insert disk here

[TheSHAD0W]

Long ago I worked tech support for a computer & electronics store in NYC. The store prospered because their salesmen were good at selling... But, perhaps, not so good at the tech.

One customer came to the store and a salesman talked him into buying a Mac Plus. The salesman also sent him out with a box of disks, an obvious and important accessory. The customer was rung up at the register, took his new computer home, set it up and started working with it.

Unfortunately, the disks the salesman had fetched for the customer were 5-1/4" floppies, not the 3.5" disks the Mac used.

The customer? He didn't know nothin' from nothin'. He took a disk, folded it in quarters, and shoved it in.

Don't know how familiar you folks are with the old Macs, but you have to take the back off, take out the power supply board (with high-voltage capacitors, since it powered the screen), and then the motherboard, before you can get to the floppy drive. Getting the disk out of the drive: 3 minutes. Total repair time: One hour.

[Bright_Star]

holy cow...lol.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

The customer? He didn't know nothin' from nothin'. He took a disk, folded it in quarters, and shoved it in.

That... made my brain hurt.

How the heck could ANYONE think that a FOLDED disk would work?

[wolfie]

Probably the same sort of person who kept their emergency recovery disk handy - by sticking it to the side of a filing cabinet using a large magnet

[lordlundar]

How the heck could ANYONE think that a FOLDED disk would work?

Ask that at a computer tech convention. You'll get a lot of fun stories. Just make sure you can wrap your head around them.

[earl colby pottinger]

Don't know how familiar you folks are with the old Macs, but you have to take the back off, take out the power supply board (with high-voltage capacitors, since it powered the screen), and then the motherboard, before you can get to the floppy drive. Getting the disk out of the drive: 3 minutes. Total repair time: One hour.

You don't really need to remove the power supply to get at the floppy drive on a Mac Plus, but then you do need a small and strong hand to reach in and unplug the main cable going to the main motherboard.

Your real problem is if the customer tries to fix the problem him-(rarely her)-self, by pulling out the mangle disk with a needle nose pliers. They will almost certain catch and rip out a read/write head and those drives were not cheap.

Apple for the first year or so did replace them under warrenty, and AppleCare always got you a replacement. But as soon as Apple wised up the problem, if you did not have AppleCare you paid thru the nose for the repair.