On Dec 16, 2003, at 03:42 pm, chris wrote:
And when the machine throws a dinger and you need to boot from a Floppy? Enough said.
No need to boot from a floppy. :-)
The only reason the machine would go down into a non bootable state is if
there is a failure. In that event, the machine would be pulled from
service and swapped with a spare. Once a machine fails for any reason, it
is removed from service until it can be fully tested and inspected. Once
it is repaired and reinspected, if it is considered good again, it goes
into storage as a backup unit (filling the void left by the one that was
taken from storage to act as its replacement). There may be a need for a
floppy during this test/repair cycle, but at that time the machine is on
a work bench with its cover off, so adding a known good floppy into the
mix during repair is a simple task.
<snip>
I see. That makes a lot of sense in actual fact. I'd never personally forsake the floppy in my PC simply because I have needed it for BIOS Flash reasons and also as an absolute last fall-back. Booting LILO off a floppy is also a handy and simple dodge for booting Linux on a machine running 2000/XP.
Losing the floppy on a Mac is not nearly so much of an issue. Macs have been able to boot from CDs since 1991 (and before that you could force some to use in Cmd-Opt-Shift-Del) and Mac OS 7.5.5 and later are all available on CD.
On the PC only some copies of 98SE and all of Me, 2000 and XP have been made on bootable CDs, similarly it is only in recent years Linux/BSD Distros have started using Bootable CDs. IIRC it was part of the PC98 standards document. As a result a lot of PC owners still have either optical drives and/or motherboards that don't support CD boot.
It's ironic perhaps then that the only machines I use floppies regularly in now are Macs!!
-- Mark Benson
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