Floppy reliability. Is it just me?

[Chuck(G)]

I didn't know you were there. I had a client, about 15 years ago, who was a Dentist, not a dumb guy, who tried to upgrade his machine himself with a new hard drive. He managed to force the molex power connector into the drive backwards! Needless to say he had to call me to fix that MESS!

The little 4-pin miniature connectors for floppies are particularly bad--it's not terribly difficult to gorilla one in upside-down--and swapping +5 and +12 does not do wonderful things to most drives--unless magic smoke is your preference.

I've never understood the logic for those connectors--put them in backwards and you've toasted the drive. If instead, they'd have staggered (e.g. +5 GND +12 GND) the pins, at least the drive would be safe. Better is to key the connector with NC positions so that inserting it any way but the correct will simply not connect power to anything.

 

[bushmechanic]

No, in reality, it wasn't!

To believe that this was the driving force this was done on an *industry-wide* level is completly without reason, logic or thought.

There was logic; it was just abductive logic. LOL

The evidence I had allowed the hypothesis. I simply never gathered any more evidence.

If an industry is tooled up one way, an addition to the process might be adapted to the machinery, rather than the other way around.

From the logical foundation I used, it worked well enough.

 

[Trixter]

disintegrating (i.e. oxide flaking off) without even being placed in a drive. Some of the really bad stuff can be salvaged by "baking".

Is there a guide or general advice online for "baking"? I have never heard of this practice as applied to floppy disk media and would like to know more, as I encountered my first "flaking" diskette a few months ago.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Same as for tape; in my case--about 58-60C or so for a few hours. Has helped enormously for old Wabash diskettes. Doesn't seem to hurt the envelope, but if you're uncertain, you may want to remove the cookie before baking. Easy enough on 8" and 5.25" media.

 

[archeocomp]

Just curious. Aren't you using Fahrenheit degrees in USA ?

 

[Stone]

We are free to use whatever we want -- °F, °C, K, °Ra -- anything. There's even several more less well known.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Just curious. Aren't you using Fahrenheit degrees in USA ?

I try to write to be understood by the largest number of people--and my PID controller reads in C anyway. If you're involved in a scientific/technical line of work and aren't familiar with metric, that would be very strange.

Let's see, isn't it only the US and Liberia who use the custmary/imperial system? I could quote length and mass in the Burmese system, if you'd like

 

[archeocomp]

No no :D Opposite! I read you recently saying "this is America we do not use metric crap". As a European I am acquainted to metric system and Celsius degrees I was once in USA shortly, some 15 years ago and I got the feeling that I heard wetter forecast in Fahrenheits. But it sooo long ago. That's why I asked.

 

[Chuck(G)]

No no :D Opposite! I read you recently saying "this is America we do not use metric crap". As a European I am acquainted to metric system and Celsius degrees I was once in USA shortly, some 15 years ago and I got the feeling that I heard wetter forecast in Fahrenheits. But it sooo long ago. That's why I asked.

You ignored the smiley after my comment--it was meant to be facetious.

In reality, the US has backtracked on the issue of going metric. In 1975, the US Congress passed legislation to promote the gradual acceptance of the metric system. Ronald Reagan essentially defunded the program in 1981. Around that time, I recall that many highways had distance and speed limits posted in both systems. I'm proud that one of my own state's senators has introduced a bill this year to make the SI system the official system of weights and measures for all state business. I don't expect it to pass, but it's a hopeful sign.

I recall that, in the mid 1980s, one of my friends who worked for Lockheed (then LMSC) was developing a program on his PC AT to work out orbital mechanics. I was mildly shocked that mass was quoted in slugs. Of course, we all know about the Mars Climate Orbiter fiasco.

So now you understand why my comment was more than a little sarcastic.

 

[vwestlife]

Let's see, isn't it only the US and Liberia who use the custmary/imperial system? I could quote length and mass in the Burmese system, if you'd like

The United Kingdom is "officially" Metric, but retains large use of the Imperial system. Road signs and travel distances in the UK are in miles, and kids there are still, to this day, required to learn the Imperial system in school (you can thank Margaret Thatcher for that). Canada likewise retains significant use of non-Metric units due to cross-border trade with the US.

Besides, the Fahrenheit scale is more human-oriented. 0 degrees F is really cold and 100 degrees F is really hot, while 0 degrees C is merely chilly and 100 degrees C gives you severe burns or death!

 

[Chuck(G)]

Don't forget the UK body weight in stone.

It's opined that Fahrenheit was going for 100F as a typical human body temperature--and he had a slight fever.

But I still buy my capacitors rated at 105C--I can't remember the time that they were ever rated in F. I dug out a Mallory FP electrolytic from the 60s--and it's rated at 85F. Probably the last time they were rated in Fahrenheit, they were called "condensers".

 

[Tor]

Well, gradual transition doesn't work. You have to replace completely. In Norway, some decades back they tried to replace horsepowers with kilowatts for car engines. But it was allowed to print horsepowers in parentheses. A few years after nothing had changed, everyone was still thinking horsepowers. Now it's just horsepowers everywhere, no kilowatts. Complete failure. Then I talked to a guy from another country where they had done the same at approximately the same time, just that you weren't allowed to print horsepowers in parentheses (advertisements, printed material). That transition went better, they use kilowatts to this day.

