Re: Rotting 5.25 floppies

[Travise <Travise@gaia.org>]

On Mon, 4 Aug 2008 17:57:27 -0700 (PDT), bloomer_au
<bloomer@iprimus.com.au> wrote:

>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.


I recently found a box of Pascal discs in a box in the basement that
had last been used in 1981. They looked good so I inserted them, typed
PR#6 at the prompt and they worked fine.

I did nothing special for the 25+ years. They were Verbatim Datalife
brand. Not sure if that mattters.