Weird scenario, unless you're talking about the joystick accidentally coming unplugged because someone either tripped on the cord or got a little too excited during gameplay.
Perhaps your friend is confusing a "smart" Amiga joystick port with the disk drives? Yep, Amiga's know when a 3-1/2" disk has been inserted or removed :lol:
A possibility for a smart joystick port would be if the joystick had circuitry inside that was powered by or looped the +5v line back into the computer. The software to sense that though would either be built into Kickstart or through each piece of software individually. You can see where this concept would be pretty frivoulous in practice as it's all too obvious to the user whether something is plugged in or not.
-edit-
Good one lsmart! lol
