This image was created by /u/kuebic@discuss.tchncs.de for this comment here: https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/21735989. I had encouraged them to post it somewhere, but as far as I can tell, they never did.
Panel 1: “Installing Windows 20 years ago” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
Panel 2: “Installing Linux 20 years ago” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 3: “Installing Windows today” screenshot of a busy command line
Panel 4: “Installing Linux today” screenshot of install wizard with just a couple buttons
I skipped 2000, but I installed XP a lot of times and I never had to insert a floppy. IDE and SATA drivers were preloaded, maybe you had some really weird storage system?
It was probably a combination of using the motherboard RAID and AMD motherboards to boot.
Microsoft also updated their Windows XP install disk a few times over the years. If you were installing from an original launch disk from 2001 on a PC with 2006 hardware it was quite a different experience than with a disk that already had SP3 and a bunch of newer drivers.
Yeah, that’s rather obscure hardware. I can imagine that you need some drivers for that.
Btw, while this dialog asked for a floppy, it actually used the regular file system, so a CD or even an USB drive worked as well.