[Coco] Floppies and floppy drives

[Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus)]

nice way to grow even more mold :D

seriously, make a backup and throw this disk away.


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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>
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