's the software that does the playing of the video. The opt drive is just reading the data, and you could also be using the optical di to
install software, rip movies, etc., which are activities that don't count "playing" something.

Back in the 90s, i had a 386 machine, which had a CDROM... that device was only to use with the PC and read data or music. To listen music from an audio CD, you needed to power on the PC and use some software to play the audio...

...but somewhere in the mid or late 90s some CDROM devices appeared that could also play audio CDs by them selves. They had a Play/Pause button and an audio jack, that you could connect to headphones or speakers and listen music. They only needed power to be used. Of course they could also be used as a normal PC device to read data from the PC.

I think you mean those devices :)

.
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Hello phigan,

24 Apr 25 05:18, you wrote to Nightfox:

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a
"player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because
when you're watching

It totally bugs me when it's acceptable to call things what they
aren't!

like calling something 'milk' when it's not coming from a mammal? :)

ByEbYe
--
Daniel

telnet://bbs.roonsbbs.hu:1212 <<=-

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On 24 Apr 2025 at 08:41p, Mortar M. pondered and said...

Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: boraxman to Nightfox on Fri Apr 25 2025 13:35:04

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they shou "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

Right, that wouldn't be confusing at all. "Hey, hand me that winchester...Not the gun, idiot, the hard drive!"

I recall seeing some advertisements or articles in old magazines, where they were called Winchesters, or something to that effect. Or a Winchester type drive.

Yes, I associate Winchesters with guns. I wonder if there is a Beretta 10M hard drive, and a Smith and Wesson 42M drive.

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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: boraxman to Nightfox on Fri Apr 25 2025 01:35 pm

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

Doesn't "disk" refer to the actual round platter(s) inside it? I always thought it was called a "drive" because it's a device that drives the motion of the disks, similar to how a screwdriver is used to "drive" the screw into the wood by turning it.

Also I've never heard the term "Winchester" for a storage device..?

Nightfox

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: xqtr to Nightfox on Fri Apr 25 2025 02:52 pm

Back in the 90s, i had a 386 machine, which had a CDROM... that device was only to use with the PC and read data or music. To listen music from an audio CD, you needed to power on the PC and use some software to play the audio...

...but somewhere in the mid or late 90s some CDROM devices appeared that could also play audio CDs by them selves. They had a Play/Pause button and an audio jack, that you could connect to headphones or speakers and listen music. They only needed power to be used. Of course they could also be used as a normal PC device to read data from the PC.

I think you mean those devices :)

No, that's not what I'm talking about (but I do remember those). What I'm referring to is online forums (such as on Reddit, etc.) where people talk about building computers, or other forums about ripping movies, etc., and people in these forums sometimes use the term "player" for an optical drive.

Nightfox

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Roon to phigan on Fri Apr 25 2025 02:01 pm

It totally bugs me when it's acceptable to call things what they aren't!

like calling something 'milk' when it's not coming from a mammal? :)

Yeah.. How exactly do you milk an almond? :P

Nightfox

StormTrooper wrote to Nigel Reed <=-

only play from it. That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where. Then again, where
are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all. So

I suspect... that hard drive is a throw back to them good old days when your HD was the size of a fridge and you had to install the platters in it. In a real sense you inserted platters into the drive mechanism. Probably hung on after the platters became integrated and the devices
much smaller..

Floppies used to be floppy - especially the 8" variety. 5 1/4" were minifloppies, and 3 1/2" were microfloppies. Would that make a USB stick
a nanoflopppy?



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boraxman wrote to Nightfox <=-

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they
should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

I prefer "Spinning Rust".



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xqtr wrote to Nightfox <=-

Back in the 90s, i had a 386 machine, which had a CDROM... that device
was only to use with the PC and read data or music. To listen music
from an audio CD, you needed to power on the PC and use some software
to play the audio...

Proprietary CD-ROM drives from the 90's - bad flashbacks! Either playing
audio through tinny tiny underpowered speakers or through your Walkman headphones if you had your computer on the desk. Otherwise, the cord
wasn't long enough and you were out of luck.


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Roon wrote to phigan <=-

like calling something 'milk' when it's not coming from a mammal? :)

I like that the popular protein drink "MUSCLE MILK" has to say in small
print, CONTAINS NO MILK.


We're on an express elevator, going DOWN!




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Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because when you're watching
a movie disc on your PC, it's the software that does the playing of the video. The optical drive is just reading the data, and you could also
be using the optical disc to install software, rip movies, etc., which
are activities that don't count as "playing" something.

Short answer no, funny answer maybe. The original optical drives could be considered both. There were cdroms with software on them, but to play audio did not play directly through your computer. The audio came out and output directly to your soundcard. To play CD's you computer just basically presses play, stop or skip. In fact if I remember correctly I believe some cd-rom drives had those buttons right on them.

But what you a describing I would agree with you, not players.

Lloyd (neoshock) sysop @ Vintage Pi BBS
vintagepi.asuscomm.com

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only play from it. That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where. Then again, where

Actually Hard Drives do go some where, eventually to the trash after about 5 years LOL

Lloyd (neoshock) sysop @ Vintage Pi BBS
vintagepi.asuscomm.com

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Speaking of the media being flexible.

When the Zip Drive began selling I wasn't wanting to buy one of them because a couple years earlier I saw a 40MB SyQuest removable disk hard drive had Metal media inside its plastic case.

The Zip Drive media was flexible as Flopoies are.

SyQuest staered advertising that they were going to make a EZ-135 Drive and I waited until they sold it and got one because the media was metal just like the platter in a HDD is .

SyQuest went out of business shortly later.
Ed
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Re: Got Floppy?
By: Ed Vance to Mortar M. on Fri Apr 25 2025 10:08 pm

When the Zip Drive began selling I wasn't wanting to buy one of them because a couple years earlier I saw a 40MB SyQuest removable disk hard drive had Metal media inside its plastic case.

SyQuest staered advertising that they were going to make a EZ-135 Drive and I waited until they sold it and got one because the media was metal just like the platter in a HDD is .

