Can't believe these old floppies still work

[Ganky Ghost]

I'm trying to get my Atari 800XL to work with the TV Tuner card in my PC. I get a picture on channel 3, but it's really not very clear and is not a suitable option by any means. I may have to look into building an s-video cable for the 800XL and bypass the tuner on the card. I'll see.

 

Anyway, while testing a bunch of stuff, I pulled out a random 5.25" floppy disk from my rather large collection of Atari software. This particular disk was a backup copy of Bellcom Theme Disk #351 -- Terix. I popped it into my 1050 disk drive (one that works) and powered up the old XL. It booted. I was greeted with the familiar but long forgotten Bellcom boot menu where I pressed the select key a couple times to boot tetrix.obj. It worked!

 

These old 5.25" floppy disks have sat collecting dust for at least the last ten years (Not to mention that I received them as a Christmas gift about ten years prior to packing them away for ten years) and they still work.

 

Edited December 9, 2008 by Ganky

[nathanallan]

Floppies can sure surprise. I have a lot that refuse to read and then I have a few others that refuse to die.

[Albert]

I can tell you one thing--I recently tested a whole bunch of original Atari ST software (on 3.5" disks) and only about half of them still worked. I have a ton of old 8-bit disk software, and I bet they've fared much better..

 

..Al

[MEtalGuy66]

I can tell you one thing--I recently tested a whole bunch of original Atari ST software (on 3.5" disks) and only about half of them still worked. I have a ton of old 8-bit disk software, and I bet they've fared much better..

 

..Al

 

Yeah I have to agreee with you on that, albert. 99% of my Atari 8-bit, C=64, and Apple II (5.25") floppies are still good from the 80s.. And I have noticed a LARGE percentage of my 3.5" Amiga floppies have developed bad sectors. Another thing Ive noticed is that the earlier 3.5" floppies are alot more reliable than the newer ones. Somewhere in the mid-late 90s, the quality of floppy media REALLY went to crap.. On a brand new 3.5" PC drive mech, I can get 10-20 "re-uses" out of a standard pre-95 made 3.5" HD floppy... I cant get 3 "re-uses" without corruption/data loss on a "modern" 3.5" HD floppy disk.. I did all this testing a few years back when I started to notice how unreliable these disks were when "re-used" with Sony Mavica digital cameras up at work... I determined that the drives are just as good as they have ever been (from the standpoint of reliability) but that the modern media is crap by comparisson to the old stuff. I have searched the web for others who have noticed/researched this problem, and unfortunately found nothing...

[supercat]

I have searched the web for others who have noticed/researched this problem, and unfortunately found nothing...

 

Has anyone analyzed the failure modes, and whether a suitably-designed reader might be able to recover 'difficult' disks?

[+remowilliams]

I have searched the web for others who have noticed/researched this problem, and unfortunately found nothing...

Definitely seen the same thing. As track/data densities increased over time floppies became more and more unreliable. Tons of 90K A8 disks still read properly, less so with the DSDD Amiga/ST floppies (but still fairly good), and with the move to HD 3.5" floppies and the sharp decline in the quality of new HD floppy mechs (and media) over time we're left with 1.44MB disks that go bad if you look at them funny.

[Albert]

Yeah I have to agreee with you on that, albert. 99% of my Atari 8-bit, C=64, and Apple II (5.25") floppies are still good from the 80s.. And I have noticed a LARGE percentage of my 3.5" Amiga floppies have developed bad sectors. Another thing Ive noticed is that the earlier 3.5" floppies are alot more reliable than the newer ones. Somewhere in the mid-late 90s, the quality of floppy media REALLY went to crap.. On a brand new 3.5" PC drive mech, I can get 10-20 "re-uses" out of a standard pre-95 made 3.5" HD floppy... I cant get 3 "re-uses" without corruption/data loss on a "modern" 3.5" HD floppy disk.. I did all this testing a few years back when I started to notice how unreliable these disks were when "re-used" with Sony Mavica digital cameras up at work... I determined that the drives are just as good as they have ever been (from the standpoint of reliability) but that the modern media is crap by comparisson to the old stuff. I have searched the web for others who have noticed/researched this problem, and unfortunately found nothing...

