Windows 95 Almost Autodetected Floppy Disks

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."

Comments

Um

[linumax]

Why not do the behavior detection on first instance a floppy disk was used?

Re:Um

[joeware]

I think you misunderstood linumax's comment. He is saying that instead of prompting the user to insert a floppy to train it, just automatically do the training behind the scenes the first time a floppy is inserted.

Re:Um

[davester666]

And thus, didn't occur to the Microsoft engineer...

Re:Um

[chickens]

If you'd ever used Windows before, you'd know that the consequences of interrupting the user with stupid dialog boxes is not something its UI designers worry (worried?) much about...

*ahem*

It looks like you've inserted a floppy disc! Would you like any help with that?

Re:Um

[mccdyl001]

damn wish i had mod points. and a shift key for that matter... anyway, surely there was a way for the operating system to poll the system using these 'magic' system commands to check if a disk had been inserted. so poll the system, see what it says - either a 1 or a 0, then spin up the drive and see what it actually says. heck do it as part of the system install. take a snapshot of the floppy drive device name or something at the same time. if the device name changes re-run this technique, cause if you swap the floppy with another drive which reports the same device name it'll still report 0 or 1 for the same type of disk insertion scenario so you fine, and if the floppy device name is diff, then re-run this technique. anyway, as part of the system install you could have polled if the disk was there, taken the answer, then actually spun up the drive and checked and bingo, your training is done1 damn what i could do with a shift key right now....

Re:Um

[davester666]

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.

Re:Um

[644bd346996]

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.

Re:Um

[Jamie's Nightmare]

You're a bit out of focus here. It worked well on the Mac and the Amiga because the floppy drives themselves were different. The hardware was designed to signal the machine when a disk was inserted via a switch/sensor inside the drive that was depressed when the disk was inserted. Similar, but in a different location than the "write protect" and "high density" sensors. This method is simple and it works. The only real point of failure is the possibility of the switch going bad, but I can't say that I've ever seen that personally.

The method from Microsoft was a way to do the same thing in a way that wouldn't always work. Do you remember Floppy Drives? Remember how cheap and shitty they were? They were not very reliable to begin with, and it's likely that even if it worked before there might still be mysterious times when a disk was inserted and this method wouldn't work. Microsoft made a good choice here, but rather than acknowledge that you'll just bitch more and fish more crap from the excuse box.

I know the feeling.

[anexanhume]

I know what it's like to not have your floppy detected upon insertion.