Ken Whiton wrote:
> *-* On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, at 22:11:30 +0200,
> *-* In Article 2pudnWpryojvcfrVnZ2dnUVZ_h_inZ2d@mozilla.org,
> *-* squaredancer wrote
> *-* About Re: Firefox 3 still hogs memory
>
>> On 29.06.2008 05:38, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ken Whiton to
>> generate the following:? :
>>> *-* Daniel wrote
>
> [ ... ]
>
>>>> Back in the days of 640kbytes of RAM, I could see why you might
>>>> allocate heaps of HD as a swapfile, but when you've got 100's of
>>>> MB or even GBytes of RAM, why should you then need to allocate any
>>>> of your HD??
>
>>> Two reasons: multitasking and software bloat. Back in the
>>> days of 640 KB neither the CPUs nor the OSs were capable of much
>>> (if any) multitasking, so there was little or no need for swapping.
>>> Furthermore, back in the days before HDs were available in PCs
>>> programs had to be able to fit on a 360 KB (or even a 180 KB)
>>> floppy, so programmers had to write tight, efficient code. Compare
>>> that with the size and complexity of (most of) today's programs,
>>> which, by virtue of that size and complexity require much more RAM
>>> to operate in.
>
>> Ho, Ken - you also remember the 8" days of single and double-sided
>> floppies?
>
> No.
>
>> those were the days when a floppy really *WAS* a floppy
>> (and don't get your sticky fingers on the read-slot)
>
> Actually, I don't even have any experience with the 180 KB
> floppies. The first PCs we had where I worked had 360 KB 5 1/4"
> floppies, and my first home PC had dual 720 KB 3 1/2" floppies (and no
> HD).
>
> Ken Whiton
>
> FIDO: 1:132/152
> InterNet: kenwhiton@surfglobal.net.INVAL (remove the obvious to reply)

I can vaguely remember having to turn the floppy over to get to the
second 180k of storage, but must have upgraded to a dual sided floppy
disk drive fairly early.

It may have even been on an Apple IIe clone with external disk drive!

Daniel