28 Jul
2001
28 Jul
'01
10:37 a.m.
Those PerSci drives bring about $9 in scrap value if
you sufficiently dismantle
them. That's about a buck more than the older Shugart drives, and two bucks or
so more than the newer, lighter 8" full-size drives of the late '80's. They
all
have significant scrap value as "high-quality" aluminum.
If you dismantle them, the stuff you take off the castings, heads, motors,
screws, solenoids, sensors, etc, becomes spare parts/hardware, while the
casting, which takes up most of the space gets recycled in a constructive way.
It's not a way to make money, but it reduces waste.
The drives have been "self-dismantling" over the past couple of decades.
In particular, the glue that holds the optical gratings has - in every case
that I've seen - come undone. I've managed to make a few good PerSci's
by combining parts from broken ones, at least. But they're amazingly
complicated drives. (As well they should be, considering how much
they cost back in the 70's - you could buy a brand new car for what 4
PerSci's cost.)
Even on the broken ones there's a huge assortment of electromechanical
parts still in place. How many other 8" floppy drives had motorized
loading/ejecting? (I know that some Shugarts and NEC's had the
option of ejecting via a solenoid, but I'm not counting solenoids here.
And I'm certainly not counting the drives that would, if you loaded and
unloaded the head often enough, vibrate so much that the door popped
open! )
Tim.