Reiability of wrong media (was: is out of 5-1/4" diskettes

From: Sam Ismail <dastar_at_ncal.verio.com>
Date: Fri Jan 22 11:57:46 1999

On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, George Rachor wrote:

> Made sense to me... In my meager days (while going to school) I turned
> over and used Apple ][ floppy's. I wouldn't say they didn't hold up but I
> did have enough disk errors on diskettes I did this with to decide to quit
> the practice.
>
> And yes I do wish I had not ever done this.

I have no idea what this commotion is about. I've always, always notched
my diskettes on my Apple II and used both sides. Hell, EVERYONE did. Who
didn't? If you weren't then you were wasting a perfectly good side of the
disk. I haven't bulk checked my Apple software collection recently (~500
disks) but every so often I do pull out an old disk with my teen-hood
programs on it to reminisce and they load fine. And every now and then
I'll pull out an old game to play and it works great. All my disks are
anywhere from 10-15 years old. So I guess I should avoid being cocky
about it since I'm at the theoretical threshold.

Although I have pulled out a couple disks once or twice that seemed to be
suffering from some bit rot, but I have a technique I use that generally
lets me recover bad sectors with pretty decent success rates.

Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Fri Jan 22 1999 - 11:57:46 GMT

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