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5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:19 pm
by tezza
One can never have too many 5.25 inch floppy disks...
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blo ... k-haul.htm

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:16 am
by am1933
back around 1997/98 I visited an office supply store to purchase some 3.5" floppies and to my amazement there was an entire base shelf crammed with 5-1/4" floppies for 50p for a box of ten(approx $1 NZ Dollar), I bought as many boxes as I could carry and went back for more-all good brands like 3M and Memorex.

I could see the look on the face of the sales assistant as if to say "what the hell do you want them for-nobody uses them now". I am still using them to this day and still have a few shrink wrapped packs that have never seen the light of day.

Well-who's laughing now :mrgreen:

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:20 pm
by RonTurner
The last factory sealed box of floppies I purchased where covered in mold!

I was looking around a junk shop a few months back looking to see if I could spot maybe a Casio calculator , clicky or other collectable amongst the junk, found a box of sealed cassette tapes the Guy offered me the whole box for $25 I replied ( poker faced) I most likely wouldn't need that many, so he said what about $20 , I accepted, score! 120+ factory wrapped cassette tapes, a life time supply, and yes I was laughing to. Not about the smell of the shop mind you! it was a mixture of old and dirt!

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:55 pm
by SpidersWeb
am1933 wrote:I could see the look on the face of the sales assistant as if to say "what the hell do you want them for-nobody uses them now". I am still using them to this day and still have a few shrink wrapped packs that have never seen the light of day.


I hate that a few months ago. Took a box of sealed floppy disk boxes - guessing between 100-160 disks? Can't remember exactly - but all sealed.
"Oh nobody uses those anymore" - $5 for the lot - no mold. Sadly they're DSHD not the DSDD I keep needing more of :P

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Fri Mar 28, 2014 12:03 pm
by tezza
I'm surprised floppies in a sealed box would have mould Gavin? Mould needs high humidity and I can't imagine you would get much in a sealed box. Then again, I could be wrong. Perhaps if humidity was high when sealed it would trap some moisture in there...also not all fungi need high moisture (just most)?

Are you sure it was fungi and not just the media flaking off just from chemical degradation? I know this can happen.

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:53 pm
by RonTurner
Yeah I was confused to see mold on factory sealed floppies, first time ever, I previously did not think it to be possible, the plastic wrap was in good nic , it had that mold growth pattern that I have seen so often.

The other time I purchased duds was that lot of 60 floppies off trademe, every last one was knackered and when I cut some open I found water marks on the disk padding! Indicating they had actually been fully wet at some stage !!!! $70 worth went in the bin.

I actually threw out hundreds of moldy DD floppies a month ago.

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2014 10:09 am
by Noncorpus
i cleaned up a really bad mouldy & corroded looking amiga floppy of "crazy cars" with a cigarette filter, a slightly damp end for washing the worst bits, and a dry end for drying it instantly.. and now the game plays fine.. but it took a long time to just clean the one disk.

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2014 9:05 pm
by RonTurner
Disk mold , These are from a sealed box of floppies, the plastic did not have any holes in it, and was clean on the outside.

This confirms that sealed boxes of floppies can have mold, like it or not :( but having said that this
is the first time I have found mold in a sealed box, so at least there is only a small chance compared
to old opened ones. This box cost me $25 and went in my Trade-Me rubbish bin of junk items.
Image

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2014 9:27 pm
by tezza
What brand were they Gavin?

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Thu May 15, 2014 9:48 pm
by RonTurner
tezza wrote:What brand were they Gavin?


Dysan

I have a couple of thousand 5.25 floppies of all kinds, mostly DD

The ones I have thrown the least out of are Print-data branded floppies

The ones I seem to bin the most are Datalife by Verbatim

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 3:47 pm
by Joseph
I got all my old floppys which had been stored in less than ideal conditions being damp an dusty, most had some mold, deciding I had nothing to lose I cleaned the media with a chux cloth and methylated spirits, after a long process from a collection of 70 disks only 3 refused to work, the blank ones have formatted and tested just fine, I'm unsure if this was a good technique but it seems to have worked just fine. The ones that wouldn't work were verbatim datalife disks..... and some that are just labeled diskettes. On closer inspection I could see that the magnetic surface had started to come away.. I discovered this after they left there surface on my drive heads, after cleaning the heads all is well, I have opened them and cleaned the insides and used them to repair some warped cases, so very happy, anyone tried similar techniques???

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 6:09 pm
by RonTurner
I chucked my moldy floppies, just don't like the idea of putting something into my drives that I don't want spreading to good floppies, its an organic floppy disk virus, and its spreading fast!

What made you decided to use meths? Wouldn't IPA be betterer?

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:49 pm
by Carcenomy
I have a huge box of C64 floppies that need this treatment. One day when I'm really bored...

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 10:14 pm
by tezza
I've washed mouldy disks in warm soapy water in order to recover data. In nearly all cases it worked!

I never kept the disk for reuse though.

Re: 5.25 inch Floppy Disk haul

PostPosted: Tue Jul 29, 2014 11:55 pm
by Joseph
I used meths cause it was at hand and I thought it would kill the mould my disks looked just like the ones in the pics in this thread, I suspect the drive would already be contaminated as it was stored with the disks.... All has been cleaned, and working fine however to start with nothing worked so I had nothing to lose and everything to gain my cleaning process only took about two minutes per disk and overnight dry time some disks needed to be cleaned twice, I soaked a chux cloth squeezed it. between thumb and fore finger whilst rotating the disk until I couldn't see any mould I didn't remove the media from its cover. Since mould can only grow in a damp environment I think it is unlikely to return as long as the disks are stored in a dry environment. I inspected disks under strong light watching the reflection whilst rotating the media.
I have a new problem now the screens power switch refuses to stay latched...... That's another job for another weekend the joys of old electric equipment maybe I'll replace some capacitors while I'm at it as the screen starts to shimmer after an hour or two of operation and sometimes loses the vertical hold but it works! Back to Gunship one of my favourite childhood games.