# What would you do with 1K



## feathery (Oct 6, 2009)

Seeing as harddisk memory has become so massive many do not know what to do with it all "Myself included" memory now seems unlimited " For me anyway". So lets say that you only have 1K to work with right now on your PC. What would you do with that 1 Kilo Byte? Im sure somthing can be saved in such a small format.
I know texts documents are roughly 1byte(s) per letter, so I reckon that be a start.


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## net-cat (Oct 6, 2009)

1K? I'd trade my computer in for a typewriter. 1K is a very short essay. (1M is probably a better number for this exercise.)


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## LizardKing (Oct 6, 2009)

Well, I'd delete some stuff. 

Then I'd have room.

Yay.


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## Shino (Oct 6, 2009)

I'd write a small perl script.

Why? Just because. ^_^


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## Shark_the_raptor (Oct 6, 2009)

Print everything.  And I mean *everything*.  Use that 1k for the bare bones of what I need for the laptop.


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## AMV_Ph34r (Oct 6, 2009)

I'd use it to write a script to connect to the internet and order me a new 1.5TB hard drive.


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## Benny the Horned Rabbit (Oct 6, 2009)

I'd do some deleating, because there isn't a single file on the internet that is only 1 kilobyte.


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## Runefox (Oct 6, 2009)

I would make very good use of a boot CD/floppy and RAMdisk. Sure, I'd have to set everything up every time (unless I had an image that deflated from the CD/floppy to the RAMdisk on boot), but it'd be pretty workable.

... I wouldn't touch the 1K hard drive.

Point of exercise -----> o



My head ---------------> o


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## Beta Link (Oct 6, 2009)

Well I wouldn't do much, that's for sure. I think if I could only use 1K, I'd just say "screw it" and throw out my computer, because 1K is essentially useless.


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## LotsOfNothing (Oct 6, 2009)

1: Destroy hard drive
2: Buy new one
3: ??????????
4: FUCK I FORGOT TO GET A NEW COPY OF WINDOWS.


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## Azbulldog (Oct 6, 2009)

I'd draw a little pixel doodle. This little 36x36 png icon I have saved is only 400 bytes, but 4kb on the disk? Fff..maybe not.


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## feathery (Oct 6, 2009)

Thats the best idea i have heard all day.


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## Runefox (Oct 7, 2009)

Azbulldog said:


> I'd draw a little pixel doodle. This little 36x36 png icon I have saved is only 400 bytes, but 4kb on the disk? Fff..maybe not.


That's due to the file system cluster size (NTFS default = 4KB). More than likely, on a 1KB (here's hoping 1KB _formatted_) hard drive (if such a thing existed), the cluster size would be 512B or less (though I believe 512B is the floor, since that's how much each sector on a typical physical hard disk contains) for an NTFS or FAT partition, meaning, at least with a 512B cluster size, it would only take up half the total available space.


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## ArielMT (Oct 7, 2009)

Apple II and Commodore formats used 256-byte sectors.  In Commodore's case, they used a forward-linked list as the first two bytes of each sector, reducing the data space to 254 bytes per.

Still, 1 K of space is too small to do anything practical in, unless you wanted to turn such a computer into a very simple dedicated system.  Microsoft Basic for the MITS Altair, a 1/4 K computer, needed 4 K to run.  As for disk-based storage, I'm not aware of any ever existing that had less than 80 K of formatted space.  Mag tape, punch tape, and cassettes, however...  I remember holding less than 1 K of freshly punched paper tape, but I had no idea (still don't) whether it was code or data.


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## feathery (Oct 7, 2009)

ArielMT said:


> Apple II and Commodore formats used 256-byte sectors. In Commodore's case, they used a forward-linked list as the first two bytes of each sector, reducing the data space to 254 bytes per.
> 
> Still, 1 K of space is too small to do anything practical in, unless you wanted to turn such a computer into a very simple dedicated system. Microsoft Basic for the MITS Altair, a 1/4 K computer, needed 4 K to run. As for disk-based storage, I'm not aware of any ever existing that had less than 80 K of formatted space. Mag tape, punch tape, and cassettes, however... I remember holding less than 1 K of freshly punched paper tape, but I had no idea (still don't) whether it was code or data.


 
The Commadore PET 1978 I do beleive had 1.7K hard disk inside of it, it was used for making text based documents so i beleive thats the only 1k hard disk i can think of.


