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Degauss and diskettes

Y

Yzzerdd

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Auto degauss, as you should know, is a process of applying electricity through coils to undo the effects of magnetism on monitors, which is dischaged from it. (or something like that, right?)

So, a month ago I had typed up an extensive report on my companies inventory. I didn't bother putting it on the hard drive, as I decided to trust the floppy. Mistake. I left the floppy in the B: drive, and it was there for about 2 weeks. Then I aquired a new PC and had sold a few. So, naturally, I wanted to update the disk. During the 2 weeks, I had redone my hard drive, ran tests on my monitor(which can auto-degauss) and had move my computer about 1 foot across the desk. My computer is an AT&T 6300, which as mentioned earlier, has potential to auto-degauss the monitor, and that function WAS TESTED with diagnostics. So anyways, I went to update the disk, and no info was found on it. As a matter of fact, the computer told me to reformat the disk. So now I have to totally redo my inventory. This time I will save to hard disk as well(which, BTW, is external). As a matter of fact, I am even gonna save to external 1.44MB disk, and transfer it to my new PC hard drive.
I guess I discovered a flaw in auto degauss, which was marketed as a positive feature back in the day.

Anyone else have this problem?

--Ryan
 
Most (if not all) colour crt computer monitors and TV's have 'auto' degauss - they often use a 'posistor' in series with the degauss coil and the coil is run very briefly every time the crt is fired up from cold.
 
I suppose you could try reading the disk in another system. I used to have problems with Windows NT reading dos disks once and a while. Also I found some systems would refuse to format a floppy due to errors on track 0 or whatever but others would (can't remember the combo for success anymore though).

A dirty floppy drive or some dust on the film of the floppy can cause that and lots of other things like the strength of the write head not being strong enough for other systems to see but itself can read it fine. Anyway, it's a long shot and I'd probably just start the inventory over after a few hours of playing with the disk but I haven't heard of a monitor wiping out a disk that's in a chassis, although I suppose that would leave the protective metal open exposing the magnetic film a bit more than usual. I would expect you could probably wipe out a disk if you set it on TOP of the monitor during a degaus but I think I did that before (with a Packard Bell 15" monitor or an NEC 17") and didn't see any adverse affects. Anyway lots of possibilities unfortunately.

- John
 
Yeah, I think it was either right next to the monitor, or leaning on the front of the system, below the monitor. Anyways, I long ago rewrote my inventory and finances, and they now look better, and my system calculates them more efficiently. I even made my inventory with prices I bought the system for, and prices I sold previous systems for. Turns out my business is still far in the black! Since the incident, I have begun making backups on the HD, instead of just on a single diskette. Oh, and I was not trying to read in another system, never had that disk in another system, and always make sure no dust, dirt, or grime is on or gets on my diskettes. I always keep them in their sleeves. I just got done typing up my research paper on the AT&T 6300, and boy did I save often!

--Ryan
 
Hi
Put more distance between the monitor and the drive.
Yes I've seen this quite often. Stray magnetic fields
seem to effect writing more than reading but they can
cause troubles with prerecorded information if strong enough.
In that past, I've found that as little as a thick phone book
is enough distance to stop the problems.
One can disable the deguass as well but the color will
gradually get strange.
Dwight
 
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