On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Joe wrote:
> At 09:43 PM 4/7/99 -0700, someone wrote:
>
> People today don't realize that the old
> >systems used a floppy like present systems use a hard drive, almost all the
> >time, which is a heck of a lot of wear for a contact media.
>
> I used to work for Burroughs and they had a computer that used 8"
> floppys that spun continously. Burroughs said to replace the disks every
> 100 hours. I have no idea how long they would actually run before failing.
> Does anyone know? I have a CPM machine that spins it's 5 1/4" disk
> continously but I haven't run it enough for a disk to fail.
Well... (note this is a completely un-scientific analysis) back when
CBBS/NW ran strictly off of two 8 inch floppy drives, we noted that it was
just as likely for the drive to wear out as the floppies themselves.
We replaced the disk if we noticed any (passing) errors during our weekly
backups, but as I recall we had some floppys that had been in use on
the system for easily a year or more with no signs of excessive wear...
Some time later, we did add a mechanism to shut down the spindle motors on
the drives after a time without a call. Those drives were still expensive
after all! B^}
-jim
---
jimw_at_agora.rdrop.com
The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw
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Received on Thu Apr 08 1999 - 10:20:40 BST