Floppy Disks and Floppy Users
Two quick floppy stories. 1. My high school got IBM PCs way back in 1983-4, when the XT was a big deal. We later got a few with half-height drives, two of them. Thus, we had both types. We had written instructions into the programs to insert disks, like: "Insert the floppy disk into the drive on the left, into the slot in the center of the drive. Then, close the drive door by pushing downward on it." Complete with little diagrams on the screen. However, these instructions were obviously invalid on the half-height drives. Thus, one day the obvious happened: The user inserted the disk into the slot BETWEEN the two half-height drives. We had to open the machine cover to get it out. 2. At Rutgers, we have a lot of Macintoshes. The bookstore sells both 5.25" and 3.5" disks, for our ATT (IBMPC clones) and Macs. One day, a user came to the aid station saying "my disk won't fit into the drive". It turned out he or she had tried to insert a 5.25" disk into the Mac's 3.5" drive, BY FOLDING IT IN HALF. The Mac obediently grabbed the disk, and tried to pull it down into the drive. We had to take that machine apart to get the disk out, and it never did work right after that! - Mark Smith