[Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 21 April 2013 19:28:12 Aldo Lagana did opine:

> Lots of old floppies, stored in a damp basement I know, I know :-(
> 
> I notice when I read them with my best drive (an fd-502), it reads one
> fine, then gives errors and I need to clean the head to do one more ok,
> but again the head is 'dirty' after backing up just 1 floppy...groan
> 
> So I wonder is it the media itself that is gumming the drive?  Or is it
> filth and 30 years of time?
> 
> Second query is floppy drives.  I have 2 fd501 drives (TEC) and 2 more
> ye-data 508 DSDD drives, a total of 4 drives that just plain suck. 
> They all have not been able to read the same floppies which the fd502
> has consistently been able to read albeit with the issues seen above. 
> Aside from using an fd501 cabinet and controller versus an fd502
> cabinet and disto SCII controller, the floppies themselves are far more
> consistently readable on my 1 fd502 drive than those 4.  It is
> annoying, I have run rpm tests, and have cleaned and lubbed those awful
> drives with no better luck.  I am thinking to just bite the bullet and
> buy new drives, but its annoying that 4 drives are such rubbish after
> 30 years.
> 
> Any ideas from the brain trust?
 
Your damp basement is the culprit I expect.  Damp tape or disks are both 
softened by the moisture, and are many times as abrasive as cold, dry tape 
or disks.

My best experience with dependable playback and minimum head cleaning ever 
was at a TV station in Redding CA, where it was std practice to store the 
tapes in between plays, in a small vault room off the control room, kept at 
about 30 to 35 % RH, and right around 50F.  Cold, dry media is not at all 
abrasive.  Bring it up to 90%RH, and 80F or higher, and you may as well use 
the tape for a hacksaw.  You can wipe out a 1000 hour prorated head in 200 
hours with damp tape.  Or in one case at the mountain time zone delay site 
for Nebraska ETV, a 200 hour rated headwheel on a 2" machine, lost a coil 
in one of the 4 heads on the wheel.  Pulling it out to send it back for 
repairs they looked up the paper on that one and found it actually had 7700 
& change hours on it.  Spin Physics, who did those rebuilds, shook their 
heads, fixed the bad solder joint and sent it home.  When it was put back 
in, it went another 1900 hours before it was finally done.  That whole room 
with 3 such machines in it, was kept in the low 60's temp, 30% or so RH, 
and all the air went through a precipitron to remove all dust & pollen.

I have a couple 70 pint a day rated dehumidifiers in my basement, set for 
about 40-45%, they get dumped daily, and I don't have that sort of problems 
at all.

Cheers, Gene
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