SyQuest went out of business shortly later. Ed

For a short time, I had a SyQuest Sparq drive, which used 1GB removable hard drive cartridges. I thought it was really cool, but I didn't know anyone else who had a Sparq drive (maybe just one of my friends). I later got a zip drive though, because my college had some computers that had zip drives.

I thought the late 90s was an interesting time with all those different removable media formats being released - especilly with 2 different ones from the same company (Syquest's Sparq and the 440MB one you mentioned).

Nightfox

I like that the popular protein drink "MUSCLE MILK" has to say in small print, CONTAINS NO MILK.

Oh, this reminds me of a couple of products that I find entertaining:

Salt Sense - Advertises that it contains something like 1/3rd less salt per teaspoon. Given that the contents are over 99% salt, just like with any other salt, they get this by making the granules bigger, thus increasing the amount of air included in a teaspoon.

So, if you want the exact same effect with table salt inside of a dish, you included 1/3rd less, and it's exactly the same. Or you could just use kosher salt instead, and already be somewhere around there.
-
Spray fat - 0 grams of fat per serving, contents are over 99% fat. But serving size is small enough that the US labeling requirements round down, so a fat-only product can be labeled fat free.

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Quoting Mortar M. to Nigel Reed <=-

Then again, [why] are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all.

Depends on your perspective. True, the outer shell isn't floppy, but
the actual media is.

They're hard on the outside and floppy in the innards! 5 1/2" disks are
floppy on the inside and the outside. And one more thing, stationary
mice have bigger balls.

;D


... RAM DISK is NOT an installation procedure!

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Quoting Stormtrooper to Nigel Reed <=-

only play from it. That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where. Then again, where
are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all. So

I suspect... that hard drive is a throw back to them good old days
when your HD was the size of a fridge and you had to install the
platters in it. In a real sense you inserted platters into the drive mechanism. Probably hung on after the platters became integrated and
the devices much smaller..

Every mechanical (non solid state) drive has platters. And they also
have heads in them, but unlike some peoples fridge where the head's
don't move - the ones in the hard drive do.

I know, I know.

Booo.

... Climate: what we expect. Weather: what we get.

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Quoting Stormtrooper to Slacker <=-

KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10
years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I was under the impression, that your KB is still 1024 bytes, while
the KiB is the decimalised version being 1000 bytes...

From what I've read...

It's actually the opposite. A KiB (kibbibyte) is 1024 bytes while a KB (kilobyte) is 1000 bytes. (according to the IEC)

But who's mincing words.

... Press <Alt-A> to Adopt Me! I need a better home.

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Quoting Nightfox to Stormtrooper <=-

I suspect... that hard drive is a throw back to them good old days when your HD was the size of a fridge and you had to install the platters in it. In a real sense you inserted platters into the drive mechanism. Probably hung on after the platters became integrated and the devices much smaller..

I always thought it's called a "drive" because it's the device that "drives" the movement of the discs, similar to how a scrwdriver is the tool that "drives" the movement of a screw when you turn it.

Oh no, we're not back to that park on driveway and drive on parkway
question are we? :)

... Bread can lead to harder stuff like baguettes and croissants!!!

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Quoting Boraxman to Nightfox <=-

I think the problem may be if the "player" is also a "burner". If its
not, then perhaps its a way to distinguish between a drive which can
only real, and one which is read-write.

Boraxman - I think you are correct about the understanding part...

You - my friend are a real 'Playa'!

If you get my meaning!

... I DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' TAGLINE

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Quoting Boraxman to Nightfox <=-

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they
should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

I guess for me it goes back to when I was only able to use "Floppy
Disks" on my C64, I really, really wanted an LT Kernal "Hard Disk". I
had never heard of the Winchester, only the LT Kernal and had dreams of
buying one instead of waiting 30 days for my 1541 to load Jumpman.


... It's a chain saw. I always carry one for emergencies.

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Quoting Roon to Phigan <=-

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a
"player"? I feel like that's not even really accurate, because
when you're watching

It totally bugs me when it's acceptable to call things what they
aren't!

like calling something 'milk' when it's not coming from a mammal? :)

Let me explain for Phi - he means it totally irritates (=bugs) him when
it's acceptable to call (or use as a description in a sentence) things
what they aren't.

Is that more crystal?

... It's a chain saw. I always carry one for emergencies.

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Quoting Boraxman to Mortar M. <=-

I recall seeing some advertisements or articles in old magazines,
where they were called Winchesters, or something to that effect. Or a Winchester type drive.

Yes, I associate Winchesters with guns. I wonder if there is a Beretta
10M hard drive, and a Smith and Wesson 42M drive.

I do recall seeing how to 'delete' a hard drive with a Beretta...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iUkkpy3JdOU

... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

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Quoting Nightfox to Roon <=-

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Roon to phigan on Fri Apr 25 2025 02:01 pm

It totally bugs me when it's acceptable to call things what they aren't!

like calling something 'milk' when it's not coming from a mammal? :)

Yeah.. How exactly do you milk an almond? :P

The same way you milk a maroon!

... Mind... Mind... Let's see, I had one of those around here someplace.

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Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Xqtr <=-

xqtr wrote to Nightfox <=-

Back in the 90s, i had a 386 machine, which had a CDROM... that device
was only to use with the PC and read data or music. To listen music
from an audio CD, you needed to power on the PC and use some software
to play the audio...

Proprietary CD-ROM drives from the 90's - bad flashbacks! Either
playing audio through tinny tiny underpowered speakers or through your Walkman headphones if you had your computer on the desk. Otherwise, the cord wasn't long enough and you were out of luck.

Most of them also had an internal connector so you could plug it into
your Soundblaster card and get some decent tunes from your Pioneer
headphones - albeit with twisty phone corded wired connection. My
Soundblaster with surround sound logitech speakers (with booming base
box) was the shizzle back then. So the music from my propietary CD-ROM
was 'kickin' some beats.

(sorry back to the present)

... Not much is worse than being peerless in a peer-review system.

