[Coco] Disk Cleanup

[Bill Pierce]

Ok guys, got a good one for ya...
 Upon recieving the news that I was going to be blessed with a Coco 3 system once again, I began to wonder if any of my old disks survived the flood of Hurricane Floyd in '99. For the most part the disks had been subjected to direct water and extreme moisture during the flood. Not submerged mind you, but under a caved in roof and sitting above about 3 foot of standing water for weeks of rain.
 During the cleanup afterwards I discovered my Coco and all that went with it had been lost. I carted it all out to an old mobile home we used for storage. This trailer had also been trashed, windows gone, doors gone, roofed caved. I proceeded to throw all the coco stuff inside thinking one day this will be halled off. Needless to say, the trailer still sits out back buried amoungst the jungle that has emerged around it.
 Today I got brave and (carefully) dug through the piles of old computers, stereos, tvs and junk to find about 200 floppy disks that were buried there. Some in plastic disk cases, some in the boxes that they came in, some lying loose on the floor. There were probably 100-150 more that I didn't waste my time with. Bent, mangled, covered in mud. But.... upon inspection of the ones I retrieved, I was in shock! The most of them showed only some water damage on the extreme coners of the paper sleeves and a lot of them showed no signs of damage at all. Yet there were still a big lot of them, the ones from the floor, that the sleeves are molded and wet, but the disks are surprisingly unhurt. Even most of the labels were intact!.
Now... My question is this.. what precautions and or measures should I take before sticking these things in a drive? And what method is best to attempt to clean some of the ones that are slightly soiled and/or mildewed? What cleaning solution? And can a disk be removed from it's plastic case and put in a temporary case for a one time read? Suggestions on replacement cases are welcome for sure. These are all 5-/14 inch disks
These disks will be read only once to be archived to a hard drive and then most likely discarded. I may keep some of the most impotant ones that look really clean. Another thing, where is a good place to aquire 5-1/4 floppies and will the newer 3-1/2 floppies that can be bought in places like Best Buy, work with the old Coco 3-1/2 drives.

any help here will be GREATLY appreciated!!
Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com
P.S. I will say the Fuji disks seem to be the ones that survived best, especially all the disks that had the fiber sleeves.