20 Oct
2005
20 Oct
'05
5:41 p.m.
Subject: Re: PC floppy cable twists...
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:05:50 -0700
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
On 10/20/2005 at 7:42 PM Allison wrote:
That is a PCism. That being those fans that suck unfilterd crud and
cruft into the system.
In the summer we do get brown dust from whatever. All of my systems
cooling and air flow get attention even if it requires some card stock
and tape duct work. Fans blow in and filters keep cat hair and
other deutrius from getting in those places where it's going to do bad
things. I find that tends to keep the inside of my PCs clean too. I
turn the fan around and add a filter. Beats having a hairball clogging
the cpu fan and crashing the system.
Under those conditions I don't worry about my media unless its old
and unknown.
Allison
Media wear, I've had disks spinning for years
in clean environments and
several dead drives that were still fine.
Dirt happens. It gets between the head and the media and doesn't do any
favors to either. I've got several diskettes in my collection that have
the oxide coating worn clear through on the directory track. Better to
either stop the motor or lift the head. Around here, during the driest
months of the year (August and Sepember), the clay soils turn to a very
fine powder and become airborne. Hoiuse dust during those months tends to
have a brownish color.
Add to this that most PC's have fans on the power supply that are set to
exhaust air from the box, which means that the drive slot is a convenient
entry point for contamination. It used to be that fans were set blow the
other way and filters were used.