Random question

[catt670]

OK, so I know why computers used to use floppys to boot up and I know it's still convention for computers to check the floppy drive first for a disk to boot up. I know this is helpful if your whole system is frigged and you *need* to boot up using a floppy.
Here comes the question:
Is that the only reason why a system will try to boot up from a floppy first? And the reason you need to remove the floppy disk before booting up?
Cheers for any help, or pointers to where I can learn more about this.

PS-Are there NO women in this forum?

[Fed]

You can change the 'boot order' sequence in your bios.
A drive, C drive, cdrom
cdrom, C drive, A drive
C drive, A drive, cdrom
blah, blah, blah
You get the idea.
Women? Where? YIKES!
There are some, and then there's Flame and rest of us.

[catt670]

Thanks.
I think I probably knew that (I'm sure it's in the back of my head somewhere!)....
I'm more investigating why it's stayed convention to boot up from floppy first.
I've been driving my mates mad with floppy questions for a while now. They're now telling me to sit down and shut up cause they couldn't be bothered with my ridiculous unanswerable questions anymore!
Cheers for the input though!

[Raptor]

PS-Are there NO women in this forum?

Fed looks very attractive in a leather skirt.

Is that the only reason why a system will try to boot up from a floppy first? And the reason you need to remove the floppy disk before booting up?

Most BIOS are set to boot from the FDD by default. Either this is a left over from the days when new PCs still came with floppy drives or it is to prevent having users who know enough to install an OS, but not enough to configure the BIOS, from having to enter the BIOS setup and change settings there.

Newer Operating Systems allow you to boot directly from the CD-ROM, removing the need for a Floppy Disk Drive.

[Computer_Commando]

...I'm more investigating why it's stayed convention to boot up from floppy first...

Hard drives are the single component most likely to fail in a computer.  This failure may be hardware or software related.  If the hard drive fails, there is no way to start the computer without a boot device (floppy disk or CD).  Bootable CD's have only been with us for 7 years (since Win98).  Bootable USB is beginning to show up now.  There are a lot of working computers in the world older than 7 years.  My primary computer is 5 years old and suits me just fine.  Not everyone needs (or wants) a Pentium 4-3GHz.  New technology costs the most, better to wait a year or two until prices drop.

Here's one to ponder.  Why is the hard drive "C"?  And why is the floppy disk "A"?  Might help to answer your original question, "A" comes before "C", so floppy is first.

Long Live the Floppy Disk, may it never die!
(While we're at it) Long live DOS, it will never die!

[catt670]

Fed looks very attractive in a leather skirt.

I'm not quite sure I want to see that  

But, yeah I can understand what all ye guys are saying and it makes sense. Good, observation on the floppy = a:. I've always noticed that myself and thought it may have something to do with that

So basically, floppy has just stuck. I just find it so strange that people don't make CD boot disks. I'm a comp Sci PhD student and *everyone* in my department at University makes boot disks on floppy. It's just odd how everything else has 'moved on' but boot devices are commonly floppy. Weird-don't you think?

[Raptor]

I'm a comp Sci PhD student and *everyone* in my department at University makes boot disks on floppy.

Boot diskettes are rarely over 1.44MB in size. It would be a waste of a CD-R if you ask me.

Plus, writing to a floppy is still easier than accessing your CD-RW copying program. Especially with all the automated programs that create a bootable diskette for you.