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Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Roon <=-

We're on an express elevator, going DOWN!

Hudson - run a bypass...


... All I need is a Wave and a board to surf it on.

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Floppies used to be floppy - especially the 8" variety. 5 1/4" were minifloppies, and 3 1/2" were microfloppies. Would that make a USB stick
a nanoflopppy?

Hmmm more like a microstiffy, no flex there at all.. not sure it'll catch on though.

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Back in the 90s, i had a 386 machine, which had a CDROM... that device
was only to use with the PC and read data or music. To listen music from an audio CD, you needed to power on the PC and use some software to play the audio...

Waaaaay back then there was a raft of "Audio CD Players" where the actual laser device portion of it was essentially a PC cdrom... with an IDE or one of those horribly screwed over SCSI interfaces on it. With a bridge to the pretty buttons on the outside of the box.... They lasted here maybe 3-4 years here... before we started seeing the full plastic mechanisms with only the outer case as the shell.

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they sh
be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

Winchester didn't seem to hang around long, before it became winchester style implying it was self contained, and it was to much of a mouthful compared to HD which it still has but you can no longer change the media.

Doesn't "disk" refer to the actual round platter(s) inside it? I always thought it was called a "drive" because it's a device that drives the motion of the disks, similar to how a screwdriver is used to "drive" the screw into the wood by turning it.

My feeling on this.. the disc portion still refers to the platters/media as opposed to the mechanism to make it spin, being the drive.

Also I've never heard the term "Winchester" for a storage device..?

I believe it dates from the 70s although I don't know the actual origin, other than it was the "first" self enclosed fixed disc device. It was essentially defunct by the 80s though...

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Yeah.. How exactly do you milk an almond? :P

You just milk it for all its worth :P

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

The Zip Drive is mostly dead, failed, but the SyQuest drive and Disks mostly work.

Interesting, back then I had a Syquest hitched to a IIgs. I never had to many carts for it.... I'm also unsure if its an indictment of the carts or the platform but I found them unsuitable for long term storage. The file systems tended to end up corrupt over a period of time, either as a boot device or storage.

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Nightfox wrote to boraxman <=-

Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: boraxman to Nightfox on Fri Apr 25 2025 01:35 pm

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

Doesn't "disk" refer to the actual round platter(s) inside it? I
always thought it was called a "drive" because it's a device that
drives the motion of the disks, similar to how a screwdriver is used to "drive" the screw into the wood by turning it.

Also I've never heard the term "Winchester" for a storage device..?

Yes, the disk is the disk inside, and the drive, drives it. But "Hard
Disk" and "Hard Drive" are used interchangeably, both correct in a
way.

My point is that "cd player" is fine, if its a CD-ROM drive that
doesn't also burn disks.

Winchester was a type of hard disk.

From Wikipedia...

Also in 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3340 "Winchester" disk drive and
the 3348 data module, the first significant commercial use of low mass
and low load heads with lubricated platters and the last IBM disk
drive with removable media. This technology and its derivatives
remained the standard through 2011. Project head Kenneth Haughton
named it after the Winchester 30-30 rifle because it was planned to
have two 30 MB spindles; however, the actual product shipped with two spindles for data modules of either 35 MB or 70 MB.[14] The name
'Winchester' and some derivatives are still common in some non-English speaking countries to generally refer to any hard disks (e.g. Hungary, Russia).

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Ed Vance wrote to Mortar M. <=-

Speaking of the media being flexible.

When the Zip Drive began selling I wasn't wanting to buy one of them because a couple years earlier I saw a 40MB SyQuest removable disk hard drive had Metal media inside its plastic case.

The Zip Drive media was flexible as Flopoies are.

SyQuest staered advertising that they were going to make a EZ-135 Drive and I waited until they sold it and got one because the media was metal just like the platter in a HDD is .

SyQuest went out of business shortly later.

I have one of those drives in a Pentium PC that I've good, along with
some 40M and 200M SyQuest disks. Interesting hardware indeed, but I
obtained it *after* I bought a Zip Drive.

The Zip Drive is mostly dead, failed, but the SyQuest drive and Disks
mostly work.

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I WILL NOT use the term "kibibyte" or "mebibyte". Refuse to.

Don't change convention.

I think that's the, "old man yells at clouds" approach, though I do certainly try to say, "crytocurrency", but only because "crypto" should refer to "cryptography", not offshoots.

But I'm unreasonably pedantic, in many things.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

like calling something 'milk' when it's not coming from a mammal? :)

Obligatory XCKD: xkcd.com/3075

"I'm trying to do a shopping trip where I only buy stuff that's no longer made from the material it's named after"

alt-text: "I have to pay with paper money".

---
I wonder if he could find an appropriate "modem".

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive
By: Cougar428 to NIGHTFOX on Sat Apr 26 2025 08:17 am

Howdy,

Oh no, we're not back to that park on driveway and drive on parkway
question are we? :)

Or as my kids recently asked me.

Why is it that a package transported by a car is called a "shipment", but a package transported by a ship is called "cargo"?

:)



...δεσ∩
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Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

Salt Sense - Advertises that it contains something like 1/3rd less salt per teaspoon. Given that the contents are over 99% salt, just like with any other salt, they get this by making the granules bigger, thus increasing the amount of air included in a teaspoon.

My wife always buys whipped cream cheese. I don't like paying for AIR.

So, if you want the exact same effect with table salt inside of a dish, you included 1/3rd less, and it's exactly the same. Or you could just
use kosher salt instead, and already be somewhere around there.

But, kosher salt is a conspiracy by THE MAN to get us to stop taking
iodized salt in an attempt to make us MORE SUSCEPTIBLE to cancer and
therefore maximize profits for the MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

Oh, isn't this the CONSPIRACY echo?


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Cougar428 wrote to POINDEXTER FORTRAN <=-

Most of them also had an internal connector so you could plug it into
your Soundblaster card and get some decent tunes from your Pioneer headphones - albeit with twisty phone corded wired connection. My Soundblaster with surround sound logitech speakers (with booming base
box) was the shizzle back then. So the music from my propietary CD-ROM
was 'kickin' some beats.

