A frightening little bit of technology

[Chuck Guzis]

On 6 Sep 2007 at 12:09, Mr Ian Primus wrote:

> I never had the problem with floppies ten years ago
> that I have now with brand new disks. I think that at
> some point, the quality of the media just went through
> the floor.

Indeed, when the price of a box of 1.44 DSHD (Fuji, IIRC) was around 
$50 and 720K DS2D diskettes were a fraction of that, it paid to punch 
the holes.  I had a hole punch at one time, but then just decided to 
stack up a pile of them in the drill press and drill the hole out 
with a brad-point bit.  Worked just fine--and I still have some of 
those "modified" diskettes that are still very readable.  Not at all 
like the "new" DSHD media that I have.

You could also do the same trick, albeit with less success to get 
DSED from DS2D.  But then DSED was never that reliable anyway...

What surprises me is the occasional 5.25" diskette that shows up for 
conversion that's written on DSHD media but formatted for 360K 2D.  
Many still are quite readable after 20 years.

Cheers,
Chuck