4 Sep
2011
4 Sep
'11
1:20 p.m.
On Wed, 31 Aug 2011, Nathan Pralle wrote:
I'd believe it for one or two, but all of them?
It seems unlikely,
although I could blame bit-rot perhaps. I'm hoping it has something to
do with the hardware instead.
YES
Popping it open, the unit powers on and the drive head
is dropped to the
spinning disk, then lifted, then dropped, then lifted, and the error
occurs. I cannot see if the head is close enough to the disk or not
(and I have *no* idea of the tolerances anyway) and am not sure how I'd
adjust it -- or drive speed, etc. if that's an issue.
Floppy drives operate
with the head in contact.
So, anyone got ideas? There *is* a remote
possibility that all the
disks I got were wiped either by the previous owner or in some sort of
magnetic disaster, but they're well-labeled and came from a working
haul, so I have to imagine that they're still good. Or at least, I'm
hoping they are. (The bits are damned near visible on these things,
after all.)
Perhaps somebody had a malfunctioning drive. It ate the disk. So, he put
the next disk in, and it ate it, also. Sequentially and systematically,
he destroyed every disk.
HOPEFULLY NOT!