Out of disks!

Post by **Jeff-20** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 12:18 am

Just a rant:

I go through disks pretty quickly, saving versions of my program after every major step. I do this because I often crash the computer with errant POKEs.

Anyway, I thought I had a bunch of disks, but I just discovered that my last box of 20 disks are HD not DD. Density seems to be an issue with some drives, my current drive in particular. I get errors with every attempt to initialize. I've managed successfully to format high density before, but DD seems to work best.

So, (sigh) I just wanted to let everyone know that I am annoyed at the moment and my projects are on hold because i can't really save. Anyone else every have this problem? Where do you get your blank disks?

Wonder-Boy · Post by **Wonder-Boy** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 12:23 am

Ebay...
but there is some place (in California) that manufactures and sells new disks, see here http://www.floppydisk.com/
I haven't bought any from there myself

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:22 am

I got 100 used disks with the last 1541 I bought... Used disks are okay in my opinion... most of the time anyway... You can tell by just looking at them if you want to put them in your drive or not...

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Fri Jul 27, 2007 2:48 pm

Jeff-20 wrote:...Anyway, I thought I had a bunch of disks, but I just discovered that my last box of 20 disks are HD not DD. Density seems to be an issue with some drives, my current drive in particular. I get errors with every attempt to initialize. I've managed successfully to format high density before, but DD seems to work best.

...

I assume you're talking about 5.25" disks.

Personnaly, my solution to reduce usage of these disks was to switch to the 1581 drive.

Having JiffyDOS in both my VIC and all my drives, the 1581 is even faster than the 1541 in jiffyDOS mode.

Also, with 3.5" floppies unlike 5.25" floppies, most HD floppies work just fine when formatted in DD. Depending on the hardware in your drive, however, you may have to cover or block the HD hole.

PaulQ · Post by **PaulQ** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:50 pm

Dump disks you're not currently using to a PC via the X1541 cable and star commander. Save the images to whatever media you want. Recycle.

6502dude · Post by **6502dude** » Sat Jul 28, 2007 7:20 pm

I agree with DigitalQuirk.

Archive the full disks to PC with Star Commander and then reformat your exisitng disks for re-use.

I've been through a couple hundred write / erase cycles with eproms for Mega-Cart project with 8 eproms in rotation.

Source files are retained in PC.

Same can apply for Vic-20 pgm development.

Rember the the Rs - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 4:13 am

eslapion wrote:Also, with 3.5" floppies unlike 5.25" floppies, most HD floppies work just fine when formatted in DD. Depending on the hardware in your drive, however, you may have to cover or block the HD hole.

HD disks in a DD drive will not hold the information as long as DD disks and sometimes HD disks won't work at all. I'm talking from experiance from all my Amiga years.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:06 pm

Jeff, did anyone volunteer to sell/give you some floppy disks? If you are satisfied with single sided disks, I'd gladly help you stock your cupboard in a while. I don't have any floppies at home right now, but I could remedy it in a week or two. Of course overseas shipping is a bit of a killer, and you might find someone in the US with surplus floppies easier.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:26 pm

Boray wrote:HD disks in a DD drive will not hold the information as long as DD disks and sometimes HD disks won't work at all. I'm talking from experiance from all my Amiga years.

Only very old Amiga 1000 drives suffer that problem.

Believe me, I have 3.5" HD disks formatted in DD here that have well retained their data for more than 15 years.

Also, the format for a 1581 is considerably different from that of an Amiga. It seems to be more resilient.

Anyways, I often see brand new DD 5.25" disks sell on eBay for quite low prices. These should be easy to get.

Try Item number: 290143979601 on ebay
100 floppies, DSDD, all new for 10$

Item number: 290143980179 is a lot of 500 for 40$

All boxes seemed labeled with DSDD specification so there's no worry about getting useless HD disks...

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:48 am

eslapion wrote: Only very old Amiga 1000 drives suffer that problem.

My Amiga 1200 must have one of those then...

Doppleganger · Post by **Doppleganger** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:16 am

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-of-500-DS-DD-5- ... dZViewItem

Hm... Coleman's Surplus in PA was selling 500 lots for $50'ish. I think they upped the prices, though. They do have a website if you search for it. The floppies are listed under Household items.

eslapion · Post by **eslapion** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:55 pm

Boray wrote:My Amiga 1200 must have one of those then...

I did get a certain number of 3.5" HD floppies that could not be formatted in DD in the past.

Turns out they couldn't be formatted in HD either... or very quickly gave me a bunch of reading errors.

In other words, GOOD 3.5" HD floppies are supposed to be able to take it being formatted in DD. Otherwise, you should ask yourself questions about the quality of these disks.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 3:41 am

eslapion wrote:In other words, GOOD 3.5" HD floppies are supposed to be able to take it being formatted in DD. Otherwise, you should ask yourself questions about the quality of these disks.

What I've heard, HD disks contains less magnetic material compared to DD disks, so I don't think it's strange at all...

wiskow · Post by **wiskow** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 6:14 pm

Wonderboy wrote:Ebay...
but there is some place (in California) that manufactures and sells new disks, see here http://www.floppydisk.com/
I haven't bought any from there myself

That place doesn't manufacture their own disks. They're a reseller. I haven't purchased anything from them, mainly because you can get disks cheaper from Athana, who DOES still manufacture new 3.5", 5.25", and 8" disks in many varieties. I'd be willing to bet that the people at floppydisk.com are buying them from Athana and reselling them. Anyway, I have purchased disks from Athana, and they are very good quality, and none have failed on me. Check out this page for more info: http://www.athana.com/html/diskette.html

-Andrew

hawk · Post by **hawk** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 8:09 pm

After tossing all my floppies the year before I got back into playing with old hardware, I posted a request for used floppies on our electronic noticeboard at work. I had several responses which resulted in a supply I've yet to exhaust.

However, I'm planning on making an MMC2IEC device. I want to mount it internally in my VIC-20C.

Here's the Atari equivalent of what I had in mind.

Atari 800XL with SIO2SD fitted internally by Beetle.

--Hawk

[Edited to allow everyone to see the image]

Denial

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