Old disks. was RE: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes

At 12:24 PM 11/6/05 -0600, you wrote: FWIW I just sold a big box of 8" floppy disks for the DEC MINC computer. They were all dated in the late '70s and up to about 1980. I was concerned weather or not they were still readable but I got this from the buyer yesterday. If I can still read 8" disks after 25 years why the %(*&&^*&^% can't they make 3.5" disks that are still readable after 2 weeks?! "So far, I haven't found a single disk that isn't readable. Interestingly enough, though, when I first booted a copy of the MINC demo and tried to run programs, I kept getting "TRAP TO 10", an illegal instruction trap. Hm. As was often done, my MINC was "upgraded" with an 11/23 CPU (M8186). Reviewing the documentation, I saw several places where instructions had changed between the 11/03 (M7270) and 11/23. I rooted about my shop and, lo! I had an 11/03 CPU. I replaced the board, and everything worked fine. Well, almost everything. I tried running a couple of the graphics programs, and no joy. Digging further, I discovered that the MINC BASIC graphics routines are expecting a VT105 terminal (I'm using a VT420). Hm. There's a VT125 on eBay.... :-) (I might just rewrite something like Kermit to grok the VT105 escape codes, too.) Thanks so much for putting these up on eBay! I'd been trying to find them for a long time without so much as a glimmer of recognition. Cheers -- Ian " Joe