Subwoofers were the thing back then. Now, my hearing isn't the greatest,
I'd rather use headphones. Also they help block out home office noise -
barking dogs, leaf blowers, etc.

I've convinced my son to wear hearing protection to concerts, hopefully
he continues to do so.



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Cougar428 wrote to POINDEXTER FORTRAN <=-

We're on an express elevator, going DOWN!

Hudson - run a bypass...

I feel fortunate to be surrounded by my people.




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Cougar428 wrote to boraxman <=-

Quoting Boraxman to Nightfox <=-

I think the problem may be if the "player" is also a "burner". If its
not, then perhaps its a way to distinguish between a drive which can
only real, and one which is read-write.

Boraxman - I think you are correct about the understanding part...

You - my friend are a real 'Playa'!

If you get my meaning!

Are you calling me a beach??


___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

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Cougar428 wrote to boraxman <=-

Quoting Boraxman to Nightfox <=-

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they
should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

I guess for me it goes back to when I was only able to use "Floppy
Disks" on my C64, I really, really wanted an LT Kernal "Hard Disk". I
had never heard of the Winchester, only the LT Kernal and had dreams of buying one instead of waiting 30 days for my 1541 to load Jumpman.

Disk? I started with the tape drive. Got a disk drive because a
friend lent me one. Try waiting 5 minutes for things to load from
tape. I'd just sometimes switch the channel and watch TV, then switch
back, unless the load music and screen was really cool.

I've still got a working 1570 disk drive. Really slow, but so
satisfying to use.

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But, kosher salt is a conspiracy by THE MAN to get us to stop taking
iodized salt in an attempt to make us MORE SUSCEPTIBLE to cancer and therefore maximize profits for the MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.

I thought it was to turn everyone Jewish? :O

Oh, isn't this the CONSPIRACY echo?

Oh, yeah, you are right.


* SLMR 2.1a * I wish Noah had swatted those two mosquitoes.....
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Quoting Nightfox to Ed Vance <=-

Re: Got Floppy?

I thought the late 90s was an interesting time with all those
different removable media formats being released - especilly with 2 different ones from the same company (Syquest's Sparq and the 440MB
one you mentioned).

Technology is like a river...

8 inch, 5.25 inch, 3.5 inch, single sided, double sided, low density,
high density...

It's like floating down a river, once you pass that dock there's no
going back. Unless, like me you stop there and are happy with the
place. My 386 has both 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. Until they quit
working, I'm happy with them.

Some analogy right?

Cougar


... I love being over 50. Learn something new every day & forget 5 others.

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Quoting Neoshock to Nigel Reed <=-

Actually Hard Drives do go some where, eventually to the trash after
about 5 years

Guess I'm livin' on borrowed time then. My Seagate IDE 585mb drive
from 1989 just keeps on tickin'...

I did buy a couple spares, but have never had to use them. I also back
it up with an HP 400/800MB tape drive and Colorado backup DOS - JIC.

Have a great day!


... Asphault = Proctologist's malpractice insurance

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StormTrooper wrote to Nightfox <=-

Doesn't "disk" refer to the actual round platter(s) inside it? I always thought it was called a "drive" because it's a device that drives the motion of the disks, similar to how a screwdriver is used to "drive" the screw into the wood by turning it.

Side note: Seagate Technologies used to be located in Scotts Valley, not
far from where I live on the California coast. Back then, Borland,
Plantronics and SCO were all nearby, heady days indeed.

Seagate's moved their headquarters long ago, but the buildings are still
there. The address? 1 Disk Drive, Scotts Valley, CA.




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Cougar428 wrote to NEOSHOCK <=-

I did buy a couple spares, but have never had to use them. I also back
it up with an HP 400/800MB tape drive and Colorado backup DOS - JIC.

And now I'm hearing the sound of a QIC drive hooked up to a floppy
controller. Fwuuuuuuup.... Fwuuuuuuuup... long pause... fweeeeeeeep...
And so on, for hours. Damn, those things were slow.

I got lucky that my employer rapidly went from DDS to DDS-2, then DDS-2
to DDS-3, and I got the previous generation, along with a SCSI card.




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My wife always buys whipped cream cheese. I don't like paying for AIR.

I can see the value in that, as it's... a challenge to whip cream cheese, in a way that, "measure out less" is not.

But I'm probably with you. I know I would avoid the yogurt containers with extra air, for the same cost.

Even if I liked it better, it still felt like shrinkflation.

Oh, isn't this the CONSPIRACY echo?

As long as we don't have to take any portion of it remotely seriously, it sounds fun.

On that note, did you see Summis Vita In Armento by Jumalauta, from the Revision demo compo? I think it was my second favorite prod in the party (behind the return of the sheep with the CTRL-ALT-TEST entry in 8k).

(On topic because it was about revealing the truth behind conspiracies)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Cougar428 <=-

Most of them also had an internal connector so you could plug it into
your Soundblaster card and get some decent tunes from your Pioneer headphones - albeit with twisty phone corded wired connection. My Soundblaster with surround sound logitech speakers (with booming base
box) was the shizzle back then. So the music from my propietary CD-ROM
was 'kickin' some beats.

Subwoofers were the thing back then. Now, my hearing isn't the
greatest, I'd rather use headphones. Also they help block out home
office noise - barking dogs, leaf blowers, etc.

Maybe I shouldn't but I feel it's my duty to tell you that you
shouldn't use leaf blowers in your house. Speaking from experience,
they rile up alot of dust. ;/

I've convinced my son to wear hearing protection to concerts,
hopefully he continues to do so.

When I was 16 I went to a concert where Heart was the main event. It was
in the city colosseum and the speaker towers were accessible. I remember
climbing into one of them during the concert. Uhhgg. Now I wonder why I
can't hear the TV when it's 3 feet away from me.

True story, feel free to share it with your son.

... Crime does not pay... as well as politics.

