[Coco] Second Floppy

[Steve Ostrom]

I do a lot of archiving with my Coco, storing software to a Cloud 9 hard 
drive system.  You can only get rid of floppy drives if the software you 
want is in digital format on-line, and accessible with a PC.  I have 
literally thousands of Coco diskettes.  In most cases they are duplicates of 
what I already have in my collection, but every so often I'll run into a 
diskette that has some really unique software.  Many times they are 
original, poorly advertised programs from the early 80's, which will never 
be found in on-line data bases.  For this activity, floppy drives are still 
mandatory.

I'll be retiring from my job of 44 years in January, and I'll have much more 
time to devote to my Coco collection and archiving project.  It's a time I'm 
greatly looking forward to.  Not because of my job, which has been a blast 
since day one, but because I'll finally get some quality Coco time.  Yeah, 
my wife just shakes her head, but the Coco is one of my most anticipated 
activities in 2013.

-- Steve --


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chad H" <chadbh74 at hotmail.com>
To: "'CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts'" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Second Floppy


> True, if same drives and disks are used on a routine basis.  I guess I'm
> just a die-hard purist. My 502 enclosure has 2 360k drives in good working
> order, and I have an additional enclosure that's the same for a spare.  I
> also have several bare drives boxed up for spares.  I was trying to stick
> with real floppies for as long as possible..it just doesn't feel the same 
> to
> me linking over a cable to a PC for storage...feel like I'm operating some
> sort of 'phantom' terminal..not coco'ish (a word?)  I also have many
> unopened & sealed boxes of 360k disks stored up.
>
> I do feel where your coming from though.  I have run into the same thing
> with my cassette operations.  I don't know if its my CCR-81, or if it's 
> the
> tapes, but more and more often I'm getting load errors.  I've been using 
> my
> digital MD recorder instead of the tape drive itself recently, so I guess
> that's sorta cheating.  I see e-bay still has new unopened cassettes 
> though,
> might try to get some and see how they behave, but now I've gotten sorta
> used to not having to FF/Rewind tapes lol.  Oh well, c'est la vie.
>
> - Chad
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] 
> On
> Behalf Of Frank Pittel
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 11:47 AM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Second Floppy
>
> The current pricing isn't the only problem. The availability and age of 
> both
> the drives and disks are the real issue. Besides drivewire is free and I
> have a better chance of reading the images from my computer via drivewire 
> in
> 4-5 years then a floppy!
>
> The Other Frank
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 11:07:51AM -0500, Chad H wrote:
>> Interesting how that works... I remember my dad paying a couple
>> hundred bucks for a FD-501 unit back in the day from Radio
>> Shack....over the years the prices on drives went down...way
>> down...now that they've become rare and are still in demand, the
>> prices come back up slightly, but still can get them cheaper than you
> could back in the 80's.  And this is bad?
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com
>> [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Frank Pittel
>> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 11:28 AM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Second Floppy
>>
>> Everytime I see where the price of drives are going I redouble my
>> efforts to moving from floppies to drivewire!!
>>
>> The Other Frank
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 11:15:03AM -0400, Frank Swygert wrote:
>> > Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:34:58 -0400
>> > From: Louis Ciotti<lciotti1 at gmail.com>
>> >
>> > I would like to add a second floppy to my FD-501 case.  Any
>> > reasonable priced sources?
>> >
>> > ----------------------------------
>> >
>> > And I thought the days of $100+ 5.25" 360K floppy drives were over!
>> > The
>> average price I found searching around were in the $55-$75 range, with
>> several as high as $235 for refurbished high end drives.
>> >
>> > I did find some on e-bay under $50, and California Digital is still
>> advertising beige Misubishi drives for $39 and Tandon 180K (single
>> sided like the original CoCo drives) for only $9. Go to
>> http://www.cadigital.com/flopdriv.htm and scroll down near the bottom
>> of the page. Those are the guys with the $45 Dragon 64 computers -- 
>> they still advertise them!
>> >
>> > --
>> > Frank Swygert
>> > Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine www.amc-mag.com
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Coco mailing list
>> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> > http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>> --
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