Re: Any way to salvage disks that can't write?

[David Schmenk <dschmenk@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, 12 March 2013 08:59:42 UTC-7, Egan Ford  wrote:
> On 3/12/13 8:32 AM, BLuRry wrote:
> 
> > This is a silly question
> 
>  > ...
> 
> > But I am curious just for posterity's sake if anyone has ever made unusable disks usable again (even for just temporary purposes)
> 
> 
> 
> A silly answer.
> 
> 
> 
> A few day back I was reading a PDF paper in a Chrome browser tab.  I got 
> 
> interrupted, so I decided to save it to disk, that, and I like to read 
> 
> them with Acrobat in 2-page mode on my rather large monitor.
> 
> 
> 
> To save the PDF I instinctively moused down to the Chrome inline PDF 
> 
> reader "floppy" icon and clicked it.  Then it occurred to me that many 
> 
> may not know what that icon is or means.
> 
> 
> 
> I took a screen shot of the icon and sent it to my 22-year-old daughter 
> 
> and I asked her to ask her friends and NYU classmates what it is and 
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> what it means (I even provided the context).  Only my kid knew it was a 
> 
> floppy, none of the others did, and none including my kid had any idea 
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> what clicking on it would do.
> 
> 
> 
> So, take your floppies on the road and educate the masses.  Perhaps a 
> 
> lucky few will get one of your relics so that they may also pass on the 
> 
> lost knowledge that without you'll never be able to save a PDF document 
> 
> inlined in Chrome.

This is so true.  The computer lab teacher in my son's elementary  school relayed almost the exact same story to me.  MS Word still uses the floppy icon for saving documents, but none of the kids have ever seen a floppy (except mine).  So she keeps a IIgs on her desk to show the kids what a floppy disk is and what it used to be used for.

Dave...