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Foone's profile
foone
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@Foone

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foone

@Foone

Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators. (they/them) ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing 

floppy.foone.org/w/Main_Page
Joined February 2008

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    foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

    It is 2018 and this error message is a mistake from 1974. This limitation, which is still found in the very latest Windows 10, dates back to BEFORE STAR WARS. This bug is as old as Watergate.pic.twitter.com/pPbkZiE57t

    4:06 AM - 3 Nov 2018
    • 6,668 Retweets
    • 14,143 Likes
    • Alf YeX Blakely North Omid Sani Squanchy حسین jacksn Alireza Ahmadi 𝅙
    164 replies 6,668 retweets 14,143 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        When this was developed, nothing had UPC codes yet because they'd just been invented. Back when this mistake was made, There was only one Phone Company, because they hadn't been broken up yet. Ted Bundy was still on the loose. Babe Ruth's home run record was about to fall.

        5 replies 45 retweets 803 likes
        Show this thread
      3. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        When this bug was developed, Wheel of Fortune hadn't yet aired. No one had seen Rocky Horror. Steven Spielberg was still a little-known directory of TV films and one box-office disappointment. SNL hadn't aired yet. The Edmund Fitzgerald was still hauling iron ore.

        7 replies 41 retweets 724 likes
        Show this thread
      4. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        WHEN THIS STUPID MISFEATURE WAS INVENTED, THE GODFATHER PART II HAD JUST OPENED IN THEATERS.

        5 replies 30 retweets 678 likes
        Show this thread
      5. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        So, why does this happen? So Unix (which was only 5 years old at this point) had the good idea of "everything is a file" which mean you could do things like write to sockets, pipes, the console, etc with the same commands and instructions.

        3 replies 43 retweets 677 likes
        Show this thread
      6. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        This idea was brought into CP/M by Gary Kiddal in 1974. You could do neat things with it like copy data off the serial port into a text file, or print a textfile right from the command line!

        6 replies 23 retweets 536 likes
        Show this thread
      7. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        This is done in unix by having special files existing in special folders, like /dev/tty for the console or /dev/lp0 for the first printer. You can get infinite zeros from /dev/zero, random bytes from /dev/random, etc!

        2 replies 22 retweets 521 likes
        Show this thread
      8. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        but here's the problem: CP/M is designed for 8-bit computers with very little memory, and no hard drives. At best you've got an 8" floppy drive. So directories? you don't need 'em. Instead of directories, you just use different disks.

        3 replies 19 retweets 485 likes
        Show this thread
      9. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        but without directories you can't put all your special files over in a /dev/ directory. So they're just "everywhere", effectively. So if you have FOO.TXT and need to print it, you can do "PIP LST:=FOO.TXT" which copies foo.txt to the "file" LST, which is the printer.

        1 reply 17 retweets 456 likes
        Show this thread
      10. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        and it works where ever you are, because there are no directories! it's simple. but what about extensions? Here's the problem: programs like to name their files with the right extension.

        1 reply 15 retweets 415 likes
        Show this thread
      11. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        so if you're running a program and it goes "ENTER FILENAME TO SAVE LISTING TO" you could tell it LST to print it or PTP to punch it out to tape (cause it's 1974, remember?) but the program might try to put .TXT on the end of your filename! LST.TXT isn't the printer, right?

        2 replies 20 retweets 457 likes
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      12. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        Nah. It is. These special devices exist at all extensions, so that this works. so if "CON" is reserved to refer to the keyboard, so is CON.TXT and CON.WAT and CON.BUG Eh. It's a hack, but it works, and this is just on some little microcomputers with 4k of ram, who cares?

        8 replies 25 retweets 561 likes
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      13. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        Well CP/M caught on widely through the late 70s and early-80s. It was one of the main operating systems for business use. It defined an interface which meant you could write CP/M code on a NorthStar Horizon and run it on a Seequa Chameleon.

        2 replies 17 retweets 432 likes
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      14. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        The lack of a portable graphics standard kept it out of the games market for the most part (though there are Infocom releases) so it was mainly business users. But it was big, so naturally IBM wanted it for some "PC" project they were doing in early 1980

        1 reply 17 retweets 399 likes
        Show this thread
      15. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        So IBM intended to launch the IBM PC with several operating systems, and were expecting CP/M to be the "main" one. But CP/M for the x86 didn't come out until 6 months after the IBM PC launched... and it cost 240$ vs 40$ for DOS.

