[Coco] Get those hard to find disks...

[Darren A]

On 12/12/08, BookWorm wrote:

>
>> I find floppy
>> disks all the time at local thrift shops (not blanks but can be formatted
> easily).
>
> So do I, but I've been having a lot of trouble with bad disks. How do I tell
> if
> it's the disks or the drives? My 3 1/2" & 5 1/4" were salvaged from
> discarded a
> Tandy 1000 and are mounted in an FD-500 (the connectors are compatable and
> it
> had to be upgraded to double sided anyway.) The cable is unshielded, and I
> don't really know how to test a drive. What if the test disk is bad?
>
> A bulk tape eraser does help this problem a lot, but it doesn't fix
> everything.
>

Are these problem disks HD or DD?  HD disks do not work well when
trying to use them for DD recording, especially if they have had any
HD data recorded on them previously. If they are virgin disks then
covering up the HD hole might improve your success rate. It's always
best to use 720K DD 3.5 inch media unless you have a controller that
has been modified for HD operation.

Darren