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Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

I think the problem may be if the "player" is also a "burner". If its
not, then perhaps its a way to distinguish between a drive which can
only real, and one which is read-write.

Boraxman - I think you are correct about the understanding part...

You - my friend are a real 'Playa'!

If you get my meaning!

Are you calling me a beach??

If the umbrella fits, a whale of a beach!

Uh oh - Flame wars! (easy there, just kidding)

... ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI.

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Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they
should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

I guess for me it goes back to when I was only able to use "Floppy
Disks" on my C64, I really, really wanted an LT Kernal "Hard Disk". I
had never heard of the Winchester, only the LT Kernal and had dreams of buying one instead of waiting 30 days for my 1541 to load Jumpman.

Disk? I started with the tape drive. Got a disk drive because a
friend lent me one. Try waiting 5 minutes for things to load from
tape. I'd just sometimes switch the channel and watch TV, then switch back, unless the load music and screen was really cool.

I've still got a working 1570 disk drive. Really slow, but so
satisfying to use.

Full circle, why is it called a disk instead of a disc? That really
bugs me! :^P

... Do what you will with this tagline, just don't bother me about it!

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
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Are you calling me a beach??

A bit gritty and sandy?

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Full circle, why is it called a disk instead of a disc? That really
bugs me! :^P

That one is Geographically driven... that dud US english prescribes a K while the original UK prescribes or did the C... back in the 70s we got both versions here. The C has mostly disappeared.. I still use it though...

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to StormTrooper on Sun Apr 27 2025 09:11 am

Seagate's moved their headquarters long ago, but the buildings are still there. The address? 1 Disk Drive, Scotts Valley, CA.

I wonder how many companies have an address with a punny name like that. I've also heard Apple's headquarters is at 1 Infinite Loop..

Nightfox

Cougar428 wrote to boraxman <=-

Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

I think the problem may be if the "player" is also a "burner". If its
not, then perhaps its a way to distinguish between a drive which can
only real, and one which is read-write.

Boraxman - I think you are correct about the understanding part...

You - my friend are a real 'Playa'!

If you get my meaning!

Are you calling me a beach??

If the umbrella fits, a whale of a beach!

Uh oh - Flame wars! (easy there, just kidding)

Now I'm lost!

It's been a while since I've participated in a good old fashioned flame war, but
its something I'm happy to pass on, for the moment...

Better to be a whale of a beach, than a beached whale.


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Cougar428 wrote to boraxman <=-

Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

Also, what is up with people calling them "Hard Drives", when they
should be "Hard Disks", or better yet, "Winchesters".

I guess for me it goes back to when I was only able to use "Floppy
Disks" on my C64, I really, really wanted an LT Kernal "Hard Disk". I
had never heard of the Winchester, only the LT Kernal and had dreams of buying one instead of waiting 30 days for my 1541 to load Jumpman.

Disk? I started with the tape drive. Got a disk drive because a
friend lent me one. Try waiting 5 minutes for things to load from
tape. I'd just sometimes switch the channel and watch TV, then switch back, unless the load music and screen was really cool.

I've still got a working 1570 disk drive. Really slow, but so
satisfying to use.

Full circle, why is it called a disk instead of a disc? That really
bugs me! :^P

Any why are they called bugs, when they are errors? That bugs me too!


___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nightfox to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Apr 27 2025 05:42 pm

I wonder how many companies have an

Most of the time, the company builds
the office (or whatever) building over
a blank slate of land. When new roads
get built as a result of them building
stuff on that land, they get to name
the roads. Same goes if you buy land
out in the middle of nowhere and make a
road that leads to it off the highway.
You get to name it.

This is how someone I knew had a house
on the corner of "Here To There" and
"This Is It".
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: Halcyon BBS (21:1/201)

Disk? I started with the tape drive. Got a disk drive because a
friend lent me one. Try waiting 5 minutes for things to load from
tape. I'd just sometimes switch the channel and watch TV, then switch back, unless the load music and screen was really cool.

I totally forgot that you could simply change the channel on your monitor, as it was simply your TV. It's kinda like watching a Youtube stream while you are messing about with you PC :)

Lloyd (neoshock) sysop @ Classic Computing BBS
bbs.classiccomputing.net

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Classic Computing BBS bbs.classiccomputing.net (21:1/150)

Any why are they called bugs, when they are errors? That bugs me too!

Actually, one of the first computer bugs in those big ass computers was actually created by a bug (a moth or something like that) which cased errors. They literally removed the bug and taped it to a log book and called it something like the first computer bug.

Lloyd (neoshock) sysop @ Classic Computing BBS
bbs.classiccomputing.net

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Classic Computing BBS bbs.classiccomputing.net (21:1/150)

Hello Nightfox,

25 Apr 25 08:47, you wrote to boraxman:

Also I've never heard the term "Winchester" for a storage device..?

i'm still using winchester, when referring to a HDD in a hungarian conversation :)

ByEbYe
--
Daniel

telnet://bbs.roonsbbs.hu:1212 <<=-

... Uptime: 56d 10h 37m 58s (?! or 6d 17h 29m 15s)
--- GoldED/2 1.1.4.7+EMX
* Origin: Roon's BBS - Budapest, HUNGARY (21:4/148)

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Roon to Nightfox on Mon Apr 28 2025 08:43 pm

Also I've never heard the term "Winchester" for a storage device..?

i'm still using winchester, when referring to a HDD in a hungarian conversation :)

Winchester drives are drives with sealed platters/heads. Made for a quantum reduction in size. Imagine if in the present day we had to create old-tech gigabyte drives with removeable disk packs, a gig the size of a washing machine?
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Win32
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

Full circle, why is it called a disk instead of a disc? That really
bugs me! :^P

Any why are they called bugs, when they are errors? That bugs me too!

Errors really irritate me!
(tag, your it)


... All I need is a Wave and a board to surf it on.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)

Quoting Poindexter Fortran to Cougar428 <=-

Cougar428 wrote to NEOSHOCK <=-

I did buy a couple spares, but have never had to use them. I also back
it up with an HP 400/800MB tape drive and Colorado backup DOS - JIC.

