We’re talking the first Microsoft drives, not the first drives that ever existed. Windows inherits from DOS. DOS was a competitor with CP/M mostly, iirc, and got to invent various standard and quirks all of its own, which passed on to Windows (which was originally a simple shell on top of dos until 95).
command.com was just the shell (like bash, zsh, Windows Terminal), not the kernel. Pre-NT Windows would use API calls to talk to the DOS kernel, bypassing command.com.
the Windows GUI win.exe would probably be launched by command.com, though, because it was specified in autoexec.bat, the batch of startup tasks designed to be read by command.com.
command.com could be closed after autoexec.bat had run.
the DOS kernel would generally only be used for 16-bit programs, 32-bit programs were managed by a newer kernel more towards the NT kernel.
the whole situation was a horrible mess and never worked very reliably.
A little more nerd knowledge: Different forms of storage media that were able to have gigabytes of storage on them were already in scientific development way before the first ever cd-r hit the market.
I was thinking of equipment my dad worked with, mostly by DEC IIRC, that had tape reels. Another user made the point, though, that they may never have mattered for MS specifically which is what the OP was about.
I was trying to think of something that can I/O on the same thing as input which is why I skipped that. I think some nominally could mark a card as read or something, but I don’t think that counts. I may be missing something. I don’t think paper tape could really do output, either. Terminals are interactive and ephemeral so I didn’t think those would be a good fit for a drive, either.
Weren’t the first drives magnetic tape? I don’t think I’d call a deck of cards a drive, necessarily, nor TTY or something.
We’re talking the first Microsoft drives, not the first drives that ever existed. Windows inherits from DOS. DOS was a competitor with CP/M mostly, iirc, and got to invent various standard and quirks all of its own, which passed on to Windows (which was originally a simple shell on top of dos until 95).
even 95 is still running dos at it’s core. NT4, 2000 finally moved away from loading shit on top of command.com
command.com was just the shell (like bash, zsh, Windows Terminal), not the kernel. Pre-NT Windows would use API calls to talk to the DOS kernel, bypassing command.com.
the Windows GUI win.exe would probably be launched by command.com, though, because it was specified in autoexec.bat, the batch of startup tasks designed to be read by command.com. command.com could be closed after autoexec.bat had run.
the DOS kernel would generally only be used for 16-bit programs, 32-bit programs were managed by a newer kernel more towards the NT kernel.
the whole situation was a horrible mess and never worked very reliably.
That’s a fair point; I got distracted thinking of history.
Does a reel count as a “drive?”
Actual hard drives (i.e. spinning metallic platters) go all the way back to 1956 (and predate floppies by 11 years):
Magnetic tape reels do win if they count, though. They were invented in 1951.
Sources:
A little more nerd knowledge: Different forms of storage media that were able to have gigabytes of storage on them were already in scientific development way before the first ever cd-r hit the market.
I was thinking of equipment my dad worked with, mostly by DEC IIRC, that had tape reels. Another user made the point, though, that they may never have mattered for MS specifically which is what the OP was about.
I’d imagine the first drives were boxes of punch cards.
I was trying to think of something that can I/O on the same thing as input which is why I skipped that. I think some nominally could mark a card as read or something, but I don’t think that counts. I may be missing something. I don’t think paper tape could really do output, either. Terminals are interactive and ephemeral so I didn’t think those would be a good fit for a drive, either.