They have a project of rcovering data from floppies, that was written up
by BBC
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251009-rescuing-knowledge-trapped-on-old-floppy-disks
The article is a pleasant read, but has technical inaccuracies.
For example, they say that a 3 inch drive (as compared to 3.5" drive) has
"a different voltage system". (+5V and +12V doesn't seem to be a
"different voltage system")) They "had to source a specific disk drive
made by Amstrad, build new connectors and jerry-rig a power cable to
access the disks." The most common 3" drive in USA is the one that was
marketed by Amdek. They used to have ads for two drive systems for Apple
and Coco. The bare drives of those have the exact same power and data
cabling as 5.25" drive. (34 pin card edge, and a power plug that we
[erroneously?] refer to as Amphenol)
Or, maybe they just mean that they have drives with power supplies that
expect 110VAC 60Hz?
I hope that they realize that 3" drives were available both as double
sided and as "flippy", and that neither of those can access the secnd side
of the other. (Some minor machining to let the Double sided also flip,
would let the DS do both)
"I bought my eight-inch drive off eBay," says Chris Knowles, a participant
in the Future Nostalgia project. "It was a miracle that it worked."
They mention mould, "delicately teasing mould off the flimsy surface of
the magnetic disks to avoid scratching them",
but not loss of coating on the cookie, nor about baking. No mention of
need to clean heads more than usual.
They talk about need to find people with knowledge of the systems, to be
able to make sense of them, but no mention of commercial disk format
conversion software, such as 22Disk (We miss you, Chuck), XenoCopy,
Uniform, etc.
No mention of flux transition systems to get raw track images when they
don't know the disk format.
Although, to be fair, a lot of those problems are file structure (every
word processing program had its own unique file structure), after the file
itself has been accessed.
They say, while on the topic of PC and Mac disks that it is very hard to
date the materials. "It's quite difficult to date floppy disks as people
used systems for quite a while,"
Did they not notice the "DATE" field in the file primary directory entry?
No mention of data recovery from corrupted or damaged disks.
On 9 October 2025, she hosted a floppy disk workshop at Cambridge
University Library where members of the public could bring old disks they
had at home to see what contents are locked inside.
https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/research-institute/events/floppy-disks-workshop
They explicitly reject "ZIP disks, JAZ drives, SuperDisks, or other
non-floppy portable media"
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred [email protected]
