17 Aug
2022
17 Aug
'22
12:20 a.m.
On 8/16/22 14:51, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
Dysan disks were always good.
The early Verbatim disks were not. It was a long time before anybody
else, such as Wabash, made anything as bad.
To get over their own reputation, Verbatim redesigned, and came out with
the "Datalife" series of disks, which were good. And had hub-rings.
Early on, Verbatim offered two grades of disks. The "purple label"
stuff wasn't too awful, but the "pink label" disks were a disaster.
Wabash was an equal-opportunity garbage vendor. Even the half-inch
open-reel tapes were terrible. I confess never to have used their QIC
cartridges, but if they were also terrible, I wouldn't be surprised.
There were quite a few disk brands back in the 5.25" days. Somewhere
around here, I have a box of Kodak floppies that are warranted against
failure. Kodak's deal was that if a disk failed in service, they would
pay for professional data recovery. That one didn't last long.
Brown Disk floppies had the distinction that the jacket was too thick
for some drives--you couldn't get them inserted.
Then there was Elephant and a whole raft of other brands that never
survived.
The funniest experience we had with hub rings was a customer complaining
that using our software, a disk copied without errors, but then couldn't
be read. In frustration, we asked to see the disk. After a few minutes
of examination, it was apparent what was going on--the disk had *two*
hub rings on one side, with one slightly offset.
On the occasion that a customer requests copies of disks, our go-to
brand is still 3M/Imation. I can't recall ever having been disappointed
with them.
--Chuck