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Newly manufactured 5.25" floppy disks

W

wiskow

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 3, 2006
Messages
182
Location
Hemet, CA
Hi all... I've been doing some searching to find out if there are any companies left that still manufacture 5.25" floppy disks, and I found one! David Moorman of Loadstar gave me the name of the company, and I've done a bit of legwork with them to get pricing information (their website doesn't give many specifics), so I thought I'd share what I've found with all of you.

The name of the comany is ATHANA International, Inc.

Their address is:
24045 Frampton Ave.
Harbor City, CA 90710, U.S.A.

Phone: 800-421-1591 or 310-539-7280
Fax: 310-539-6596
Website: http://www.athana.com/

The disks I found that are ideal for Commodore use are part number 47-7501, which come in an ATHANA box, or part number 47-7501G, which come in a plain white box. These are 5.25 Inch Diskettes DD (Double Sided, Double Density), Unformatted, 48 TPI (Soft Sector). Minimum order is for 2 boxes; each box contains 10 disks. Cost for 2 - 5 boxes is $7.95 each, plus freight. Cost for 6 - 10 boxes is $7.75 each, plus freight. Bulk orders of 500 disks or more are $0.52 per disk. Cost of freight varies, but as an example, I was told that an order of 5 boxes shipped via UPS ground would have a freight charge of $5.25. For any further details, you can call them or e-mail info@athana.com.

Oh, and for any of you really old school folks... They also manufacture 8" floppy disks! ;-)

I hope this information is helpful for some of you...

-Andrew
 
Great work Andrew! Putting those guys on my favorites list for sure. I should be getting several 5.25 drives soon. Yep, think I'm going to need some diskettes to go with them.


Their website says min. order is $100. I hope that isn't true!!!
 
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Great! I always thought that somewhere out there, there'd still be a manufacturer of them! Now we don't have to feel guilty of busting open a sealed pack of floppies!

Now all we need is a company that stamps Laserdiscs!
 
Great! My luck with NewOldStock disks has been pretty sketchy. Seems they deteriorate with age, even unused, in factory shrinkwrapped boxes. (I stocked up on quite a few boxes when they began appearing on clearance racks for $.99 a few years back). Newly manufactured is really the way to go.

--T
 
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Are you sure they are not some old stock sitting on the shelf or rebranded old stock from somebody else? I can't see anybody firing up a production line for making those economicaly especially in CA.

The best place to find those disks are from a duplicator that has yet to dump his old stock.
 
Unknown_K said:
Are you sure they are not some old stock sitting on the shelf or rebranded old stock from somebody else? I can't see anybody firing up a production line for making those economicaly especially in CA.

The best place to find those disks are from a duplicator that has yet to dump his old stock.
Click to expand...

I haven't placed an order with them yet, so I can't be 100% sure. But from what I gather, they do in fact still produce a full line of floppy disks, including 3.5", 5.25", and 8" disks in a variety of densities. I believe they are the company that supplies the U.S. government with their floppy disk needs, which would explain why they're still in business. I just so happen to be active duty navy (in for over 13 years now), and I know first hand that the military still uses a lot of old equipment, even if they'd like you to believe that they're totally "high tech". ;-)


Chuck, as for the web site pages being dated 1997... That's probably just because there hasn't been any new technology in the floppy disk business in a while... so no real need to update... But hey, I don't work for them or anything, I'm just passing on the information that I gathered, hoping to save some other people the trouble. Harbor City is about an hour and a half drive from where I live... so maybe I'll just have to drive over there one of these days and see just how "legit" they really are. Besides, I could save myself the freight charge! ;-)

-Andrew
 
Nope, Andrew, you are right. There just hasn't been any need to update their website. They do look legit to me already even with the 1997 web pages.

LOL, you are sure right about the armed services. I screwed up, I should have learned more IBM 360/370 stuff when I was younger. I could have made tons of money doing COBOL and CICS projects for the government. I got stuck on the little mini computers, no money there! (like IBM 1130).
 
