Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

@anthracite It's judging how likely it is when the robot apocalypse comes for the googlebots to need to know how to climb stairs.

@climagic Either/or. One-handed, I use the shift nearest the letter; but two-handed, I use the shift with the opposite hand of the one pressing the letter. I did have to think about which one I use when now, but it's finger-memory when actually typing.

@maple That is so fantastic, woohoo!

"If you've ever wanted to see the Internet fold itself up into a burrito and consume itself hungrily over the course of four minutes, you've come to the right place." - NPR, introducing what's supposed to be a news article.

Frankly, that pretty well describes birdsite.

I'm quickly learning that for IBM-compatible retrocomputing, life becomes a lot easier if newer vintage PCs are restored & operational first.

I heard that my orange excuse for a head of state gave a speech at the UN General Assembly today, & when he boasted that he did more than any previous US administration, he got laughed at. Politely, of course, but openly laughed at. This makes me so happy.

I realized something this morning.

With 3.5" floppy disks, unformatted HD disks are 2 MB, & DD disks are 1 MB, so HD disks have twice the capacity of DD disks.

But with 5.25" floppy disks, unformatted DD disks (assuming double-sided) are 500 KB, & HD disks are 1,500 KB, so HD disks have 3x the capacity, not twice.

Later TIL there was a seldom-used "quad density" between DD & HD in 5.25" standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk

Today was a spinning-wheels day. No progress, nothing done, despite every effort.

The new floppy drive belt is too wide. Everything else is perfect, but it's too wide to sit right in all three channels.

In good news, the seller I got the replacement from has better communication than most businesses. They want me to send both belts (new & bad) to make sure I get the right-width one.

@Saxxon I didn't ask the seller, but it looks like it soaked up enough of whatever the formula was to turn it soft enough to sag in the sun.

Be careful what you test your new Retr0brite techniques on, folks. This is the main case of a Macintosh Plus 1Mb, signed by Steve Jobs among others on the inside, and shows what happens when you guess wrong on something pretty valuable.

(This eBay listing sold, but I'm not the buyer.) https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Apple-Macintosh-Plus-1MB-SIGNED-BY-Steve-Jobs-Rear-Back-Case-DEFORMED-/263939311552?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137

@softgoat I can't look at those sneakers without them blending into one sneaker doing the MTV moon landing bumper thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_maw6KgJhT4

@nincollin The difference is usually subtle, but in this case it's deceptively critical.

"Abort" means "quit what you were trying to do & return to your calling program with an error," while "Fail" means "keep running, but you have to handle this error condition yourself."

In this case, there's nothing to quit back to except DOS kernel, which runs command.com all over again, which first checks the disk is there before showing a prompt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abort%2C_Retry%2C_Fail%3F is a good explainer.

Who is General Failure, why is he reading drive A, & why does the question not make sense?

@prpl@dragon.style

Nope. The motor just isn't turning the belt, but it isn't free-spinning either.