Hi

Introduce yourself. Tell people why you are interested in vintage computers and what (if anything) you've got.

Hi

Postby entomos on Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:47 pm

Hi,

I remember using a ZX Spectrum and a C64 at friends places but my family brought an Amiga 500.
Later I really wanted the A600 due to the footprint and the A1200 but I never could afford them.
It took me a long time to get rid of the Amiga 500 but did so in a move around 2009, the end of 2010 I was sitting annoyed in front of Cubase wondering why I couldn't do a simple task that I remembered Octamed could (ok so ones a tracker and the other is DAW).

This lead me to getting an A1200 off Trademe (which came with a A500 as well) in early 2011 and it went from there. I have been reading over this forum for a couple of years now and thought I should join.

Luckily I kept all my old disks and still had an older PC which support 2 Floppy drives so I could use Disk2FDI to read them in. They had suffered through damp flats etc, So killed a lot of cheap PC drives in the process but got about a 80 to 90 percent success rate in reading them in.

I currently have
Amiga 1200 running an ACA1230, IDE to CF Card and a Indivision AGA Mk2
Amiga 600, 1 MB ram in the trapdoor, 4 MB CPU clip on ram,IDE CF Card and a Indivision ECS
Amiga 500, 512 KB in the trapdoor, Gotek Floppy to USB to replace the Floppy drive
C64C with a Kerberos Midi Flash Interface

And a few consoles

Cheers
entomos
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:29 am
Location: Wellington

Re: Hi

Postby SpidersWeb on Thu Dec 18, 2014 7:57 am

Welcome aboard :) Nice to have another local around too.

Most of my stuff is PC, but have managed to pick up a VIC20, C64C, and Amiga 2000 from local second hand stores (also have a couple of other C64C's from other sources).

Damp media is always a pain, if you end up doing it again you can get floppy drive cleaning kits - I keep a few around in both formats ready to go in (just takes 15-30 seconds with a few drops of isopropyl). Although PC 3.5" drives are pretty disposable.
Wanted - Dead or Alive - Reward $$$: Compaq Deskpro 8088 / 286 / 386 - IBM RT 6150/6151 parts - AT&T 3B2 parts
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Re: Hi

Postby tezza on Thu Dec 18, 2014 8:03 am

Welcome to the forums entomos!
Tez (Terry Stewart) (Administrator)
Collection: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/co ... /index.htm
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Re: Hi

Postby entomos on Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:23 am

Thanks Spiders Web and tezza,

On the floppy disks I was reading in, I had picked up 20 PC Floppy drives at $2 a piece and was cleaning the drives with isopropyl as I went, and I am sure I knock the alinement out of a few of them as I was cleaning them.
Some of the disks were coated in mold so it was very hard on the drives and I ended up cleaning some of the disks directly (for a last ditch read effort) and this yielded better results.

If you do know a supplier for 3.5" cleaning kits I would be keen on getting one.

Cheers
entomos
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:29 am
Location: Wellington

Re: Hi

Postby tezza on Thu Dec 18, 2014 11:15 am

entomos wrote:If you do know a supplier for 3.5" cleaning kits I would be keen on getting one.

Yes, mouldy disks can be hard on drives. I don't every try if I suspect a disk is mouldy. 5.25 inch ones can be removed from the jacket and washed.

No, I don't know a supplier for these 3.5 inch cleaning kits. I managed to score one..I think from e-bay.
Tez (Terry Stewart) (Administrator)
Collection: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/co ... /index.htm
Projects and Articles: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/index.htm
Twitter: @classiccomputNZ | YouTube: Terry Stewart
Trade Me: tezza5
tezza
Site Admin
 
Posts: 2382
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 12:00 pm
Location: Palmerston North, New Zealand

Re: Hi

Postby SpidersWeb on Thu Dec 18, 2014 5:12 pm

I got one off trademe a while back, but most of mine are from ebay (one even came from Russia with a bunch of random floppies with Russian labels). That's only for cleaning the drives though.

For disks where you can't remove the media (without damaging the jacket) I have found if you're very very patient, you can wipe the media, then rotate a litlte, then repeat until there is nothing visible on the surface. It's quite time consuming though.
Wanted - Dead or Alive - Reward $$$: Compaq Deskpro 8088 / 286 / 386 - IBM RT 6150/6151 parts - AT&T 3B2 parts
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Re: Hi

Postby entomos on Thu Dec 18, 2014 9:25 pm

Thanks again, Will hit up Ebay but wondered about them shipping items with isopropyl in it.

Spiders Web, that is how I cleaned about 40 disks, just watched a movie and turned them slowing wiping them down.
It worked really well. I assume they won't last once that is done to them but I got my old data off.

Cheers
entomos
 
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2014 9:29 am
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