        4 replies 18 retweets 400 likes
        Show this thread
      16. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        so the vast majority of users ended up using Microsoft's PC-DOS, which was an evolution of a new OS developed by Seattle Computer Products. MS purchased Tim Paterson's project and developed it into PC-DOS (which later became MS-DOS, if you're not aware)

        2 replies 18 retweets 422 likes
        Show this thread
      17. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        Tim Paterson's OS was called "QDOS", for "Quick and Dirty Operating System". It was basically written because CP/M didn't have an x86 version yet, and an attempt to solve some of the limitations of CP/M. It was definitely inspired by CP/M, in a lot of ways.

        4 replies 23 retweets 436 likes
        Show this thread
      18. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        One of those main ways was keeping the idea of special files and no directories, because that was a useful feature of CP/M. So QDOS and PC-DOS 1.0 have AUX, PRN, CON, LPT, etc, too!

        3 replies 18 retweets 397 likes
        Show this thread
      19. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        For PC-DOS 2.0 released in 1983 for the new IBM XT, Microsoft significantly revamped PC-DOS. The IBM XT featured a hard drive, so PC-DOS needed directories support. You need them to keep your massive 10mb hard drive organized, obviously!

        3 replies 19 retweets 441 likes
        Show this thread
      20. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        But here's the problem: Users have been using these special files since PC DOS 1.0 release two years earlier. Software has been written that uses them! batch files have been written that support them. with directories, Microsoft could now make a C:\DEV folder... but they didn't.

        2 replies 17 retweets 398 likes
        Show this thread
      21. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        For what wouldn't be the last time, Microsoft sacrificed sanity for backwards compatibility: Special files are in EVERY DIRECTORY with EVERY EXTENSION. So your "DIR > LPT" trick to print the directory listing doesn't break because you're in C:\DOS instead of A:\

        5 replies 55 retweets 622 likes
        Show this thread
      22. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        But we're not running DOS 2.0, of course... And when Windows 95 was released, it was built on top of DOS. So it naturally inherited this behavior. (Windows 1/2/3 similarly did, but Win95 was much more an OS than they were)

        3 replies 18 retweets 378 likes
        Show this thread
      23. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        But hey, we're not running Windows 95 anymore! The current branch of windows is based on Windows NT, not Win95. But Windows NT wanted compatibility with DOS/Windows programs. And XP merged the two lines. So these special files still work, FORTY FOUR FUCKING YEARS LATER

        4 replies 52 retweets 786 likes
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      24. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        Feel free to try it yourself! Open explorer, do "new text file", and name it con.txt aux.txt prn.txt it'll tell you NOPEpic.twitter.com/29JEBzAGpw

        9 replies 120 retweets 898 likes
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      25. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        So because of Gary Kiddal going "Special files representing hardware devices! That's a neat idea, Unix. I'll borrow that idea and try to hack it into my toy-computer OS" so long ago that people born that year can have children old enough to drink... we can't name con.txt

        3 replies 70 retweets 782 likes
        Show this thread
      26. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        Microsoft gives the official list here: CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/naming-a-file …

        10 replies 95 retweets 961 likes
        Show this thread
      27. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        For extra fun, accessing C:\con\con (or C:\aux\aux) on win95 would cause it to bluescreen instantly. That was hilarious back in 1995, because it was a 21-year-old bug! Imagine some misdesign hanging on that long?pic.twitter.com/Scq1xLcWBD

        10 replies 193 retweets 1,240 likes
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      28. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        Bonus: Here's a picture of Tim Paterson at the VCF:W this August, giving a talk on the history of DOS.pic.twitter.com/CFm9fAknmA

        5 replies 18 retweets 471 likes
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      29. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        And if you want the backstory for I got into this mess where I have a file I can't copy: These special-device names are implemented at the OS level, rather than the filesystem level. So they're perfectly valid NTFS filenames, and I was using an NTFS drive in linux.

        6 replies 21 retweets 539 likes
        Show this thread
      30. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        And apparently OS/2 didn't implement these special names either, cause IBM shipped some opengl headers as AUX.H on one of the OS/2 devcon disks.pic.twitter.com/GtrACvbxrs

        2 replies 20 retweets 484 likes
        Show this thread
      31. foone‏ @Foone 3 Nov 2018

        So today I was trying to backup this NTFS drive onto my main PC and WHOOPS CAN'T COPY ALL FILES CAUSE OF BUGS OLDER THAN MOST PEOPLE READING THIS

        31 replies 116 retweets 1,926 likes
        Show this thread
      32. Show replies

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