[Coco] Are 5 1/4" floppies still made???

[Francis Swygert]

Athana has a $100 minimum order, but you can find 10 packs of 5.25" floppies on e-bay (new Athana brand) for $10+ depending on amount. One thing I noticed though, all listings say "new old stock" and appear to be older manufacture. The only one with a date has 1993 on it. Might be a good idea to see how many you can get from Athana for $100 and make a group buy. No prices listed on the Athana site (http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html), just part numbers and a phone number to call in an order. There is an e-mail address for inquiries though. I suspect the disks are around $1.00 each, but haven't inquired. That's the average price on e-bay, but as I mentioned, those are all NOS disks... new might be higher, but should be worth it if not more than $2 each. 

The bigger problem is finding 5.25" 360K drives to use the media!  Some 1.2M drives will work, but you're stuck with using that same drive to read and write. Most 360K drives will read disks written on a 1.2M, but DO NOT write to it with a 360K drive once formatted on a 1.2M (at 360K capacity). A 1.2M drive should read a 360K disk also, but again, DO NOT write to it... The 1.2M has a narrower head and double steps, so the track is written differently. Writing with a 360K drive screws up the formatting, neither drive may be able to read a floppy that was formatted with one and written to with the other. Unless the disk is formatted with the drive you're writing with -- I mean partial writes.I found a source for new manufacture 1.2M drives (http://www.floppydisk.com/5point25) and 360K floppies ($50 for 50), but only a couple Amazon sources for 360K drives -- and they reported only one or two left.  Frank Swygert
 Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
 803-604-6548