22 Feb
2008
22 Feb
'08
5:05 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Temperature and its buddy, humidity have a lot to do
with the
readability of diskettes. Too much humidity (as in a cold diskette
in a warm room generating condensation) will cause the cookie to drag
in its jacket, for example.
I try to allow diskettes to take some time to acclimate (for 2 or 3
days) in a low humidity (20 percent RH) environment at 20C. I don't
know if an extremely dry environment would be any better.
I do keep the AC on in my computer room 24/7, although in winter, since
it's so cold the condenser almost never kicks in.
So I suppose it was at most 60'F. Outside was 30-something so the disks
were about 40'F at most.
Somehow, in this case, I no longer suppose the temperature was
involved. Before sending out the disks, I re-read them again, and every
single one read just fine. I expect it was a case of the owner's drive
being dirty/misaligned.
Then, there's some media that's just plain
garbage--it was terrible
when it was new and is no better now (e.g. Wabash, Control Data,
Elephant, etc.).
Wow, I remember Elephant. :-) They were one of the first disks I
bought, something insane like $2 @ for 5.25" SS/DS... they were pretty
awful when new, I'm not sure I'd put'em in a drive after all these years.