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Windows 95 Almost Autodetected Floppy Disks

Posted by timothy on from the be-nearly-nostalgic dept.

bonch writes "Windows 95 almost shipped with a technique for detecting whether a floppy disk was inserted without spinning up the drive. Microsoft's floppy driver developer discovered a sequence of commands that detected a disk without spinup — unfortunately, unspecified behavior in the floppy hardware specification meant that half the drives worked one way and half the other, each giving opposite results for the detection routine. Microsoft considered a dialog prompting the user to insert a disk to 'train' the routine, but the idea was scrapped."

2 of 334 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Um by davester666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    But the main reason for not bothering is that the benefit was minuscule compared to the cost. Nobody wants floppy drives to spin up as soon as a disk is inserted. That just makes them think they've been attacked by a computer virus. It'd all just be a lot of work for a feature nobody wants. And then you'd all be posting, "I can't believe Microsoft wasted all this effort on floppy insertion detection when they should have fixed insert favorite bug here."

    Really? I liked how I could insert a floppy into my Mac, there was a firm ka-thunk that the disk was inserted, and then like magic, the floppy icon appeared on my desktop to indicate that the computer was ready for you to use it (or it would pop up a 'could not recognize this disk').

    Do this day, on windows (at least up to xp), clicking the floppy icon (which is always present) freezes the window while it goes about trying to read from the drive, making it annoying if you accidentally click the icon (because it's always there).

    And the system possibly could have worked by doing the test the first time the floppy is attempted to be accessed after the system boots... But you did save less than a dollar (retail) on the drive.

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. Re:Um by 644bd346996 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That whole explanation is bullshit. AutoRun was not reliable at first for CDs either, and most software included instructions for what to do if the AutoRun screen didn't show up or if AutoRun was disabled.