exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR FLOPPY DISK SURFACE THROUGH A MAGNIFYING GLASS! :lol:

If you do, you'll find that even new HD ones unopened in plastic wrap have bits on them. (I thought they were made in a dust free environment)

Anyway after 2 days with little sleep I've wiped down all of my disks and cleared inside both sides of each window the best I can and washed my disk case.

I've also sought out the exact HD disks I used for storing my vocal exercises (new old stock) and copied them onto the new ones with Fast Copy Pro.

Also ordered a pack of HD's for the PC floppy drive just for nostalgia, as Midi stuff fits on them easily.

Because of the times we are living in, going out to the shops, getting deliveries of food, and packages is resulting in way too much hand washing than is mentally healthy...

In this I also found out I can feel a 3 gram difference.

The HD floppy disks always felt lighter in my hand and I always wondered if that could affect a drive (as my old one went bad after using these)

So I weighed them. :lol:

I figured I can use HD disks for storage. Cheaper. I just want to have everything usable in the old way too (although it's been way more trouble than it should have been)

Can also feel a 2 bpm difference. This stuff can be a blessing and a nightmare.

Anyway, some music hardware is on its way, so I can focus this obsessive attention on that. Although, because my drum pad for triggering my keyboard in Notator is coming from Thomann, I would bet it's currently stuck in Germany. :lol:

Even though I stopped doing Christmas over a decade ago, I go off the rails mentally this time of year. Anxiety is through the roof and is accompanied by mood swings. I can only theorise that I am picking up the collective emotions of the people around me, and this year is extra special.

There is one odd observation I have had though about backing up Notator.

If I have the files on the UltraSatan it loads every time. However, the back up on floppy disk often freezes on the final bit of loading and needs another try (It can even succeed if you sit there for a crazy amount of time.) These are the exact same files!

Way back in the past this has always been the case. The original disk would load every time. The exact copy wouldn't.

The one good thing that happened yesterday is that I finally got myself a kettle.
Now I can stop destroying my pans, which I've nearly replaced.

My floppy drive seems a bit rough on the metal part of the disks, with some new ones showing signs of ware, but I guess I'm lucky I have an original drive that works.

I'm also showing signs of ware. Slipping in the woods and landing my back on a large stone really helped :lol:

Cosmic Puppet wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:00 DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR FLOPPY DISK SURFACE THROUGH A MAGNIFYING GLASS! :lol:

Dammit... now I gotta do it...

Looks fine to me...


We got a metal kettle the other day, boy are those things LOUD!

exxos wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:07

Cosmic Puppet wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:00 DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR FLOPPY DISK SURFACE THROUGH A MAGNIFYING GLASS! :lol:

Dammit... now I gotta do it...

Looks fine to me...


Capture.PNG


We got a metal kettle the other day, boy are those things LOUD!

You gotta catch the light at a certain angle. :lol: Trust me, it will be there lol I can't capture it with my phone.

I'm looking at it through part of the zoom that broke off my old camera when it was in a bicycle crash. It didn't break it's ribs though haha :lol:
I never thought about the kettle volume, but then again I live next to the busiest road in town.

I don't like the idea of drinking water boiled in plastic :lol:

I don't know if this is your problem with the floppys, but I heard that the chemical composition of the HD disks is different from the 720k ones. They work but apparently not as good for data integrity? Perhaps someone else might know about this, I can't remember where I read about it.

Steve wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:21 I don't know if this is your problem with the floppys, but I heard that the chemical composition of the HD disks is different from the 720k ones. They work but apparently not as good for data integrity? Perhaps someone else might know about this, I can't remember where I read about it.

Thanks Steve, that's interesting.

With my old drive the mechanism for retrieving the disk went and would stick. I thought it was the HD disks, but that could have been Pigeon superstition (now I can hear Stevie Wonder singing that in my head lol) on my part. It could simply have been 10 years plus of disk swaping as I had no hard drive back then.

I remember people talking about HD and DD's for years, but not sure if anyone really concluded anynthing. Like I used to format all my 720K with maxed out settings 11 sectors etc never had any dataloss.. others say otherwise.. I mean I had like 2,000+ floppies formatted like that back in the day.

AFAIK, you can format a 1.44 as 720K (but why ?!) , I would assume its ok that way as the 1.44's must be higher quality for the tracks. Though formatting 720K as 1.44 is not really a good idea... OTOH, someone claimed the write currents are different between 720K and 1.44.. I never looked into it all.

exxos wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:45 I remember people talking about HD and DD's for years, but not sure if anyone really concluded anynthing. Like I used to format all my 720K with maxed out settings 11 sectors etc never had any dataloss.. others say otherwise.. I mean I had like 2,000+ floppies formatted like that back in the day.

AFAIK, you can format a 1.44 as 720K (but why ?!) , I would assume its ok that way as the 1.44's must be higher quality for the tracks. Though formatting 720K as 1.44 is not really a good idea... OTOH, someone claimed the write currents are different between 720K and 1.44.. I never looked into it all.

I started formatting 1.44 to 720 in the early noughties as they were available on the high street. Even though it's possible to get them online now, they are usually from america with huge shipping costs.

I guess this explains the bits. It must just be microchips and stuff that are made in clean rooms.

exxos wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:45 I remember people talking about HD and DD's for years, but not sure if anyone really concluded anynthing.

I cant quite remember the exact details, but its a definite no-no.

Something along the lines of the HD drive heads needing higher magnetic levels than the DD floppies provide (or was it vica versa?). They may work for a bit but are prone to failure sooneror later.

mrbombermillzy wrote: 22 Dec 2020 17:42

exxos wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:45 I remember people talking about HD and DD's for years, but not sure if anyone really concluded anynthing.

I cant quite remember the exact details, but its a definite no-no.

Something along the lines of the HD drive heads needing higher magnetic levels than the DD floppies provide (or was it vica versa?). They may work for a bit but are prone to failure sooneror later.

Those HD disks with my vocal exercises on were made in 2001 and were still alive until I decided to put them on new old stock disks yesterday.

I am only using DD's for general use though just to play it safe.

Steve wrote: 22 Dec 2020 13:21 I don't know if this is your problem with the floppys, but I heard that the chemical composition of the HD disks is different from the 720k ones. They work but apparently not as good for data integrity? Perhaps someone else might know about this, I can't remember where I read about it.

There is actually a difference between the materials used to make 1.44MB floppies and 720KB floppies.

The magnetic material in a 1.44MB disk requires a much stronger current to change it's magnetic state, so if you drop a 1.44MB disk into a 720KB drive, and format it at DD capacity, the chances are it will work, however you may later run into data integrity issues because the 720KB drive was not able to properly change the state of the magnetic material in the HD disk.

I say may "encounter data integrity issues" because I never had a problem doing it myself, but the possibility is that it is a long term effect, and is only seen over years.

I personally don't think it's a good idea to put anything of value you want to keep long term on a 1.44MB floppy disk formatted to 720KB in an ST.

I did once find an article explaining all of this, and I'll post a link if I can find it again.

EDIT:

On this Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_density it states the following:

"Double density (DD) 3½-inch disks use an iron oxide coating, just as with 5¼-inch DD/QD disks. However, drives utilize stronger 670-oersted write heads and a narrower track width of 0.115 mm (0.0045 in) for a density of 135 tpi and 8717 bpi.

High density (HD) 3½-inch disks switch to a cobalt disk coating, just as with 5¼-inch HD disks. Drives use 700-oersted write heads for a density of 17434 bpi"