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## Adelio Altomar (Oct 7, 2009)

1K? Nothing. I mean, that's all you can do if you're that spot, no?


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## Sinjo (Oct 7, 2009)

1 kilobyte? Nothing. Nothing modern can run off of 1kb.


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## feathery (Oct 7, 2009)

Sinjo said:


> 1 kilobyte? Nothing. Nothing modern can run off of 1kb.


 
Maybe theres some ancient program that can? Man im stuck in the 70's XvX.


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## net-cat (Oct 7, 2009)

feathery said:


> Maybe theres some ancient program that can? Man im stuck in the 70's XvX.


I don't think you quite comprehend how useless 1KB of space is. This is one 1KB of text:



> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum leo leo, auctor et rhoncus eu, vehicula id nulla. Duis dictum gravida tincidunt. Ut mattis augue ut magna tempor condimentum. Fusce aliquam, turpis adipiscing iaculis imperdiet, erat turpis tempus ante, nec mollis sapien massa at lorem. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Donec sodales aliquet congue. Suspendisse quis libero in ante tincidunt facilisis. Donec et erat leo, et sodales mauris. Sed hendrerit volutpat elit, non facilisis tellus sollicitudin ac. Integer posuere eros diam. Sed a sapien at lorem imperdiet consequat non vel neque. Etiam pulvinar odio eget elit lacinia vel congue enim hendrerit. Nunc gravida eros at ligula eleifend egestas. Nam eu ligula ipsum. Duis dictum vestibulum condimentum.
> 
> Sed eu ipsum ut nibh congue tincidunt. Nulla fermentum rhoncus nisl eget sagittis. Vivamus laoreet, dui eleifend varius accumsan, odio erat tincidunt erat, at lacinia nisl metus vitae urna. Praesent eu mi at purus placerat luctus eget in posuere.


You can fit more text on a single piece of paper by using a typewriter.

Even the cheapest of microcontrollers have 10KB or more of non-volatile memory. General purpose computers have never actually had that little non-volatile memory. (Of course, embedded apps and the early research systems did, but those are generally highly specialized.)


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## SnowFox (Oct 7, 2009)

I'd probably upgrade my "computer" to a microcontroller and use it for more interesting things. And maybe try to memorize the program memory in hex form... just because.


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## Sinjo (Oct 7, 2009)

feathery said:


> Maybe theres some ancient program that can? Man im stuck in the 70's XvX.


let me correct myself. No modern OS can run off of 1kb.


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## feathery (Oct 7, 2009)

Sinjo said:


> let me correct myself. No modern OS can run off of 1kb.



These days no if there was i would go nuts.


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## Bittertooth (Oct 8, 2009)

the most practical way to utilize 1kb might be to store a txt document with important info like passwords and stuff.  1kb is enough to serve as a digital post-it note.


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## Dior (Oct 8, 2009)

net-cat said:


> I don't think you quite comprehend how useless 1KB of space is. This is one 1KB of text:
> 
> You can fit more text on a single piece of paper by using a typewriter.
> 
> Even the cheapest of microcontrollers have 10KB or more of non-volatile memory. General purpose computers have never actually had that little non-volatile memory. (Of course, embedded apps and the early research systems did, but those are generally highly specialized.)




FAF forums... you get educated. Seriously i didn't know that 1k was only that much.


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## D Void (Oct 8, 2009)

I would use the storage devise to smash the computer in.
1 K makes me sad so little storage so much storys to save 

Lol funny note I added up the memory capability for both my computers and it is still currently lower than my xbox. Go 2 external harddrives and the elite harddrive. lol


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## Carenath (Oct 8, 2009)

@Shino: I'd write a small C program instead, just because.


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## ArielMT (Oct 8, 2009)

Dior said:


> FAF forums... you get educated. Seriously i didn't know that 1k was only that much.



He's right.  A plain unformatted text document is often assumed to be 4 KB per page.

Another way to put it in perspective: The plain-text video mode that MS-DOS and Linux start up in (and Windows, too, if the GUI is not allowed to load) consumes 4 KB of display buffer space, 2 KB each for each cell's ASCII code and each cell's foreground/background color code, with 128 bytes to spare.



Carenath said:


> @Shino: I'd write a small C program instead, just because.



I'd probably do the same, but I'd have to hand-compile it into ultra-tight assembly code, then hand-translate it into machine language before keying it in.


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