[Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

[Joel Ewy]

On 04/21/2013 06:11 PM, Aldo Lagana wrote:
> 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?

I recently dug out some old floppies for the purpose of backing them up 
to Drivewire image files.  One of them had sectors that wouldn't read.  
I used a cotton swab and some water to gently clean the entire surface 
of the disk through the cutout for the head in the sleeve, one slice at 
a time, rotating the disk by hand.  And I was able to get it to read and 
got it backed up.  That also meant less wear on my disk head (though I 
had first stuck it in the drive just to see if it would work.)  I 
suppose I could have ruined the disk. But it was already as good as 
shot, so I thought it was worth a try.

JCE

> 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?
>
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