 

[SomeGuy]

Well, gradual transition doesn't work. You have to replace completely.

And you can't always do that either During the mid 1990s there was some crazy push to get government agencies to switch to metric. They even had metric road signs ready to put up. And I had the pleasure of converting a construction project materials testing database to Metric.

Thing is, when a construction project is let, it specifies units to use for things like materials testing. You can *NOT* change this sort of thing mid-contract (various legal and cost reasons). Additionally, such contracts can span many, many, many years. The result was that for many years newer projects used metric while older project used normal units. Meanwhile the database had to convert everything internally so they could do querying and reporting on all of the data. Last I heard, they stopped letting projects in metric, but there very well still could be a few extra long term metric projects still out there. :shock:

Anyway, as a US citizen it is my patriotic responsibility to call for death to all the third world communist terrorist Nazis that use metric units, Celsius, twenty-four hour time, or write d/m/yy instad of the One True Way: m/d/yy.

 

[mwillegal]

I think the US is transitioning to metric, but it's been a very gradual, unofficial, process. These days, I probably use metric tools, as much or more than imperial tools, even on American made cars. It's interesting that the wheels of my American made cars are held on with imperial sized lugs, but the brakes are secured with metric bolts. The oil drain plug is imperial, but most other engine fittings are metric. I think, up to now, they left the most commonly accessed items imperial, and everything else has gone metric. It may be just a matter of time before everything is metric.

Since I have both imperial and metric tools, I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter a whole lot.

regards,
Mike Willegal

 

[Stone]

Anyway, as a US citizen it is my patriotic responsibility to call for death to all the third world communist terrorist Nazis that use metric units, Celsius, twenty-four hour time, or write d/m/yy instad of the One True Way: m/d/yy.

You really should go back and re-check your sources:

1) US scientific organizations use metric units and Celsius. They may additionally use Imperial and Fahrenheit.

2) The US military uses 24 hour time (as do some other governmental agencies).

3) The US military uses day/month/year (again, as do some other governmental agencies).

 

[Malc]

Anyway, as a US citizen it is my patriotic responsibility to call for death to all the third world communist terrorist Nazis that use metric units, Celsius, twenty-four hour time, or write d/m/yy instad of the One True Way: m/d/yy.

Nah! There's only one true way and that's d/m/yy :lol:

....The oil drain plug is imperial....

When i was in the garage trade many moons ago , I lost count of the oil drain plugs i had to replace because some idiot had used a 13mm socket instead of the proper size 1/2" and rounded the head off. I still got most of my old whitworth spanners

 

[vwestlife]

3) The US military uses day/month/year (again, as do some other governmental agencies).

I believe they always write the month in text to avoid confusion, such as 3.APR.2015 instead of 3/4/2015, which would be ambiguous with March 4th.

I have also noticed that with the trend of downsizing, many food/beverage items and household products are now sold in Metric-scaled sizes. For example, a bottle that used to be "18 fl. oz. (532 mL)" is now "16.9 fl. oz. (500 mL)".

 

[Tor]

If we could just get rid of that 12-hour time format then I would be quite relaxed with the rest - I am unable to wrap my head around the pm/am thingy, and even when I get it I can never remember (for more than five secs) what 12am *really* means. Or 12pm? See, I can't even remember which one of those even exists. After all, artificial light was invented a *very* long time ago and the 24 hour day was introduced then - before that apparently (yes really) only the hours with light were counted.

But it is also a bit annoying that the Japanese cheap digital watches for export stopped having an option to select d/m format for the date. It's always m/d now and that's something I don't like to see on my watch.

 

[Stone]

I am unable to wrap my head around the pm/am thingy, and even when I get it I can never remember (for more than five secs) what 12am *really* means. Or 12pm? See, I can't even remember which one of those even exists.

It really quite simple (if you understand just a little Latin).

AM stands for “ante meridiem”, which means “before noon” in Latin, while PM stands for “post meridiem”, which means “after noon” in Latin.

I thought everybody learned that in third grade!

 

[Krille]

Probably the last time they were rated in Fahrenheit, they were called "condensers".

I didn't know capacitors used to be called condensers in english. It's interesting because they are still called that in Swedish (capacitor = kondensator) and I've never really understood why. "Kondensator" sounds (to me at least) like something that should turn gases into liquid.

Anyway, as a US citizen it is my patriotic responsibility to call for death to all the third world communist terrorist Nazis that use metric units, Celsius, twenty-four hour time, or write d/m/yy instad of the One True Way: m/d/yy.

Nah! There's only one true way and that's d/m/yy :lol:

You both got it wrong; the one true way is yyyy/mm/dd :D

If we could just get rid of that 12-hour time format then I would be quite relaxed with the rest - I am unable to wrap my head around the pm/am thingy, and even when I get it I can never remember (for more than five secs) what 12am *really* means. Or 12pm? See, I can't even remember which one of those even exists.

OMG, this is word for word exactly my thoughts on the PM/AM thing. I can never remember what it means even though I've read the explanation many times.