8 inch floppies, decaying

[Terry Stewart]

Just my experience,  I once did a trial where I took two identical 5,25
inch disks of the same batch from the same manufacturer.  These were clean
disks which both formatted and verified just fine, but I wanted to see if
IPA did indeed damage the disk.

One I swabbed one with 75% IPA, the other with warm water with a touch of
dishwashing liquid.

On checking the IPA swabbed disk now showed a few damaged sectors.  The
water/detergent one did not.

It's not scientific (just one rep) and I was quite aggressive with the
wiping.  However, it made me steer away from IPA.  Immersing the platters
in warm water with a touch of detergent, and gently wiping (then air
drying) works well for me when cleaning "dirty disks".

Terry (Tez)

On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 8:17 PM, Steve Malikoff via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> Fred asked
> > What concentration of IPA were you using?
>
> 99% Laboratory grade. Not very pleasant to have on the skin, it dries it
> out shockingly.
>
> > There might be a difference in results between 70% and 91%
> >
> > There might also even be a difference in the oxide formulation between
> > brands.  (If Chuck was trying to clean a Wabash, then it might dissolve
> > right through the plastic.)
>
> I've had Computer Resources, Wabash and other cheap diskettes long ago,
> they were
> none too good. Verbatim and Dysan always seemed pretty reliable for me.
>
>