And now I'm hearing the sound of a QIC drive hooked up to a floppy controller. Fwuuuuuuup.... Fwuuuuuuuup... long pause...
fweeeeeeeep... And so on, for hours. Damn, those things were slow.

My HP drive is parallel so it may be even slower than the floppy
controller units, but it has worked flawlessly. I regularly run 4 tapes
with full backups and no compression. Not sure why, as there's not much
that's important on the drive (except Wordstar, Lotus 123, Grandview 2
and dBase III+ and of course Blue Wave.

... Junk: stuff we throw away. Stuff: junk we keep.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)

On 28 Apr 2025 at 02:59p, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Roon to Nightfox on Mon Apr 28 2025 08:43 pm

Also I've never heard the term "Winchester" for a storage device..?

i'm still using winchester, when referring to a HDD in a hungarian conversation :)

Winchester drives are drives with sealed platters/heads. Made for a quantum reduction in size. Imagine if in the present day we had to
create old-tech gigabyte drives with removeable disk packs, a gig the
size of a washing machine?

No lie, that kind of awesome. You could spin dry your clothes as the disk spins.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

On 28 Apr 2025 at 07:09p, Cougar428 pondered and said...

Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

Full circle, why is it called a disk instead of a disc? That really
bugs me! :^P

Any why are they called bugs, when they are errors? That bugs me too

Errors really irritate me!
(tag, your it)

And irritation leads me to make errors. Its a vicious circle.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

Full circle, why is it called a disk instead of a disc? That really
bugs me! :^P

Any why are they called bugs, when they are errors? That bugs me too

Errors really irritate me!
(tag, your it)

And irritation leads me to make errors. Its a vicious circle.

You win! I'm chasing my tail...

... Exercise your right to arm and keep bears!

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)

In a tangentially related "old man yells at cloud" issue:

KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10 years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I WILL NOT use the term "kibibyte" or "mebibyte". Refuse to.

Don't change convention.

Agree!

|14Dave!
|05(|13dflorey|05)
|13Retro16 BBS |05--> |14bbs.retro16.com |05(|13WIP|05)
|07No one expects the Spanish inquisition!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Retro16 BBS (21:1/226)

I've never referred to them that way. Only way it's a player is if it's a standalone device. Stuff like a walkman, CD player, DVD/BD player, stuff like that. Otherwise it's just a drive. I don't call my old PS2's disc tray a DVD player.

===================
Born too late to experience the 90s.
Born too early to go back in time.
Born just right to see the comeback.
NeoCinci BBS SYSOP

... Unzip... expand... What kind of pervert came up with this?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nodoka Hanamura to Nightfox on Sun May 04 2025 04:59 am

I've never referred to them that way. Only way it's a player is if it's a standalone device. Stuff like a walkman, CD player, DVD/BD player, stuff like that. Otherwise it's just a drive. I don't call my old PS2's disc tray a DVD player.

That's my thinking too.

Nightfox

Depends on your perspective. True, the outer shell isn't floppy, but the actual media is.

i love my 5.25" 13cm DISKS! those are PEAK COOL!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Family BBS: Telent Familybbs.ddns.net:23 (21:1/204)

Floppies used to be floppy - especially the 8" variety. 5 1/4" were minifloppies, and 3 1/2" were microfloppies. Would that make a USB stick
a nanoflopppy?

YES 8 AND 5.25" DISKS ARE AMAZING I USE THEM ALL THE TIME!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Family BBS: Telent Familybbs.ddns.net:23 (21:1/204)

They're hard on the outside and floppy in the innards! 5 1/2" disks are
floppy on the inside and the outside. And one more thing, stationary
mice have bigger balls.

LMAO XD
this is too funny!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Family BBS: Telent Familybbs.ddns.net:23 (21:1/204)

Technology is like a river...

8 inch, 5.25 inch, 3.5 inch, single sided, double sided, low density,
high density...

It's like floating down a river, once you pass that dock there's no
going back. Unless, like me you stop there and are happy with the
place. My 386 has both 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. Until they quit
working, I'm happy with them.

i love my working disks and drives too!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Family BBS: Telent Familybbs.ddns.net:23 (21:1/204)

Quoting Mary4 to Cougar428 <=-

They're hard on the outside and floppy in the innards! 5 1/2" disks are
floppy on the inside and the outside. And one more thing, stationary
mice have bigger balls.

LMAO XD
this is too funny!

Sorry about that one! It was something passed around back in the day...

Have a great day!

... If you believe in telekinesis, please raise my hand.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)

Quoting Mary4 to Cougar428 <=-

Technology is like a river...

8 inch, 5.25 inch, 3.5 inch, single sided, double sided, low density,
high density...

It's like floating down a river, once you pass that dock there's no
going back. Unless, like me you stop there and are happy with the
place. My 386 has both 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. Until they quit
working, I'm happy with them.

i love my working disks and drives too!

I guess we're part of an exclusive club!

I know there are better and more efficient ways to store and use data,
but this tech is what I know and grew on. Yeah, I do have newer systems
but my old ones keep on churning data for me.

Have a great day!

... All of my REALLY GOOD taglines are 1 character too lon

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: CJ's Place, Orange City FL > cjsplace.thruhere.net (21:2/156)

Re: Re: Got Floppy?
By: mary4 to Mortar M. on Fri May 09 2025 04:58 am

Depends on your perspective. True, the outer shell isn't floppy, but the actual media is.

i love my 5.25" 13cm DISKS! those are PEAK COOL!

They're great, but i'm a 3.5" inch enjoyer... Peak floppy.
--- SBBSecho 3.24-Linux
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Re: Re: Got Floppy?
By: Cougar428 to MARY4 on Fri May 09 2025 09:23 am

Quoting Mary4 to Cougar428 <=-

Technology is like a river...

8 inch, 5.25 inch, 3.5 inch, single sided, double sided, low density,
high density...

