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Author Topic: Floppy disks  (Read 4857 times)

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Offline Nostalgiac

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #14 on: November 13, 2007, 09:08:54 PM »
or as I have done, in an A2000 install a Budha + CF/IDE converter... and stick a 2gb CF card into that.

Bit awkward to swap the CF card, but works fine :-)

Tom UK
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Offline AmigaMance

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #15 on: November 13, 2007, 10:22:01 PM »
Quote

persia wrote:
In a related topic, can I get a card reader to wrk on an Amiga?


 This man is a sarcasm machine.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32495
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Offline frl9lk

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #16 on: November 13, 2007, 10:30:09 PM »
Semi related: Is there anything that can reasonably be done to avoid floppies going bad seemingly randomly. I use several different drives, three different machines, and the failure rate is still way high. Is it peculiar to Amigas? (No other system I have ever used has had anywhere near the same problem.) Thanks.
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Offline AmigaMance

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #17 on: November 13, 2007, 11:06:46 PM »
 Keep the disk away from: Magnetic fields, moist, heat, dust, direct sunlight. Also, clean the heads of your drives. (gently)
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Offline HopperJF

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #18 on: November 13, 2007, 11:25:55 PM »
Quote

marcfrick2112 wrote:
Well, basically yes, you will need to block up the High Density hole on the upper right, but HD disks used as DD this way are said to not be as reliable as actual double density disks....



HD disks aren't as reliable as DD full stop
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Offline da9000

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #19 on: November 14, 2007, 06:13:11 AM »
Quote

HopperJF wrote:
HD disks aren't as reliable as DD full stop


YMMV (like my case) but *technically*, yes, they are not as reliable.

PS. HopperJF, your blog link "no-worky" :-(
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Offline weirdami

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #20 on: November 14, 2007, 06:45:39 AM »
Quote
Also, clean the heads of your drives. (gently)


I let my floppy drive cleaner disks do things their own way. There's only one cleaning mode on those.
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Offline AmigaMance

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #21 on: November 14, 2007, 07:21:20 AM »
Quote

weirdami wrote:
Quote
Also, clean the heads of your drives. (gently)


I let my floppy drive cleaner disks do things their own way. There's only one cleaning mode on those.


 Well, yeah. Obviously...
Perhaps he doesn't have a cleaner disk and he wants to open the drive and clean the heads with a cotton pad. I have done it many times. It must be done gently, otherwise you could make things worse.
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Offline CLS2086

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #22 on: November 14, 2007, 06:06:38 PM »
Clean the long screw and use spray to put oil on it. :rtfm:
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Offline Zac67

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #23 on: November 14, 2007, 07:02:27 PM »
Compare Wikipedia:Floppy Disk - it's not 100.00% safe to use (previously formatted) HD disks for DD, but it's very safe (>99.9%). I've been mixing them for years (PC/A3k <-> A500) and the error rate in HD/DD disks wasn't noticably higher than with real DD.
Note that the only difference comes from the formatting done to them, the actual media has always been the very same since the early 90's.

I don't trust a floppy disk further than I can spit it anyway - Murphy states that it's the most important disk that dies next.
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Offline frl9lk

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #24 on: November 14, 2007, 07:22:14 PM »
I do have a disk cleaner, which I use with Klean (an old utility that simply spins dfX: for a few seconds). The problem is that disks can go bad in the same sitting. And by bad, I mean unformattable. All my Amigas have had problems this way -- and old Mac, PC or ST disks have stayed basically reliable.  I will open up a drive and try the clean and oil. Thanks.

(I've eBayed my way through a bunch of drives, and would like to find an alternative strategy.)
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Offline koaftder

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #25 on: November 14, 2007, 07:28:20 PM »
Get a catweasel and use it to backup your stuff to the pc, and use the cheap HD floppies but treat them as disposable.
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Offline frl9lk

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #26 on: November 14, 2007, 07:39:40 PM »
I don't use floppies to backup. I have redundant HDs, CDRW, zips(speaking of flakey) and SyQuest. But it's playing Russian Roulette to try to read/install legacy software.
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Offline amiga-madTopic starter

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #27 on: November 16, 2007, 11:19:13 AM »
You have all been lots of help guys.

I have sourced some new DD disks which i never knew that i could still buy.

Thanks soooo much.

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Offline Paradox

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Re: Floppy disks
« Reply #28 from previous page: November 16, 2007, 11:32:40 AM »
Floppy disks are unreliable no matter which ones you use.

And same to are the floppy drives.

Sometimes you think your floppies have errors but its your drive messing up for a while.

I use PC floppies on my Amiga all the time with no problem
, you just have to format them.

I bite a piece of paper and chew it up then splodge it inside the notch on the HD floppy.

Regards
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