Backround:
I have an iMac machine with an external USB Floppy Disk Drive.  When a
diskette is entered, Mac OS 9.1 reads the disk and Virux scans the
floppy.  Soon enough, the diskette now appears on the desktop.

Problem:  Whenever I accedently press the hardware eject button on the
floppy drive, not only the application crashes, but also the operating
system.

Question:  I always wondered why that is the case on mac computers as
opposed to PCs.  Is it simply how the mac OS handles its open file
handles?  is there any way to prevent crashing the mac computer
whenever someone ejects the diskette?

Mac OS is not really geared to ejecting floppies via a mechanical
button. Call it quirky, but the OS has just relied on dragging the
floppy to the trash. The mechanical button is presumably for PC USB
enabled machines?
regards
lot-ga

That's right... the USB floppy drive was presumbly for PCs.  I just
have a bunch of these things and students... well, manually eject the
disk and crach macs in my lab.. lol... =P  Short of telling students,
"close the disk by dragging it to the trash", I just wondered if
there's any HW or SW soultions for that. ^,^

I think your best bet is a hardware solution. They did this with some
extra USB floppies we had at school. Open the drive and remove the
connection pin between the eject button and the eject mechanism. This
allows you to push the button in, without anything happening. Then,
place a piece of tape over the button to further discourage people
from using the button. Since these devices were not made for a classic
Mac OS, what happens is what i call an illegal hot unmount. This would
be like opening your machine while it was running and disconnecting
the IDE cable from the hard drive. Mac OS (classic) doesn't realize
that it is actually a floppy since it's not a native device, all it
sees is that there is a new volume and that it should be mounted. If
it is improperly unmounted then it freaks out. I have this same
situation at home with a USB floppy drive, but ejecting it manually
under 10.2 Jaguar doesn't result in anything that makes the machine
crash.