![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/delllt320.png\")
Figure 1. The Dell 320LT. That’s a full-size keyboard. Compare it with the size of the batteries and the power brick.<\/p><\/div>\n
I purchased the system back in 1993. From what I gather, I used this laptop as a test bed for my book, the MS-DOS 6.22 Upgrade For Dummies<\/em>. I might have reformatted the hard drive because the 400MB whopper had little on it other than the OS.<\/p>\n \nBy the way, that book was stressful for me because I had to work with Microsoft to customize DOS For Dummies<\/em> to their liking.<\/p>\n They did not like DOS For Dummies<\/em>.<\/p>\n Specifically, they hated the humor. They hated that Microsoft was the butt of jokes throughout the text. They hated that the book featured an attitude that made them look silly. And I hated working on the damn thing and having to respond to the fools who kept telling me, “The book is great, but . . .”<\/p>\n Anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I was disappointed that I had reformatted the laptop’s hard drive, but I probably did so because it was the only system I was willing to sacrifice it for an OS upgrade. Beyond DOS, the hard drive was empty. My only clue that it was used for the MS-DOS 6.22 upgrade book was a few screenshots I’d taken. I wanted to transfer them to my archives. That’s when I had to use the floppy drive. Immediately, I was flush with memories of how terrible floppies could be.<\/p>\n I still have a stack of 3½-inch floppies, so I jammed one in the laptop’s floppy drive. Immediately I was informated that the diskette was unreadable. So I formatted it. And, yes, I had to look up the formatting command because if you type Oh, those were the days!<\/em><\/p>\n The formatting process took several minutes as the drive head was probably dirty and had trouble verifying the sectors. Then I had to copy the files, which took even more time.<\/p>\n It was unsettling was that you just pop the disk out of the drive. You don’t un-mount it or otherwise release the storage. DOS was weird, which is why DOS For Dummies<\/em> sold so well.<\/p>\n What’s also unsettling is how to quit some DOS programs: You just restart the system. Because DOS doesn’t multitask, that process is okay, but it still felt wrong.<\/p>\n Back in the day, using a floppy was common and users tolerated it as a viable, removable form of storage. Today, with networks for file transfer, and massive thumb drives as removable storage, the floppy disk is an odd curiosity. I can easily see why the technology was abandoned years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No computer user today would tolerate a floppy drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-8978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8978"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8986,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions\/8986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}FORMAT A:<\/code>, DOS uses the original 180K disk format even though the drive is capable of formatting a 1.44MB floppy.<\/p>\n