Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 02:10:54 -0000
From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com>
Subject: Tidbit - Mac Floppy Kills NT

Keyword: Advocacy, Windows Daymares

This tidbit is from: 

Steve Cmabers

I am a support technician (contractor) for a big Government R&D 
contractor and work a lot setting up and configuring Macs and PC's. We 
just got a shipment of new computers in (7 new G3/266 towers!) and 4 new 
top of the line Dell 300MHz PC's.

Installation of the Macs is running flawlessly, as expected, so I uncrate 
the Dells fire them up and go thru the rigmarole for a first time run of 
Windows NT (service pack 3). OOPS, I need a new set of Win 95 setup disks 
(basically a disk tools disk and some CD-ROM drivers). SO I grab a couple 
of floppies from the floppy box, pop it in one of the new NT boxes.

To format a floppy on NT/Win95 you right-click on the A: drive icon and 
select format. WRONG! on all 4 NT boxes I do this and I get the BSOD 
(blue screen of death --reboot your system, it's gone!)

The floppy in question, an old Mac formatted system 7.5 floppy!

I asked our NT Admin what gives and he shrugged his shoulders and said, 
"I dunno, mine does the same thing, when I want to format a floppy I take 
it to another machine."

Sure enough, Win 95 formats it fine, the Mac (of course) formats a PC 
floppy fine but on many NT 4.0 boxes re-formatting a Mac formatted floppy 
can't be done!

So much for "a bullet proof enterprise wide OS for mission critical 
applications!"