Perhaps they manufacture a lot of other magnetic media, and happen to still have the machinery to make 5.25" and 8" disks. If the machines still function, the overhead costs to use them shouldn't be too bad.

I suppose they can offer 5.25" HD for those who need. Perhaps QD too, if asked nicely? As I told Andrew (hi!) in comp.sys.cbm, a couple of web shops are reselling new 5.25" floppies. I suppose at least the US ones get the disks from this factory; dunno if there are similar plants hidden in Europe.
 
carlsson said:
I suppose they can offer 5.25" HD for those who need. Perhaps QD too, if asked nicely? As I told Andrew (hi!) in comp.sys.cbm, a couple of web shops are reselling new 5.25" floppies. I suppose at least the US ones get the disks from this factory; dunno if there are similar plants hidden in Europe.
Click to expand...

They have a variety of formats, in both unformatted and IBM/DOS formatted disks. You can check out this website to see all the formats they have:
http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html

I wrote back to Mr. Wolf Arnold, asking if it'd be alright if I pick up disks in person. That way, I'll be able to see what kind of an operation they have "up close and personal". :)

-Andrew
 
Have Wolf setup a "referral account" for you!! Have him put some commission from all the sales to follow in there :rolleyes:
 
Ayep, article number 47-8801 are 96 tpi DD, known as "QD". They are the least common, but which owners of suitable disk drives tend to look for. Often 48 tpi DD works in these systems, but with less reliability.

What is the point of manufacturing single sided 5.25" floppies in the year 2006? Will they be significantly cheaper than the double sided ones, or will a system that can only handle single sided floppies work better with those than if the disk was coated on both sides?
 
carlsson said:
What is the point of manufacturing single sided 5.25" floppies in the year 2006? Will they be significantly cheaper than the double sided ones, or will a system that can only handle single sided floppies work better with those than if the disk was coated on both sides?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure... As far as I know, all single-side drives can read and write to double-side disks without any problem... But I could be wrong.

Anders, if you're interested in trying some of these disks, I'm planning on buying some soon, so I could get some for you and send them to you for probably less than Athana would send them overseas. You can contact me privately at drewbrasil@yahoo.com.br

Actually, that offer goes for anyone living overseas... I'll just have to check on the details...

-Andrew
 
wow, thats interesting. I have a huge lot of still sealed in the box blank 5.25 disks, though (probably about 50 to 100 of them).
Nevertheless,
This is good to know, thanks for passing this onto all of us. I might need to buy some of those 8"ers!

off topic:
I bought a mass storage OSB stick a few weeks ago (since this this what people use now a days, for those of you who dont know). Anyway, It is small and can be lost easily. So for irony, I tied a 5.25 disk to it. (I drilled a tiny hole in the corner of the disk for the wire to go through). I liked my "key chain" idea, and when I did it, I made sure to only use a disk that wasnt working right (at least the info on it was corrupted anyway, thats for sure).
anyway, when I go to places with my stick (to print out CAD plots etc.) I have my stick with the old disk attached. It has been interesting to see the differnet responces. People act like its completely ancient. Some people think its really cool. Others think its weird and dont know why I have it attached. The reason is, this is my 3rd stick, the first 2 got lost, and so I need something attahed to this little thing so it doesnt get lost too.
But a couple of days ago I went to a reprographics place to get files plotted, and the guy who worked there, who had to be about 50 years old, had no idea what it was! I had to tell him that it was a floppy disk. He never saw one before. I thought this was quite odd! When I was a kid, every computer took one, and its not so uncommen to still find computers here and there in the homes of people who dont even collect old computer shit to have a 5.25 drive.
 
I've been averaging around 50% with the 3M disks I've had stashed since 1995-or-so. OTOH, I recently 'rescued' a 300-pack of generic disks from ComputerHell (manufacture date unknown), and so far, all have proven good.

--T
 
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