It's like floating down a river, once you pass that dock there's no
going back. Unless, like me you stop there and are happy with the
place. My 386 has both 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. Until they quit
working, I'm happy with them.

i love my working disks and drives too!

I guess we're part of an exclusive club!

I know there are better and more efficient ways to store and use data,
but this tech is what I know and grew on. Yeah, I do have newer systems
but my old ones keep on churning data for me.

Have a great day!

I've got two systems which have both a HD 3.5" and 5.25" drives, plus an additional one or two of each in other machines. Heaps of disks, but I'm reluctant to use them as they need to be treated with care are are appraoching an age were reading them can just cause damage.
--- SBBSecho 3.24-Linux
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Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nightfox to All on Wed Apr 23 2025 03:06 pm

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"?

No. But even more to the point, PC optical drives are unacceptable! My last few desktop builds don't have 'em, my laptops don't have 'em. I really hope nobody ever hands me a CD or DVD disc again because I won't have a handy way to read it (though yes, I do own some USB optical drives... somewhere).

So it's understandable that people don't know what they're called because you don't really see/use them any longer! :-)
--
digital man (rob)

Steven Wright quote #7:
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
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Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Digital Man to Nightfox on Fri May 09 2025 03:33 pm

Do you think it's acceptable to call a PC optical drive a "player"?

No. But even more to the point, PC optical drives are unacceptable! My last few desktop builds don't have 'em, my laptops don't have 'em. I really hope nobody ever hands me a CD or DVD disc again because I won't have a handy way to read it (though yes, I do own some USB optical drives... somewhere).

So it's understandable that people don't know what they're called because you don't really see/use them any longer! :-)

I suppose that's true.
I still have one in my current PC build, but I mostly use it these days to rip movies & music and put it on my Plex media server. I still like to buy physical media for things I really like, as I don't like to rely on streaming services for everything (they can remove things at any time). I guess I'm part of a niche group of people now who still like to buy physical media. The physical media community is still relatively active - I've seen groups on Facebook, and there's also a fairly active forum for MakeMKV (ripping software for DVDs, blu-ray, and 4K blu-ray).

One of the reasons I wanted to set up a media server with Plex was so I could rip my movies and watch them more easily by streaming from my server.

I've been seeing more and more posts online recently where people have said they've gotten back to buying (or started buying) physical media because they're frustrated with streaming services removing things & such.

Nightfox

Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Nigel Reed to All on Thu Apr 24 2025 12:16 am

If it's DVD-ROM or CD-ROM then yes, it would be a player since you can
only play from it.

Then it's a disc "reader".

That said, not sure where the term "drive" comes
from because hard drives don't really go any where.

I think at one time hard disks were separable from a hard drive and you needed a hard drive to "drive" move/rotate the disks. They actually were 2 different things.

Then again, where
are 3 1/2" disks called floppies because they're not floppy at all.

The actual disk in a 3.5 floppy is floppy. It's just protected by a hard-plastic case.

So many conundrums when it comes to computer hardware.

There are, but the naming usually does make sense when you look at the history of thing closely.
--
digital man (rob)

Synchronet "Real Fact" #52:
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions: http://wiki.synchro.net/faq:index
Norco, CA WX: 88.7°F, 30.0% humidity, 5 mph W wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs
--- SBBSecho 3.25-Linux
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: slacker to Nightfox on Thu Apr 24 2025 07:50 am

In a tangentially related "old man yells at cloud" issue:

KB vs KiB, etc

For a good portion of my life I remember KB=1024 bytes. The past 10 years or so, its now KB bytes and a KiB is 1024 bytes.

I've come to terms with the change but I don't really like it.

At work, the legacy system I work on refers to storage in base 2 so a KB=1024 but interacts with newer services that are base 10 where KB=1000 so there's a headache of conversions.

Anyway, I don't really understand why that all changed. I've heard people mention HDD storage manufacturers using base 10 as marketing and it stuck but that seems like an odd reason to upend everything.

...that's the end of my rant on that. I'm probably wrong so take it with a grain of salt. lol

I remember thinking that 14.4Kbps modems were actually supposed to get 14.4 * 1024 Kbps through-put and they never did! That's because in communications, K has *always* meant 1000 and never 1024. It was only in memory or disk storage where K=1024, so that got especially confusing over time and really did need a solution. KiB (and MiB, GiB, etc.) is that solution. It'd been better if we could go back in time and not use K=1024 to begin with, but oh well. Here we are. :-)
--
digital man (rob)

Synchronet "Real Fact" #47:
The Synchronet Museum is online at http://wiki.synchro.net/history:museum:index Norco, CA WX: 88.6°F, 29.0% humidity, 14 mph WSW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs --- SBBSecho 3.25-Linux
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (21:1/183)

They're great, but i'm a 3.5" inch enjoyer... Peak floppy.

i can respect that! <3

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: Accession to Nightfox on Thu Apr 24 2025 09:39 pm

Hey Nightfox!

On Thu, Apr 24 2025 20:02:53 -0500, you wrote:

I've heard people say it's the other way around.. KB is supposedly supposed to be 1000 bytes and KiB is 1024.

FYI, in a quick duckduckgo search.. my first two results conflict each other.

1st result:
Kibibyte = 1
Kilobyte = 1.024

That makes no sense.

2nd result:
1 kB = 1000 bytes; 1 KiB = 1024 bytes

That is correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Multiple-byte_units
--
digital man (rob)

Steven Wright quote #12:
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
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Nightfox wrote to Digital Man <=-

I've been seeing more and more posts online recently where people have said they've gotten back to buying (or started buying) physical media because they're frustrated with streaming services removing things &
such.

A buddy of mine was telling me today about a book he found called
"Revenge of Analog." It's about the cultural shift of buying
physical media.

We talked about back in the day when you'd see a comic on the
shelf / spinner rack and that's how you learned about it!

You'd buy a record and have to go through the trouble of
playing it - so you didn't just skip to the next one, etc.


... Apathy Error: Don't Bother Striking Any Key
--- MultiMail/Mac v0.52

Digital Man wrote to slacker <=-

etc.) is that solution. It'd been better if we could go back in time
and not use K=1024 to begin with, but oh well. Here we are.

