Re: Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk
John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> writes:
> According to that logic you would have to replace the save icon in every
> desktop application because we're no longer using floppy disks.
Well.. I actually bought a 5 1/4" floppy drive a few weeks ago.
Had been thinking about maybe copying whatever documents off some
floppies. For a couple of decades or so. Thought sometimes take a lot
of time. You know what I mean. So I finally got one of the last
remaining 3 1/2" USB floppy drives. It was actually very cheap. I
guess the shop tried to get rid of it. And I got at least some
documents. Not all of the floppies were readable of course, after
collecting dust for 25 years. But the success rate wasn't that bad
Then there was this one 5 1/4 floppy, which I really don't know why I
didn't just copy and throw away in the early 90'ies. Curious as I am, I
couldn't just throw it away without at least trying. So I got a nice,
used of course, state of the art, Teac drive from an eBay seller. This
was definitely not cheap. And a floppy cable with those weird looking 5
1/4" connectors from another eBay seller. I'm lucky enough to still have
a desktop PC from around 2007. It has a floppy connector on the main
board, which never've been used before. But I got the drive connected,
trying to remember all the magic about which connector to use when
having only one drive etc. Failed to remmeber anything at all, but
thought I'd just try all possibilities until something worked. Then I
entered the BIOS setup and enabled the '3 1/2" floppy drive' there.
The main board was obviously much too new to consider 5 1/4 floppies.
I was still a bit worried about whether I could use it without booting
some ancient OS. I seemed to remember reading that Linus wanted to get
rid of floppy support. So I was very pleased when I found that Debian
had been nice enough to even ship the floppy driver wtih the other
modules in "buster". It just worked.
But reading the floppy didn't, of course. I could read about half the
sectors. The remaining have prpbably gone to meet their creator a long
time ago.
Anyway, I now have a couple of floppy drives if anyone needs one.
This is probably starting to get off topic unless I say something about
LILO. Which I've now done.
Bjørn
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