At heart, I’m a lazy person. If I have the choice of doing something using three key presses, or doing it using two key presses, I will use the two key presses every time (wouldn’t everyone?). Because I’m so lazy, I used to hate ejecting floppy disks. If I was typing at the keyboard, I had to pick up the mouse, click on the disk icon, and drag the disk icon to the trash. That's why I wrote EjectDisk. Now all I have to do is press a single key (on my extended keyboard), and any floppy disks that are currently mounted are unmounted and ejected.
EjectDisk comes in two parts, an extension (INIT), and an FKEY. You can choose between them which one to use, since both perform the same function (they are just started in slightly different ways). For example, I prefer using the extension, where as people who don’t like installing extensions might prefer to use the FKEY. This document describes the EjectDisk extension. For more information on the EjectDisk FKEY, select the About item from the Apple menu of the installer program.
The EjectDisk extension requires System 7 or later (it checks this at startup, and if you aren’t running System 7 or later it won’t install itself).
Installing the Extension
Simply drag the extension onto your System Folder, and release it. The computer will ask you if you want to put it in the Extensions folder. Click OK (or press return). Once you have restarted your computer, EjectDisk will be installed and ready for use!
Using the Extension
Once EjectDisk is installed, there are two ways of using it. If you have an extended keyboard, pressing the F15 key will cause EjectDisk to unmount and eject any floppy disks currently mounted. If you don’t have an extended keyboard, pressing command-escape will do the same thing.
The EjectDisk extension doesn’t mask out the key presses that are used to activate it, so any other extensions or programs that use either F15 or command-escape to activate should still work (of course, if you have any floppy disks in your computer they will be ejected).
Removing the Extension
If you later decide that you don’t want to keep EjectDisk, simply remove the extension from your extensions folder and restart.
Possible Problems
• Occasionally, if you eject a disk and then put it back in the computer, you will find that the last thing you did to the disk is not “remembered”. This is because the Finder hasn’t written the changes you have made to the disk. Normally this only occurs when you open/close windows, but it can also occur when renaming the disk or files on the disk IF THE EDIT FIELD IS STILL ACTIVE. In other words, click off the item you are re-naming for the disk to “remember” the change. Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a way around this problem (other than using really nasty hacks which would probably break under future systems).
• Sometimes, when you invoke EjectDisk (either the extension or the FKEY), the computer will beep and do nothing. This can mean one of three things: you have a program that is currently running from a floppy disk, a program currently running is accessing something on a floppy disk, or the frontmost process(application) is a DA. The first two cases can be solved by simply quit the offending program(s). The last case occurs due to a documented bug in System 7, which basically means that if EjectDisk did what it normally does when a DA is at the front, the computer would crash. If you really have to eject the disk, simply switch to another application and everything should work fine.
Disclaimer
THIS PROGRAM AND THE ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION ARE PROVIDED “AS IS”. WHILE EVERY EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO TEST THIS SOFTWARE TO ENSURE IT PERFORMS AS EXPECTED, NEITHER THE AUTHOR (JASON ANDERSON) OR BEYOND MIDNIGHT SOFTWARE CAN BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR INDIRECT DAMAGES THROUGH THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
Notes
Much of the code of the extension came from the source code supplied with Extension Shell, written by Dair Grant. EjectDisk was originally written using Extension Shell, but I had some problems, so I decided to code everything myself. While frustrating at times, doing it myself was very educational. I strongly recommend that you have a look at Extension Shell if you are at all interested in writing your own extensions.
The code used to show the icon at startup is called ShowIcon7 (available at most sumex and umich mirrors), and was written by James W. Walker.
Roundup
Well, that's all there is to say about EjectDisk. It has proven itself to be useful to me, and hopefully other people will think so too. Any comments, suggestions or (dare I say it) bug reports, should be sent to:
Normal Mail:
Beyond Midnight Software
PO Box 471
Devonport TAS 7310
Australia
e-mail (Internet):
jason_ga@postoffice.sandybay.utas.edu.au
Finally, EjectDisk is distributed as freeware, so feel free to use it as much and as long as you like (and pass it around to all your friends).
EjectDisk was written using THINK C 5.0.4.
Version History
• v1.0.3 (November ‘94)
- Documentation update (mention bug found in EjectDisk).
• v1.0.2 (August ‘94)
- EjectDisk used to crash if it was used when a DA was the frontmost process (apparently due to a documented bug in System 7). EjectDisk now checks to see if a DA is at the front, and simply beeps and does nothing if there is.
• v1.0.1 (August ‘94)
- Fixed a bug in the extension that caused incompatibilities with some extensions that loaded before EjectDisk (Apollo was one - thanks to Jean-Luc Haibette for finding this bug). Also fixed a bug with which any function key, not just F15, would cause EjectDisk to activate.
