Windows 95 Almost Autodetected Floppy Disks 334
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."
Um (Score:5, Insightful)
How about veryslownewsday? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is you don't have to do even that. The routine would look something like:
- User initiates action with the floppy drive
- Run the auto-detection routine to see what answer you get
- Spin up the drive and check to see if something is in the drive
- Compare that with the pre-spun result to see what answer you get.
Something along those lines. There are several variations on this that would work and never require you to interact with the user at all.
Re:Detection via delta? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, and that's been a danger since day one. The removable media should _never_ have been the default: it should have been the fallthrough boot medium, to keep idiots from booting with floppies or later CD's and USB devices automatically to take control of your hardware.
ok, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why didn't they spin up the drive to check for a disk, run the routine that doesn't spin the drive up and based on the results, adapt the result to the computer...
Re:I question this. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the hardware switches did indeed report differently depending on the model, then yes I can see this. But the article makes it sound like the programmer was some kind of clever genius; rather, the insertion detection was right there in the specification to begin with.
Re:Um (Score:3, Insightful)
If you spin up the drive and find there isn't a disk there, that either means there isn't a disk there, or the disk is faulty.
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
problem: some users are idiots
solution: treat all users like idiots
I know its not the msway but a would regkey you could manually set have been that hard?
Re:Where did I put that SlowNewsDay tag? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully far away.
To ordinary people, this is indeed a non-story. But to a true nerd, a story about an undocumented feature in a (once) popular tech almost being implemented in a (once) popular OS is interesting reading.
It may not be "news for nerds, stuff that matters" but it's definitely "stuff for nerds".
Re:Um (Score:2, Insightful)
Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Um (Score:4, Insightful)
For that matter, they could have done it during setup or any other time. It doesn't matter if a floppy's in the drive or not. Check if there is one the old fashioned way (spinning the motor) and then do your routine. Bam, trained, and you never have to spin the drive again for this purpose.
Re:Detection via delta? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and that's been a danger since day one. The removable media should _never_ have been the default: it should have been the fallthrough boot medium, to keep idiots from booting with floppies or later CD's and USB devices automatically to take control of your hardware.
On "day one" the *ONLY* option was "removable media". If you were lucky, you might even have had drive A: _and_ drive B:.
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Non-system disk or disk error anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations on not reading the article or summary.
First, this feature was talking about checking if a disk is present without spinning up the disk. To boot from a floppy, a computer spins up the disk and looks for a boot sector.
Second, that would be the BIOS, not Windows, checking the floppy during the boot process. It checks the devices in the order it's set to. Back in the mid 90s, this was generally floppy, then IDE, then SCSI. A few people with good hardware had CD-ROM in there, too.
Click (Score:3, Insightful)
AmigaOS 1.0 did that
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Re:Um (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way the OS even knew your floppy drive existed was through the bios. If you told the BIOS you had a floppy drive and you didn't, the OS would be none the wiser. And if the OS didn't know if there really was a drive or not, I somehow doubt the technology could even support unique device ID's like modern stuff.
In other words, your plan would work if floppy drives had device ids, but they dont, so your idea won't work either!
Re:Detection via delta? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because some of us elder geeks like learning about clever and functional hardware tricks, I suppose. It's always interesting to me when a piece of hardware learns a new trick which its designers never intended, with software alone. Using the PC speaker for digital audio is one. Data acquisition with a parallel port is another.
Central Point's PC Tools Backup program used to do floppy detection, but it kept the motor spinning the whole time. So, doing this same trick without spinning the motor is interesting to me.
If it's not interesting to you, then get off my lawn, kid, and go fuck with your water cooling rig some more and post the results on Twitter or something. Don't come whining here.
K? Thx.
Re:Obligatory Linux Comment (Score:1, Insightful)
Or, being Apple, you happened to know the magic for each drive you shipped and didn't need to train.
Controlling the whole system means knowing whatever you want about it.
Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
One could say that a feature that mysteriously turns itself on and off is worse than a feature that simply doesn't work. At least when it doesn't work, it predictably doesn't work. Human beings value predictability.
Consistency in an operating is indeed a high priority, but the designers at Microsoft think they know better and suggest [microsoft.com] "Because Windows adapts to how you use your computer, the menu items you use most will be automatically displayed in the future. So the next time you open the menu, you might not need to expand it."
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.
If only they had remembered this lesson. Some years later they considered it vastly different to spin up a CD upon insertion. Then they figured they'd not only do that, but also trust the media enough to blindly start executing code from it.
And what kept them from doing what's safe? (Score:2, Insightful)
What kept them from auto-detecting floppies during a Windows session?
Example:
1. insert floppy, do something, detect mechanism
2. request disk2
3. auto-detect that disk2 has been inserted
4. keep auto-detection during the Windows session
5. after Windows restart goto 1
That sounds seamless to me, is easy to understand and doesn't cause any trouble. (I guess the few people that swapped their floppy drives during a Windows session are negligible.)
Re:Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)