Vintage Scopes

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Sun Oct 13 13:19:00 2002

On Sat, 12 Oct 2002, J.C. Wren wrote:
> Two things: Dysan disks, while reliable, were considered
> incredibly abrasive. There was an independant study done by a drive
> manufacturer, Qume, IIRC, that strongly recommended not using Dysan.

> drive manufacturer, Qume,
Makers of the Qume 142 : the "FIRST" "half height" 5.25" drive to be
widely distributed; (I don't know who might have developed one earlier),
the worst reliability of any drive EVER. Even worse than the BASF 2/3
height drive. IBM originally used the 142 in the "Portable" (Compaq
wannabe) and the PCJr. ONE OF the major reasons for the release of PC-DOS
2.10 was that the 142 was so friggin slow that the OS had to change the
seek time to allow for slower drives!


I don't recall that study. Dysan disks were widely regarded as being
the best, although many people felt that they were not AS MUCH BETTER as
they claimed, nor worth their "premium price".

> Verbatim diskettes were only used when you wanted to be sure no one,
> including yourself, would ever read the media again. Verbatim became
> better many years later, but they were left with a major stigma.

Verbatim had a "short" period where they produced a lot of truly BAD
batches, including some where the coating wore off of the mylar in record
time. They were good BEFORE that time, and AFTER. But something like that
is hard to live down. Once they fixed their problems (which they never
admitted to), they over-overcompensated, and produced exceptionally good
disks for a while. Wasn't "DATALIFE" trademark originated during that
period, sort of as a promise that "these are not the same as the crap that
we sold you last time"?


> Maxell was my personal media of choice. I used Maxell 8's, 5.25's, 3.5's,
> cassette, reel to reel, 4mm, 8mm, and on a few rare occasions, 9 track.
> I've had far fewer problems with Maxell media than anything I've ever used.

Maxell tended to be consistently good. But EVERY company occasionally
puts out some bad ones.


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Sun Oct 13 2002 - 13:19:00 BST

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