XPost: aus.computers, alt.os.linux.debian   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 8/12/2025 11:52 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:   
   > On Tue, 12 Aug 2025 23:04:52 -0400, Alan K. wrote:   
   >   
   >> as /media/alan/DATA or /media/alan/C_Drive   
   >   
   > What happened to “A” and “B” drives?   
   >   
      
   Originally, the floppy drive controller was the first   
   thing detected (it was on the SuperIO, on LPC bus).   
      
   If the floppy controller was turned on, the dual   
   media device would be assigned letter "A" and letter "B",   
   even when no media was inserted in the drive.   
      
   In a similar way, USB card readers have been assigned   
   E,F,G,H even when no media is present. The optical drive   
   could be D, and not have media in the tray and still use   
   a letter.   
      
   *******   
      
   In some cases, if you go into the BIOS and switch off   
   the floppy controller, the OS then does not assign A and B   
   to the SuperIO floppy. This allows assignment later, to   
   a USB floppy housing, of a drive letter "A" manually.   
   Some softwares were picky enough, they would not work   
   correctly unless the floppy they were launched from was   
   exactly A: . when flashing up the firmware on an optical   
   drive, some of those tools only worked if the optical drive   
   was a "Secondary Master", in other words a fixed role, and   
   then you had to fiddle the cabling to suit the programming   
   software.   
      
   C: is not always the system drive on Windows. If you do the   
   right things, the letter can end up as D: .   
      
   If you boot installer media in the Windows ecosystem,   
   that is loaded as a ramdisk, the media can be popped out   
   once the bootable section is loaded. The letter assigned   
   in that case is X: , and the high assignment allows working   
   with media in the computer as a C: (for convenience). Using   
   the "diskpart.exe" command line utility, you can make and   
   also remove drive letters, while you work from a DVD disc.   
   You can assign drive letters to hidden partitions (yes, in the   
   year 2025, you need to know how to do that).   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)