Booting from floppies Win 95

Posted by jasondbk@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 17 comments

Our company was a special place, we were an AS/400 programming firm although we also had a group that wrote custom PC software. So each PC had a network card, used Netware for the file servers AND software that let them connect to the AS/400 over Ethernet.

(My PC and three others also had a twin-ax card with cables that went directly to the AS/400 in case the network went down.)

The PCs booted from floppy disk as they were running DOS and Win 3.11 ran from the server.

We started installing Windows 95 and still used the DOS boot disk and ran Windows 95 from the server. My boss thought this was a great way to do it. It also kept people from saving projects locally instead of on the server.

It was time for me and the three others on my team to get new PCs and my boss paid $400 EXTRA to remove the hard drives at the factory (Compaq). After two weeks of my boss running Windows 95 from a DOS boot disk the boss started to see things differently.

After confirming with me that I had the skills to install hard drives she agreed to order hard drives for us. All new PCs would be ordered with hard drives moving forward.

She ordered hard drives and they added to the price the IDE and power cables. But not mounting brackets. Our local reseller forgot she had specified no hard drives and Compaq didn’t put mounting brackets in for free. Then she had to order Compaq HD mounting brackets as the factory had not installed any HD parts at her request. We must have paid $600 or so (HD, cables and brackets) to add a hard drive to each of the computers she custom ordered without hard drives.

Her next batch of new computers she had me pull the hard drive IDE and power cables and people continued to boot from floppies until she was ready to convert the whole company to Win 95.

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kaptiankuff@reddit

Just stopped using an as400 and miss it daily

Gandgareth@reddit

I used to work on PCs for family and friends, but not Compaqs, they could just fuck right off. Too much proprietary stuff in them.

EruditeLegume@reddit

Was it Compaqs or HPs that had "proprietary" power supplies + MB's?
Had 2 pins switched vs the standard - let the magic smoke out if you tried switching either one.
Caught me (once) before I sat down and actually measured pin voltages/connections.

Never came across that one, luckily it seems.

I just like systems you can plug a lot of stuff into without being restricted. (Looking at you Apple)

Agreed. There's lots of advantages to a 'Walled Garden' approach - but then you've gotta accept the restrictions.
I prefer to avoid the restrictions and kludge things my way :)

Everheart1955@reddit

Damn. I feel old. First hard drive ( fixed disk) was 5 MB and about the size of a 58 Chevy wheel.

jasondbk@reddit (OP)

Ever worked with removable pack hard drives? The drive was the size of a washer and the pack was 14” and about 10” high.

MOS95B@reddit

Honestly, in the early Win95 days $600 to add a hard drive to a system, since all companies were pretty proprietary still, probably wasn't that bad.

But skipping the drive and adding it later added $1,000 to the price of an already expensive PC

tashkiira@reddit

on top of paying $400 to not have a hard drive in it the first time..

ol-gormsby@reddit

That takes me back - I was sysadmin on the AS400, but we also had a DEC Alpha acting as a file server. The DEC connection client software did NOT play nice with the AS400s PC Client Access software, so we couldn't get both connections running at the same time - you had to terminate the DEC client to run the AS400 client.

And then I discovered a telnet-based client for the AS400 which didn't care about the DEC client - my boss was very pleased.

Trin959@reddit

Ah, that takes me back. I never worked on AS400s but my first PC was a Leading Edge D with 2 5.25" floppies and no HD, running MSDos 2.1. Came with 256K of RAM, if I recall correctly. I later added RAM, an 8087 math coprocessor, and replaced one floppy with an HD. Again if I'm recalling correctly, the HD was 32MB but Dos could only address about 31.5MB. Left a little room for bad sectors.