[Coco] Read Coco floppies in my PC

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

Due to the lack of affordable bulk tape erasers,

can any household device with an ac electric motor be used? Perhaps a vacuum 
cleaner.

I remember some magnetic media being erased by a floor buffer used too close 
to the almost at floor level shelf.

That took a huge amount of time to find the cause.

SHF

P.S. I am NOT selling my bulk eraser, it is in use ever so often on 3.5" 
floppies if I am changing from PC to CoCo. If in doubt, use one.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "gene heskett" <gheskett at wdtv.com>
To: <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 9:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Read Coco floppies in my PC


> On Saturday, March 31, 2012 12:00:20 PM Michael Graham did opine:
>
>> Well, if you'd like, I guess you could try the bulk erase method listed
>> in that link.  I found a copy of the BULKERAS.EXE that it mentions here:
>> http://retro.icequake.net/dob/files/cp2pc/bin/cp2pc600/
>
> No program can duplicate a true bulk eraser.  It will be a waste of your
> time, and if they charge for the program, money.  The drive can only erase
> where its heads travel, and I have yet to see a micro-stepping driver in a
> floppy drive that would allow the intertrack spaces to be erased.
>
> True erasure means the disk is being subjected to a strong magnetic field,
> generated by the powerline frequency, strong enough to flip the magnetic
> signals fully one way or the other.  The disk needs to be moved slowly 
> over
> the working face of the eraser and removed slowly such that as the
> alternating magnetic field fades with increasing distance, so the magnetic
> coating on the disk is essentially left in a neutral, no net magnetism one
> way or the other remaining state.  The shack once sold a handheld rig that
> was strong enough for disks but not anything thicker than a 1/8" cassette,
> but I haven't seen one of those on the pegboard for close to 20 years.
> That leaves Guardiner who supply a belt driven carrier model strong enough
> to wipe a  2" quadruplex video tape.  But it will need a 240 volt circuit
> rated for a 20kw load and you will need several thousand to buy it with.
>
> Much much cheaper to find an old 360k drive.  Hopefully with good heads
> yet, some of mine are dying from worn heads.  My fav drive, a Teac 55 360k
> gave up the ghost about a year ago from worn out heads.  I expect they had
> the equ of 3 million miles on them though.  It had been my /D0 for nearly
> 26 years.
>
>> I might have to try it myself next time I go back home to my old
>> desktop, I hadn't run across that method the first time I was searching.
>>
>> On 3/31/2012 9:08 AM, Bill wrote:
>> > So basically, regardless of the OS, I still ain't gonna get any good
>> > results 'till I find me a 360.
>
> That is in this case, the least headache method, by a very large margin.
>
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com
>> > [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Aaron Wolfe
>> > Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 12:31 AM
>> > To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> > Subject: Re: [Coco] Read Coco floppies in my PC
>> >
>> > http://www.oldskool.org/guides/oldonnew/hardware/1.2mb_to_360k.html
>> > "Everybody knows that trying to write to a 360K disk in a 1.2MB drive
>> > usually works fine for the 1.2 MB drive, but then renders the disk
>> > mostly unusable for the 360K drive. "
>> >
>> >
>> > --
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>> > http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>> --
>> Coco mailing list
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>
>
> Cheers, Gene