Harken back to the days when the mac was young. The system was small; applications were even smaller. Floppy disks were enourmous. It was a common practice to put a system folder and an application together on a disk, set so the application would run on startup. Then one could pick out the disk holding one's first task for the day, slip it in the drive, turn on the computer, and launch straight into the program. A handful of disks provided variety: one chose work or play by choosing a disk.
Alas, these days have passed. The latest system will hardly fit on a floppy, let alone leave room for any tools or toys. And even if they did, we would be loathe to part with the speed of our hard drives.
Now, with Run & Stumpy, we can have the best of both worlds. Slip a floppy with only a slim “Startup Items” folder into the drive, power on, and let your hard drive boot -- in addition to your usual system, the items from the floppy are opened.
Run is a program to put in the Startup Items folder of your hard drive. When you boot, it searches all volumes for Startup Items folders at the root level, and opens the files within.
Stumpy is to be applied to floppy drives. It installs stump boot blocks which keep the disk from being ejected before the hard drive boots. It also makes a Startup Items folder, and installs cute icons.
The interface to Stumpy is still quite crude -- it's not finished yet. It does its magic to a disk named "Startup". You can rename the disk later -- but don't change the name of the Startup Items folder. The boot block hack is skanky: it probably won't work on some machines.
Many thanks to the people at MacHack 92 and BMUG for their assistance.
Run and Stumpy may be freely distributed. Send your comments to
