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floppy drive protection thingy...

I have one, as my Mac Plus came with the little cardboard box with all the documentation and bits inside :) Which models of Mac did it come with, do you know? You don't tend to see them that often; I guess a lot of people just threw them away.

 
I got mine together with my classic. I dunno if it came originally with it, but I think so cause the seller of the classic said that he doesn´t know anything about macs and never had one before... so I suppose it´s original.

 
It stops the read / write heads in the drive from banging together in transit. It is a good idea to use one of these if you are moving a Mac, but if you don't have one then an old floppy disk (ie. one you don't want) will suffice.

 
^^ Agreed, I usually tell people shipping them on eBay to put an old disk in the drive. It almost always winds up being a disk that won't format.

 
What about an old head cleaning disk? Or would that have accumulated too much junk during it's life and potentially cause damage?

 
That would be fine too. It's soft, which is the main property you care about. At worst, the heads could get dirty (which is also potentially the case if you use a floppy). Easy to clean if that does happen.

 
I have one... don't know where it came from, but it is the same hideous colour.
whats wrong with yellow??
It's just not a very nice yellow... maybe if it had a bit more orange to it, or was more of an ochre I wouldn't mind it.

 
It's just not a very nice yellow... maybe if it had a bit more orange to it, or was more of an ochre I wouldn't mind it.
You are intended to be offended by the colour. Had it been a pleasant beige that blended in with the Mac, purchasers may have confused it with something useful. Twenty odd years ago, purchasers of computers of all types were even less knowledgeable than today.

 
I have (or at least had) one of those things. But I think mine came from IBM. I was always a bit dubious about its value. The read/write heads on floppies (particularly the ones Apple used) are separated by quite a distance and it would take quite a bit of force to flex them that far. So it probably could not do much in that respect. Sticking one of those into a drive would pretty much mean the read/write heads would be vibrating against a surface, even under minor jostling.

 
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