In a few million years, maybe we'll grow 2 extra thumbs and get rid of
base 10. Sure would help my phone typing...


--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

jimmylogan wrote to Nightfox <=-

You'd buy a record and have to go through the trouble of
playing it - so you didn't just skip to the next one, etc.

I usually bought cassettes, lending themselves more to listening
straight through. LPs were made to be listened to straight through, had
a flow, and I miss that.

--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "
By: jimmylogan to Nightfox on Fri May 09 2025 11:10 pm

I've been seeing more and more posts online recently where people have
said they've gotten back to buying (or started buying) physical media
because they're frustrated with streaming services removing things &
such.

A buddy of mine was telling me today about a book he found called "Revenge of Analog." It's about the cultural shift of buying physical media.

The title feels like a bit of a misnomer.. A lot of the physical media in use today (CDs, DVDs, blu-ray, 4K blu-ray) are digital formats. And I still feel like the use of the term "digital" to refer to online streaming is a little weird (since the aforementioned physical formats are digital media).

We talked about back in the day when you'd see a comic on the shelf / spinner rack and that's how you learned about it!

You'd buy a record and have to go through the trouble of playing it - so you didn't just skip to the next one, etc.

I don't recall if I'd seen that, but that's cool. I do remember in the late 90s/early 2000s, some music stores (such as Tower Records) started having spots on the rack with headphones and would let you choose from a selection of albums or songs to listen to.

Nightfox

Quoting Boraxman to Cougar428 <=-

I've got two systems which have both a HD 3.5" and 5.25" drives, plus
an additional one or two of each in other machines. Heaps of disks,
but I'm reluctant to use them as they need to be treated with care are
are appraoching an age were reading them can just cause damage. -!-

I can understand where you're coming from, I used to purchase boxes of
100 ea and split the cost with someone, so I still have new 3.5 disks
that have never been used yet. That doesn't neccesarily mean that they
are OK, but might have a better chance at error free disks.

Of all the disks I use, I reformat them pretty often using C2PC and
have only had a minor amount of them go bad. Of course if you have
important data on that bad sector...

Have a great day!

... "Transporter chief , beam the landing party to the bridge"

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
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Re: Re: Is a PC optical drive a "player"?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Digital Man on Sat May 10 2025 08:24 am

In a few million years, maybe we'll grow 2 extra thumbs and get rid of
base 10. Sure would help my phone typing...

So we'd count in base 12?
--
digital man (rob)

Steven Wright quote #27:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
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--- SBBSecho 3.25-Linux
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I usually bought cassettes, lending themselves more to listening

I tended to buy cassettes too, mostly because it was the age of the walkman.. I just didn't have a portable turntable with headphones :P

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

So we'd count in base 12?

Counting by the dozen? At least its got more divisors than 10...

ST

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

Re: Re: Got Floppy?
By: Boraxman to mary4 on Fri May 09 2025 08:30:32

I'm a 3.5" inch enjoyer...

There's a joke in there somewhere.
--- SBBSecho 3.24-Linux
* Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)

I'm a 3.5" inch enjoyer...

There's a joke in there somewhere.

LOL XD

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Family BBS: Telent Familybbs.ddns.net:23 (21:1/204)

poindexter FORTRAN wrote to jimmylogan <=-

jimmylogan wrote to Nightfox <=-

You'd buy a record and have to go through the trouble of
playing it - so you didn't just skip to the next one, etc.

I usually bought cassettes, lending themselves more to listening
straight through. LPs were made to be listened to straight through, had
a flow, and I miss that.

I started with 8 track. :-) Then we got a cassette adapter for 8-track. :-)

And of course the original cassette players would only play one side,
then you had to eject and flip the cassette over. :-) Was a big deal
when they started making auto reverse. :-)



... Keyboard not connected . . . . Press F1 to continue.
--- MultiMail/Mac v0.52

Nightfox wrote to jimmylogan <=-

Re: Is a PC optical drive a "
By: jimmylogan to Nightfox on Fri May 09 2025 11:10 pm

I've been seeing more and more posts online recently where people have
said they've gotten back to buying (or started buying) physical media
because they're frustrated with streaming services removing things &
such.

A buddy of mine was telling me today about a book he found called "Revenge of Analog." It's about the cultural shift of buying physical media.

The title feels like a bit of a misnomer.. A lot of the physical media
in use today (CDs, DVDs, blu-ray, 4K blu-ray) are digital formats. And
I still feel like the use of the term "digital" to refer to online streaming is a little weird (since the aforementioned physical formats
are digital media).

True, but books and vinyl? Those aren't digital. But yes, digital content,
but having a physical copy of it so you're not dependant on streaming
or the cloud.

I don't recall if I'd seen that, but that's cool. I do remember in the late 90s/early 2000s, some music stores (such as Tower Records) started having spots on the rack with headphones and would let you choose from
a selection of albums or songs to listen to.

I don't know that I ever went to a Tower Records, but it was common
around here too. The headphones to sample stuff.


... Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
--- MultiMail/Mac v0.52

8 inch, 5.25 inch, 3.5 inch, single sided, double sided, low density
high density...
It's like floating down a river, once you pass that dock there's no
going back. Unless, like me you stop there and are happy with the
place. My 386 has both 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. Until they quit
working, I'm happy with them.

Still using my 5.25 drive on my Atari 800 and 130xe computers!

... Redundant book title: DOS For Dummies

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: https://13leader.net (21:3/195)

paul wrote to mary4 <=-

Still using my 5.25 drive on my Atari 800 and 130xe computers!

I gave that up with my Commodore 64 and Plus/4, but I still have the drive hooked up, just in case.

But I do still use floppy disks with my Kaypro 4/84. And I still have a 5.25" 360K drive in my Sperry HT - to write new software to those Kaypro disks.


... When all is said and done, more is said then done.
___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

--- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)

Still using my 5.25 drive on my Atari 800 and 130xe computers!

nice! <3

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
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