Re: Rotting 5.25 floppies

[bloomer_au <bloomer@iprimus.com.au>]

Thanks for the advice guys.

To clarify one point:

"> Last night, after I played some Savage Island Part I, I put in a
> different 5.25, and it did the screwing my drive routine.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this...  Do you mean that after
running this disk, disks that previously worked stop working? "

Yes, that is what I mean :) The Scott Adams disk ran fine multiple
times, but then I put this 2nd disk in. The 2nd disk wouldn't boot and
I got 'check startup device!', and then when I went back to the Scott
Adams disk, it wouldn't boot either. That suggested to me the
mechanism of the 2nd disk introducing some crud into the drive. I had
experienced this same pattern of trouble before with several 5.25s,
one standalone and a kind of duodisk thing (unsure of brand) attached
to an Apple II clone. So the pattern has been - disks work, then after
a particular disk is put in (not the exact same one mentioned in this
example) nothing works. Then after a clean or three, maybe I get to
the point where the first disk is okay to be run again. Or maybe
nothing ever works again. And my disks have been stored very well as
far as I can tell.