On Wednesday 30 July 2008 03:07:44 pm Jeremy wrote: > Somewhere in storage I have a couple boxes of 8" floppies. This includes a > compiler :) > > No, I don't have the correspondng machine :( > > Jeremy > > On Wednesday 30 July 2008 8:56:49 am J Cruit wrote: > > You know I just found a box of good old five and a quarters (remember > > the old whole punch read/write trick?) and if someone does have access > > to a drive perhaps I could borrow it to try to transfer data? Or > > maybe at the next meeting we could work up a transfer station :) > > > > --j > > > > On 7/30/08, Smith, Craig A <Craig.A.Smith at honeywell.com> wrote: > > > >I wasn't the original poster on this one, but... > > > >I'm surprised to hear that these disks are expected to fail at this > > > > point. I guess it has been 20 years since I looked at some of my old > > > > disks but I was thinking I could copy some of the files off of them, > > > > copy them to my HDD and toss the disks in the trash > > > > > > I believe storage is the key. The magnetic domains should be good to > > > the Curie point (768°C for iron) but hot, humid conditions affects the > > > support medium, turning it into a gooey mess. I recall a spot on NPR > > > about a steam pipe breaking at the Smithsonian and the resulting loss > > > of irreplaceable jazz recordings. I have cassette tapes that are over > > > 20 years old and still play. Of course analog recordings may degrade > > > more gracefully than digital. > > > > > > If the original poster can find a 5.25" floppy drive, I would be > > > interested to know if the data transfer is successful. Unfortunately digital recordings don't tolerate degradation at all. A single bit error is enough to make a binary file unusable....whereas you can lose a vast amount of analog information and still make out what song you're listening to. Case in point, 20 years ago cassette tape sucked ass as a medium for music, but it was livable. Using cassettes for digital storage however was so incredibly painful you only tolerated it if you had no other choice. There are tape mediums that have shelf lives in the 30 year range, unfortunately floppies were not designed to have a long shelf life. I believe I was testing 5.25" floppies in 1998 when I was preparing to move from Michigan to Minnesota. They had been stored in a cool dry dark place and were for the most part all junk. I think they were about 6 years old at that point. Maybe a tad less. The last machine I'd had with a 5.25" drive was a turbo XT 286 from the late 80's. I know by 1994 I had a machine with no 5.25" drive, perhaps earlier. -- Thanks, Josh Paetzel PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5A8C 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 195 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20080730/0e5cc46e/attachment.pgp