Fun with degaussers

From: Dwight Elvey <elvey_at_hal.com>
Date: Mon May 3 12:12:45 1999

CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com wrote:
>
> The "rotate around at many different orientations" is also
> important for a thorough degaussing. Unlike electric charge, which
> doesn't have a direction, magnetization *does* have a direction.
>

Hi
 Although there is a direction issue with magnetized materials,
I have found that simple DC type erasing works well on floppies.
I had similar problems when reformatting floppies for a different
type of machine. What I did to erase was to put the floppies on a
metal surface ( my refrigerator ) and then a piece of thin cardboard
( cereal box from on top of the refrigerator ). I used one of those
super magnets from a disk servo drives and just dragged it once
around the disk. I formatted it and it then worked without errors.
 I know from my audio tape days that this tends to reduce S/N
but I also know that floppies tend to saturate so a slight DC
bias isn't so bad.
Dwight
Received on Mon May 03 1999 - 12:12:45 BST