Practical jokes: just don't Richard Speed Fri 23 Apr 2021 // 07:31 UTC Share On Call Welcome to another entry in The Register's On Call files, where we learn that the hilarious pranks of an IT joker can be enjoyed as much as millionaire actor George Clooney's "fun" leg-pulling. "Jim" returns once more to pages of On Call with a tale of poorly targeted japery and an unfunny practical joke. Is there any other sort? We skip once more to the 1980s and the mighty IBM XT, a fleet of which Jim was tasked with supporting. Data entry had been done by punch cards back in the day, but the PC now reigned supreme. Keypunchers banged in information via keyboard, as Jim explained: "Floppy disks holding the keypunch program were inserted to provide the OS, and then the other floppy in a dual system held the precious data, from which the company earned its crust."