[Coco] [Color Computer] a question to those of you with working cocos with floppy discs

[Michael Furman]

On Feb 10, 2009, at 12:26 PM, stinger30au wrote:

> how many of you have floppy discs with information that is still
> readable say of original programs from say 1991 or there abouts?


Around 2 years ago I went to all the surplus electronics stores here  
in the Silicon Valley area hunting 5.25" 360K drives.  I found a few,  
took them home, cleaned the heads and lubed the drive mechanisms.   
After doing this I ran a few test floppies from my later original coco  
using days (around 1990) until I found a HP drive that worked well.   
As soon as I did that I went and read every coco floppy I could find.   
This goes back through the 80's back to around 1983 or so.  I was able  
to create images of some of the very first floppy disks created on the  
then brand new Coco.  These disks have been in original plastic disk  
storage boxes from day one, and not always in cool dark places  
either.  I can now read and laugh at my 2nd grade report on Birds, and  
my 4th grade report on California Missions, all input using Color  
Scripsit:


All About Mission Santa Clara de Asis

     by Michael Furman
        Grade 4
        April 30, 1987
        Mrs. Lim

        C 1987 Furman Press Inc.,
        Sunnyvale, California
        No part of this report
        may be copyed in any
        way.
^@^@    Table  of  Contents

    contents              page
1. Report.................1

2. Illustrations..........5

3. Bibliograghy...........7
^@^@    My report is about Mission
Santa Clara de Asis. I will tell
you who founded it, when it was
founded, where it is, why, its
history, and why it is famous.

     It was founded on January 12, 1777
by Father Tomas de la Pena.
     Mission Santa Clara was near the
Guadalupe River. Now it is at Santa Clara
University. It is about fourty miles from
Mission Dolores in San Fransisco.

     Two missions needed to be built in the
'San Fransisco' area. Mission Dolores, the
first, founded in 1776, was ready to build
Santa Clara but couldn't because of problems
with the indians at San Luis Obispo which
caused a two month delay.

     When the delay was over on January 5,1777
some priests and soldiers left San Fransisco
to the site chosen by Juan Bautista de Anza.
the site chosen was on the bank of the
Guadalupe River. On January 12, they put up
a cross and an arbor to be a temporary church.
                                                                        
pg 1
^@^@    Six indians from Baja California
cut logs and poles for building. Father
Jose Antonio Marguia came from Monterey
with church goods and supplies.

     The missionaries had a church and
dwellings, two corrals, a bridge, a dam,
and irrigation ditches by the end of the year.
     On November 7,1777, Lt. Jose
Joaquin Morga brought nine soldiers and
five colonists and their families from
San Fransisco to start the pueblo of San Jose
just like when he brought the missionaries to
the mission. San Jose was the first town in
California.
                                                                        
pg 2
^@^@    The Santa Clara mission was rebult
four times.

     The first mission was distroyed by
a flood on January 23, 1779. Then
rebuilt on higher ground.

     The second mission had some things
in the cornerstone, put there by Father Serra
on November 19,1781, which were dug up
130 years later. The second mission
was destroyed in 'The great California quake'
of 1812 which shattered it.

     When the quake of 1818 came,
the fathers were still repairing the
second mission. They rebult the mission
for the fourth time on the present site.

     The fourth mission crumbled and two
wooden churches built in its
place. These burned to ashes.

     The fifth and present mission is a
replica of the one before it.
It still stands, in Santa Clara University.
The present mission was built in 1926.
                                                                        
pg 3^@^@
I know two reasons why Mission Santa Clara
is famous.

     One  is because Santa Clara University
formed around the mission because in 1851 the
mission was changed from Francisan to Jesuit
(a teaching order).

     The other is that San Jose and
Santa Clara grew up around the mission.
                                                                        
pg 4
^@^@          Bibliography

1. Baxter, Don J., Missions of California
          San Fransisco, Pacific Gas and Electric, 1970

2. Kerell, Dorothy, The California Missions
          Menlo Park;Ca, Lane Publishing Co., 1979
                                                                        
pg 7