[cctalk] Re: Cambridge University Library

They have a project of rcovering data from floppies, that was written up by BBC https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251009-rescuing-knowledge-trapped-on-o… The article is a pleasant read, but has technical inaccuracies. For example, they say that a 3 inch drive (as compared to 3.5" drive) has "a different voltage system". (+5V and +12V doesn't seem to be a "different voltage system")) They "had to source a specific disk drive made by Amstrad, build new connectors and jerry-rig a power cable to access the disks." The most common 3" drive in USA is the one that was marketed by Amdek. They used to have ads for two drive systems for Apple and Coco. The bare drives of those have the exact same power and data cabling as 5.25" drive. (34 pin card edge, and a power plug that we [erroneously?] refer to as Amphenol) Or, maybe they just mean that they have drives with power supplies that expect 110VAC 60Hz? I hope that they realize that 3" drives were available both as double sided and as "flippy", and that neither of those can access the secnd side of the other. (Some minor machining to let the Double sided also flip, would let the DS do both) "I bought my eight-inch drive off eBay," says Chris Knowles, a participant in the Future Nostalgia project. "It was a miracle that it worked." They mention mould, "delicately teasing mould off the flimsy surface of the magnetic disks to avoid scratching them", but not loss of coating on the cookie, nor about baking. No mention of need to clean heads more than usual. They talk about need to find people with knowledge of the systems, to be able to make sense of them, but no mention of commercial disk format conversion software, such as 22Disk (We miss you, Chuck), XenoCopy, Uniform, etc. No mention of flux transition systems to get raw track images when they don't know the disk format. Although, to be fair, a lot of those problems are file structure (every word processing program had its own unique file structure), after the file itself has been accessed. They say, while on the topic of PC and Mac disks that it is very hard to date the materials. "It's quite difficult to date floppy disks as people used systems for quite a while," Did they not notice the "DATE" field in the file primary directory entry? No mention of data recovery from corrupted or damaged disks. On 9 October 2025, she hosted a floppy disk workshop at Cambridge University Library where members of the public could bring old disks they had at home to see what contents are locked inside. https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/research-institute/events/floppy-disks-workshop They explicitly reject "ZIP disks, JAZ drives, SuperDisks, or other non-floppy portable media" -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com