Yeah, something definitely happened with the quality of 3.5" disks at some point. There was a noticeable drop in reliability. Hell, I had brand new disks out of the box not work, something I never experienced in earlier days of 3.5" disks. I've heard this from other people as well.

 

..Al

[ijor]

I have searched the web for others who have noticed/researched this problem, and unfortunately found nothing...

 

Has anyone analyzed the failure modes, and whether a suitably-designed reader might be able to recover 'difficult' disks?

 

There are very different types of "failures".

 

One is the behaviour in newer HD disks, that at some point you can't format them anymore. I'm not sure what is exactly the reason here. This issue wasn't too interested for me and then I never researched it. I suspect/guess that it's a bleeding issue, where portions of the surface was recorded with too much magnetic strength, and then it cannot be erased anymore (not by normal means, at least). Usually there isn't too much interest in recovery here, because the problem is that you cannot reformat it.

 

A second one is common in ST/Amiga/MAC home made disks (not original disks). The most common problem is known as "bitrot". It happens when the flux transitions on the surface move from the original peak. It is sometimes possible to recover the data, but it is hard.

 

Original disks usually have a different problem. They were normally recorded with much better equipment, and on high quality disks. The most common problem is not exactly bitrot, but that the signal is becoming weaker. In many cases it is possible to fully recover the data, I did it countless of times.

 

Lastly, there is an issue present both in old original or home made disks. Sometimes the disk surface lose most of its lubrication. The disk then rotate too slowly, or at variable speed, and in extreme cases it doesn't rotate at all. This is usually easy to recover.

 

The last issue can also happen on 5.25 disks. It is rather uncommon, but when it happens, it's so bad that the friction of the drive's head damages the disk surface. Believe it or not, this is quite common in the best Synapse titles.

[Rybags]

I've also found that the jackets can deform or the tissue paper put too much pressure on the media.

 

The fix there is to just pull the disk out and put in another jacket, then copy to another one.

[+remowilliams]

The last issue can also happen on 5.25 disks. It is rather uncommon, but when it happens, it's so bad that the friction of the drive's head damages the disk surface. Believe it or not, this is quite common in the best Synapse titles.

I've seen that myself. I've got an original Blue Max disk that the magnetic coating has literally been stripped off the media. It's clearly visible when examining the disk.

 

The fix there is to just pull the disk out and put in another jacket, then copy to another one.

I've done that several times with great success. Including disks that were dumped in water, had soda spilled on them (and actually washed the media afterwards!) etc.

[+Allan]

I can tell you one thing--I recently tested a whole bunch of original Atari ST software (on 3.5" disks) and only about half of them still worked. I have a ton of old 8-bit disk software, and I bet they've fared much better..

 

..Al

Yea, I had the same experience. Most of the failed ST discs were original commercial games.

 

Allan

[FastRobPlus]

To this day I wonder what happens when you try and take advantage of the "unconditional lifetime guarantee" that these disk manufacturers gave out back in the early 1980s. Do you think anybody ever tries anymore?

[Albert]

To this day I wonder what happens when you try and take advantage of the "unconditional lifetime guarantee" that these disk manufacturers gave out back in the early 1980s. Do you think anybody ever tries anymore?

How many of them are still in business? I know 3M is..

 

..Al

[FastRobPlus]

To this day I wonder what happens when you try and take advantage of the "unconditional lifetime guarantee" that these disk manufacturers gave out back in the early 1980s. Do you think anybody ever tries anymore?

How many of them are still in business? I know 3M is..

 

..Al

 

My wife loves those lotto-style scratch ticket games. I think it's a waste of good money, but she buys them seldom and won $2000 last year! So I really can't complain too loudly.

 

Anyway, in a huge boxed ebay lot I got a sealed box of Memorex disks with a $10,000 grand prize Memorex scratch-and-win game tickt inside. I gave her the ticket as a joke but in hindsight, since the ticket expired in 1984 if she had won I think she'd have been pretty pissed off at me.

[S1500]

1986: My first box of floppy disks was bought. It was made by a company called Bonus. ALL of them failed. I played with some 3.5 inch disks from less than 10 years ago, and many of them just simply didn't work at all.

