[Dylan16807]

> Analysis of the floppy availed not.

It's not a very good puzzle if the only clue is "I dunno he looked at it real squinty and it didn't help."

Apparently any alternate formatting would have tripped up the friend.

[eps]

It's a good story and you are nitpicking.

[Dylan16807]

I was complaining about the framing, not the story. The story is fine as a story.

[carapace]

I didn't want to make up details. I'm asking if anyone recalls the origin ("provenance") of the original story.

IIRC, the friend did various things to the disk to try to figure out what was up.

Think how crazy this magic trick was: you can literally watch it boot a machine, but then put it in another machine and it's just garbage, that should be impossible...