[Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

[Joel Ewy]

On 04/24/2013 11:14 AM, Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus) wrote:
> nice way to grow even more mold :D
>
> seriously, make a backup and throw this disk away.

Yeah, well the point was to back up the data to a disk image.  But the 
disk was completely dry before putting it in the drive, so I don't think 
it's any worse off than it was before.

JCE

>
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Joel Ewy <jcewy at swbell.net> wrote:
>
>> 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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>
>