Modern floppy disk question...

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Leonard" <trixter at oldskool.org> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 5:06 PM Subject: Re: Modern floppy disk question... less of in an http://www.oldskool.org/ http://www.mobygames.com/ http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ Could it just be that few if any places manufacture 3.5" floppies anymore and all the stock being sold today was made back in the 90's? I could see a company buying a large lot at a good deal when floppies were somewhat still used and just selling small quantities of that stash to this day. For a company making commodity media to make a profit they would need to have some decent volume in production at any one time, so most if not all of those companies have probably retooled for some other semi profitable line of products after making a last run or 2 of floppies. If my theory is correct then a large stack of media is sitting in a warehouse going from a very hot climate in summer to a very cold one in winter over a period of years, maybe weakening the glue holding the magnetic material on the disk or slightly warping the housing just enough to cause more then the usual problems to the end user. Either that or they had to change the process of making the media because of new EPA regulations on adhesives or something. Most of the cheap floppies I have purchased in the last few years were from duplicators dumping their old stock since they don't need it anymore and those disks work great in my 8/16bit systems. The cheap low grade generic floppies I purchased bulk back in the 90's have had some reliability issues being written to once and then stored in disk boxes.