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8 inch floppies

Mike_Z

Mike_Z

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Joined
Dec 1, 2013
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Near Milwaukee Wisconsin
Recent I met Jack Rubin and another guy, I think his name was Bob. Anyway Bob had a set of disk drives for Jack. He also had a storage tub full of 8 Inch floppies, which Jack didn't want, so I got them. There has to more than 100 floppies in this tub. Today I started to look at them. At first I thought they were all bad, out of the first half dozen, 5 were bad. But the next 10 all formatted and tested good. So maybe the majority of these floppies will be OK. I wanted to ask, what is the best way to store these. I'm sure they should kept away was extreme temperature and probably humidity. Any suggestions? Thanks, Mike
 
Store them where you would feel comfortable. 20C/68F, 40% RH. Keep them in some sort of container so as not to invite dust. Just converted a batch of 70 40 year old ones stored in regular office conditions. No hard failures (although some magic was involved for the tough cases).
 
I've been using 22DISK to format these. Gotten thru 25 floppies so far and 6 have had problems. I plan on retesting these after I get thru the entire lot. Thanks, Mike
 
I've been going thru more of the floppies. I have more than I had first thought. There are 7 boxes, which are stuffed with floppies, 20 or so, instead of 10. There are many loose, some in jackets and some not. So far it appears that the boxed floppies are all good, whereas some of the loose one show errors. I'll have to look around for more boxes so I can 'unstuff' the ones I have. Mike
 
Visually inspect the surface of the disks before putting them in a drive. If there is visible residue or damage, don't put them in a drive until you can clean them or otherwise deal with them. If you see the brand name "Wabash" on any of the disks, then run for the hills, they may make a big mess.

Always store floppy disks in a cool, dry, clean environment. I just got done archiving a lot of disks that I think were stored in an un-airconditioned storage unit, and the surface of most of them had nasty white residue all over them that required very thorough cleaning before reading.
 
"Wabash" isn't the only brand--there were a few rebranded Wabash ones. I think "Tab" was one.
If you need to read Wabash, there's always D-5. I keep a dropper bottle handy when I'm working.
 
The majority of the disks are name brand like
1. Datalife
2. Dysan
3. Memorex
4. 3M
5. Vernatium
The only odd brand that I have seen so far is 'Elephant'. All these disk are very clean and dry. The guy I received them from, said they have been in the storage tub at his place of employment since 1985. All the programs and data on these are tax plans and tax data from the early 1970's through 1982. So, I suspect they were in a good place for a long time. I'm about half way through the batch, so far there are 87 good disks and 11 bad. Mike
 
pbirkel@gmail.com said:
"D-5" = "Cyclomethicone 5"? How and where do you apply it?
Click to expand...
How about Amazon? Lots of choices. Just search for cyclomethicone. :) Stores that cater to home soap makers also carry it.

As far as application, a little goes a very long way. I dispense mine with a plastic dropper bottle. The stuff has almost no surface tension, so it spreads quickly. Applied directly to the "cookie". It will evaporate completely with time, so it's not a permanent fix, but gets the job done.
 
Chuck, today I came across a few disks that when placed in the drive, 22DISK reported 'drive not ready'. I think that you generally recieve a reply like this when the locating hole is not detected. These disks seem to turn a little hard. Would the cyclomethicone help this? But if it doesn't last maybe I should just disgard these floppies. Mike
 
Are you sure they're soft-sectored? Hard-sector floppies will produce the same message.
Also, if you're trying to read a double-sided floppy with a single-sided drive, you'll get the same message because the DS index aperture is in a different place from a single-sided one.

ss-ds-2.jpg
 
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So far, I have not found any hard sectored disks.I do have a SOL Terminal which has 3, 5 1/4 inch hard sectored drives. I had a difficult time finding extra floppies for the SOL. I built a punch that will place holes in a soft sectored disk, converting it to a hard sectored disk. Seems to work just fine. Suppose one could make a punch for 8 inch floppies also, Mike
 
A big difference between 5.25" and 8" hard-sectored floppies is that there is only one type of HS 8" disk--32 sector, unlike the situation with 5.25" where there were both 10 and 16-sector versions in use. (I didn't mention the really rare 8" versions; the original 8" 8-sector from IBM and the somewhat more common(?) 32-sector made mostly for Vydec word processors, that fit the Memorex 650 series drive. Both have their index apertures on the outer edge of the disk. The Memorex 650 disk has a different shape, with a "dogleg" in the jacket so that it can be inserted into the drive only one way.)
 
I'm still testing disks. I'm over 200 of them and still have some left. There were about a dozen that, when I attempted to format them, 22DISK reported that the drive was not ready. To me that means the index hole was not being seen. Some of these disks were hard to turn in their jackets, so I cut a couple open to look at the disk. They looked just fine and they only have one index hole. Next, I cleaned the hub area of the disk, no change. Then, I toke the cover off my formating drive to see if the disk was turning, it was. Then I noticed that the faulty disks have the index hole clocked a little more in the clockwise direction. This is why my drive is not sending the index pulse to the controller. I noticed that my drive has a hole drilled, that if it had an LED it would line up with these different floppies. The floppy itself is labeled, Dysan 3740/2D two sided double density, soft sectored, much like all the others. So, I bet these floppies are OK, since the majority of these disk do work, but, will not work in my drives. Mike
 
Sorry, I must have missed the point. I was not aware that the DS disks were different in this way. All the single sided disks have a slot for the head on each side. Just assumed that the DS disks used a similar format. Any particular reason they moved the index hole? Is the media different? Were they concerned that should a single be used in a double environment, there may be data lost? I figure that I could just punch an extra hole in these disks and I should be able to use them in my drives. Mike
 
The idea behind the different hole position was to allow the drive to distinguish between SS and DS media. Many DS drives have the ability to inform the controller that a SS disk is inserted and will block write attempts to the second side if the medium is SS. As far as inherent differences, there are none, other than the knowledge that the manufacturer has verified both surfaces on a DS drive. The physical distinction, of course, was lost by the time 5.25" drives became a thing.

If you punch an extra index hole to allow your SS drive to handle DS disks, be sure to cover the other hole. It won't matter on your SS drive, but may confuse someone trying to read your disks on a DS drive.

Anent extra holes: Since you've got a SS drive, you can punch an extra index aperture to make SS disks into "flippies". Those were actually a manufactured thing back in the day--I've got a couple of Memorex "flippies" that are identified as such.
 
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