[Ganky Ghost]

1986: My first box of floppy disks was bought. It was made by a company called Bonus. ALL of them failed. I played with some 3.5 inch disks from less than 10 years ago, and many of them just simply didn't work at all.

 

Were those the disks with the blue and white labels that covered the entire top portion of the floppy disk? The ones where you had to stick your disk label over top the brand label? Were those the disks where the sleeve was made of thick paper, almost cardboard, and every inch of the sleeve was printed with brand information?

 

I don't remember what brand my first box of 5.25" disks was. I remember very rarely buying generic 5.25" disks. I didn't climb onto the no-name brand diskette train until I started buying 3.5" disks. I remember my first box of 3.5" diskettes being BASF brand. They were purchased from a Zellers department store and were in a white box with with a grey band that contained the company name, a multicoled logo in the center of the box, and were shrinkwrapped so bloody well that I remember cursing myself for having clipped my fingernails the day before.

 

I know one year the company my father worked for offered disks and stuff to their employees at a discount price for the Christmas season. That year I got six or so boxes of 5.25" disks in my Christmas stocking. As a matter of fact, the BASF diskette that I scanned and posted in the original post is one of those disks.

 

In the mid nineties, when I rediscovered the old Atari 8-bit computers again, I was buying my floppy disks from the only store in this town that still had them stocked. Canadian Tire had a shelf full of GoldStar floppy disks that were either in clear plastic cases or white paper boxes. I must have bought at least six boxes of the plastic cased ones (because that's how many of the plastic cases I have laying around with floppies still in them) and ten or so of the ones in the paper boxes. I must have at least twenty or so of these disks that are still blank and factory formatted for MS-DOS machines. lol. They all contained eleven disks, I believe. The eleventh disk contained free anti-virus software for MS-DOS. lol.

 

Enough floppy disk notalgia for one day.

[LYNXGUY]

I have tons of floppies that I had from the very early 80's that still work like new

[sup8pdct]

I'm trying to get my Atari 800XL to work with the TV Tuner card in my PC. I get a picture on channel 3, but it's really not very clear and is not a suitable option by any means. I may have to look into building an s-video cable for the 800XL and bypass the tuner on the card. I'll see.

 

Anyway, while testing a bunch of stuff, I pulled out a random 5.25" floppy disk from my rather large collection of Atari software. This particular disk was a backup copy of Bellcom Theme Disk #351 -- Terix. I popped it into my 1050 disk drive (one that works) and powered up the old XL. It booted. I was greeted with the familiar but long forgotten Bellcom boot menu where I pressed the select key a couple times to boot tetrix.obj. It worked!

 

These old 5.25" floppy disks have sat collecting dust for at least the last ten years (Not to mention that I received them as a Christmas gift about ten years prior to packing them away for ten years) and they still work.

 

 

I still have heaps of floppies i havent used yet and lots that I have. they all are out in the shed that gets very hot and some times has very high humidity due to to water.

ie treated very badly.

The only ones I have real trouble with are Le Floppy. the magnetic coating comes right off leaving the depries on the head of the drive and a clear line on floppy it self.

About 12 years ago, I copied all floppies to atr images except the copy protected ones. Some took several goes in 3 different drives before I got the whole lot.

I broke out some brand new gestetner (nashua?) disks and they formated perfictaly and they would be 18 years old.

 

James

[FastRobPlus]

Check out this thread regarding floppy longevity.

[Christophero Sly]

I've had the same experiences with 5.25" disks as everyone else. I only recall 2 bad disks in ~25 years.

 

In ~10 years of 3.5" disk use, I had numerous disks fail on me. I never had any confidence in 3.5" disks.

[+remowilliams]

No old floppy thread is complete without this of course.

[Albert]

No old floppy thread is complete without this of course.

The IntErNeT. All I can say is.. Wow.

 

..Al

[FastRobPlus]

No old floppy thread is complete without this of course.

 

What? No archive of write-protect stickers?

[Christophero Sly]

No old floppy thread is complete without this of course.

I'd never seen that site. I was actually going to start something similar on my blog. Utterly pointless now.

[Ganky Ghost]

No old floppy thread is complete without this of course.

 

lol. I've got a couple that they don't have. I didn't see any pink Sony sleeves in there. lol.