Sleeping Floppies -- Rich Wolfson <72467.617@compuserve.com>, author of The PowerBook Companion, passes on this helpful PowerBook hint. Apple tells you to shut down the PowerBook 100 before attaching the external floppy drive. The reason for this is not because of electrical danger, but because even though the driver for the floppy drive loads from ROM, the PowerBook 100 sets a bit at startup that indicates whether or not a floppy drive is attached. If you boot without the floppy drive attached, that bit thinks there is no floppy drive, and attaching the floppy drive after the fact won't work. So, follow this procedure. Shut down the PowerBook, attach the floppy drive, boot the PowerBook again, and when it wakes up, put it back to sleep. You can now safely remove the floppy drive, and when you want to use the floppy drive again, assuming you haven't rebooted, you can put the PowerBook to sleep and attach the floppy again. The Duos are even neater; you can attach the floppy at any time to a sleeping Duo because it has the floppy driver in ROM and also includes special docking features that allow you to attach a floppy drive (via the floppy adapter or MiniDock) when the Duo is asleep. Never attach an external floppy to any PowerBook while it is awake!

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