[Coco] lets play canyon climber from floppy disk ( 8 inch floppy disk)

Wed Nov 6 18:18:35 EST 2019

As we alarmingly learned
<https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whos-minding-the-nuclear-weapons/> in 2014,
the US military has been using 8-inch floppy disks in an antiquated '70s
computer to receive nuclear launch orders from the President. Now, the US
strategic command has announced that it has replaced the drives with a
"highly-secure solid state digital storage solution," Lt. Col. Jason Rossi
told *c4isrnet.com
<https://www.c4isrnet.com/air/2019/10/17/the-us-nuclear-forces-dr-strangelove-era-messaging-system-finally-got-rid-of-its-floppy-disks/>*
.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/18/us-military-nuclear-missiles-floppy-disks/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I suppose we can rest a bit easier now that they are no longer using these
floppies in the missile silos!  Wonder if they replaced them on account of
the rosette problems Gene mentioned.

Art

On Wed, Nov 6, 2019 at 2:21 PM Gene Heskett <gheskett at shentel.net> wrote:

> On Wednesday 06 November 2019 10:06:20 Salvador Garcia via Coco wrote:
>
> >  Hello, I shared your video and it garnered some interest. One guy is
> > asking about the 8" drives. What type/brand/model are they? Thanks!
> > Salvador
> >
> Most of those that I have seen, showing up as surplus, and useable in our
> character generator at the tv station would have worked, but watch the
> special bits in the descriptor, you may be double stepping them, which
> would cut their capacity in half.  Some experimentation may be in order
> IOW.  The surplus models were all narrow track, but the controller in
> the CG was hard coded for the wider tracks. Theoretically, we had lots
> of unused space between the tracks.
>
> These drives are famous for collapsed rosettes, do not leave them closed
> when not in use.
>
> If the nylon disk that centers the disk as the clamp lever is left
> closed, the rosette petals collapse inward with old age, making it easy
> to clamp the disk half a track off center, and that reduces the clamping
> pressure allowing the disk to slow or even stop if the envelopes
> lubrication is drying out.  I even made a jig I could put the rosette in
> and push it back the other way for a week or so.  That worked for 6
> months or so, but wasn't the ideal fix. What is called cold flow is a
> bitch to predict.
>
> We had for a long time, at least 15 years, an IBM System 360 that had 8"
> drives, but as long as the slider rods were oiled 2x annually, never
> gave me a spec of trouble.  I used to gig the GM that my office coco3
> had more memory, and many times the non-volatile storage that the
> stations traffic computer, which since it processed and sent the
> billing, kept the cash cow fed.  He was basically a salesman, so I think
> he was hearing swahili. He did get upset when he found I had the
> authority to shut down a contest idea he had as it was just another
> payola scheme, with a $27,500 dollar a day fine from the federal candy
> company.
> >
> >     On Tuesday, November 5, 2019, 09:25:07 AM CST, rietveld rietveld
> > <rietveldh at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  That is exactly what I am doing.  The HDS controller is running
> > C-DOS.    It's treating the 8 inch as a 5 1/4.    But not able to
> > fully format it to a full 158k.  So I can put files on it but I can't
> > do a full disk.    There is just enough slop in the controllers
> > parameters that the coco can read and write to the 8inch.
> >
> > Sent from my BlackBerry
> >   Original Message
> > From: Michael Kline via Coco
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 10:19 AM
> > To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> > Reply To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> > Cc: Michael Kline
> > Subject: Re: [Coco] lets play canyon climber from floppy disk ( 8 inch
> > floppy disk)
> >
> >
> > If the 8" floppy is formatted as a 158K disk, then I don't think it
> > matters to DECB. True???
> >
> >
> > Michael
> >
> > On 05/11/2019 08:45, Sean wrote:
> > > How is the 8" floppy drive talking to the CoCo?  I thought those
> > > drives were way different than a 5 1/4" and not compatible?  I think
> > > I can see you have some sort of device in between the disk
> > > controller and drive.
> > >
> > > Very cool though!
> > >
> > > On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 7:55 PM rietveld rietveld
> > > <rietveldh at hotmail.com>
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn1ldeK6d94
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> --
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> >
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>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> --
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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>  - Louis D. Brandeis
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