What Would Happen If You Trashed Your HD?
- Thread starter Amie
- Start date
Mikuro
Crotchety UI Nitpicker
You can't put it in the trash. When you try to drag a volume, the Trash icon changes to the Eject icon, so dropping it on the Trash would merely try to eject/unmount it. If you dragged your startup disk there, nothing would happen, since it cannot be unmounted.
(If you have more than one partition on your HD, though, the non-essential partitions WILL be unmounted, which strikes me as a bit backwards. But there's still no real harm done: just re-mount it in Disk Utility.)
As an interesting aside, in the old days (before most people were at all computer-literate), whenever I would sit someone down at a Mac for the first time, the first thing they would do is drag a very important folder into the Trash. I've seen this happen at least half a dozen times. I think I did it myself, too, when I first used a Mac. Human beings are silly creatures.
(If you have more than one partition on your HD, though, the non-essential partitions WILL be unmounted, which strikes me as a bit backwards. But there's still no real harm done: just re-mount it in Disk Utility.)
As an interesting aside, in the old days (before most people were at all computer-literate), whenever I would sit someone down at a Mac for the first time, the first thing they would do is drag a very important folder into the Trash. I've seen this happen at least half a dozen times. I think I did it myself, too, when I first used a Mac. Human beings are silly creatures.
MacGizmo
Graphics Guy
Nothing would happen. It won't allow you to trash your hard drive from the desktop. The only way to hose yourself like that is to be logged in as Root user and physically drag all the folders from the hard drive into the trash and empty it. Even then I don't think it would allow you to trash much of the files.
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
As far as I know (and that goes back as far as System 6.x on old Macs like the Mac Classic, Mac SE, Mac SE/30, etc.), the Finder has never allowed the system disk to be deleted. The system disk is the disk that is booted up with the operating system. This would make sense since it would render your computer useless.
Compare this with the days of DOS when doing a "format c:\" would wipe the drive. To this day on Windows and Linux, you can wipe out the drive if you have enough administrative access. I'm sure this is now the case with OS X if you enable root (since it IS basically a Unix operating system), hence one of the many reasons Apple disables it.
Compare this with the days of DOS when doing a "format c:\" would wipe the drive. To this day on Windows and Linux, you can wipe out the drive if you have enough administrative access. I'm sure this is now the case with OS X if you enable root (since it IS basically a Unix operating system), hence one of the many reasons Apple disables it.
Amie
Mac Convert for Life
DOS!!! Oh, man ... I remember that! DOS was the very first OS I ever used. That's what all the schools were using when they first brought computers to the classrooms. Ugly-ass black screen with green letters. lolnixgeek said:Compare this with the days of DOS when doing a "format c:\" would wipe the drive. To this day on Windows and Linux, you can wipe out the drive if you have enough administrative access. I'm sure this is now the case with OS X if you enable root (since it IS basically a Unix operating system), hence one of the many reasons Apple disables it.
Does anyone know what the very *first* OS was? DOS was pretty far back, but I don't think it was the first OS. Cobalt, maybe?...
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
Hmm...that one might be a tough one to crack. TO THE INTERNET!!!!
<searching....searching....picking nose.....searching....>
Ah-HA!!! Got it! <flicks "green-gold">
OK, now for the information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
http://www.osdata.com/kind/history.htm
These two links provide some good information on the history of computers and operating systems.
<searching....searching....picking nose.....searching....>
Ah-HA!!! Got it! <flicks "green-gold">
OK, now for the information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
http://www.osdata.com/kind/history.htm
These two links provide some good information on the history of computers and operating systems.
Yeah, and I'm sure there are millions of COBOL applications running as we speak. The IBM 360 never died, it lives on in various incarnations.nixgeek said:
It's supposed to be particularly good at handling forms and output, especially printed output but my experience with it stopped in the 70s.
Esquilinho
Registered
Weee! I remember DOS too, I still had to learn it in my first colleage year
And when I was in the last years of high school, I had a Commodore Amiga with Workbench! THAT was cool!
OOPS! Back to topic, maybe…?
And when I was in the last years of high school, I had a Commodore Amiga with Workbench!
THAT was cool! OOPS! Back to topic, maybe…?
Amie
Mac Convert for Life
No, I replied to that. I'm not looking for verbose articles/links. I'm looking for a ONE-sentence answer: What was the first OS used on computers? One sentence--or even one or two words will do. It's not an essay question.nixgeek said:I thought I did when I provided the links.....the answer is in the links.
Does ANYONE know the answer?
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
Well, I linked to those sites because there are various types of operating systems listed. This is why I couldn't give you a one sentence answer. If you're talking about an operating system similar to what at the basic level would have been like DOS, then it would be Unix. Of course, others wold argue that it's MULTICS since Unix was an offshoot of MULTICS.
It really depends what kind of operating system you mean. Even the term "computers" in your sentence is rather vague when referring to computers and operating systems as a whole in their history. Heck, switches and levers on old analog computers could be considered "operating systems" since you can move them to operate the system to get the desired result. They also mention real-time operating systems that were used in military computing devices. Sometimes humans were considered the "operating system" for a computer in the 50s like ENIAC and UNIVAC since humans had to punch in the information.
As for software that did all of this (which would probably make up what an OS is today to everyone), it would probably be the OS/360 from IBM which was an OS for mainframe systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/360
Beyond that, there's not much to tell. As for GUI operating systems, the first computer to have a GUI was the Xerox ALTO from Xerox PARC. A visit from Steve Jobs and comany to the Xerox PARC facility is what inspired the Macintosh (along with predecessors like the Lisa, Lisa 2, and Mac/XL). The rest, as they say, is history.
It really depends what kind of operating system you mean. Even the term "computers" in your sentence is rather vague when referring to computers and operating systems as a whole in their history. Heck, switches and levers on old analog computers could be considered "operating systems" since you can move them to operate the system to get the desired result. They also mention real-time operating systems that were used in military computing devices. Sometimes humans were considered the "operating system" for a computer in the 50s like ENIAC and UNIVAC since humans had to punch in the information.
As for software that did all of this (which would probably make up what an OS is today to everyone), it would probably be the OS/360 from IBM which was an OS for mainframe systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/360
Beyond that, there's not much to tell. As for GUI operating systems, the first computer to have a GUI was the Xerox ALTO from Xerox PARC. A visit from Steve Jobs and comany to the Xerox PARC facility is what inspired the Macintosh (along with predecessors like the Lisa, Lisa 2, and Mac/XL). The rest, as they say, is history.