16 Sep
2004
16 Sep
'04
7:43 a.m.
At 04:00 PM 9/15/2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
I do not consider myself a magnetic-media expert, but
I've made a number
of (low-density) controllers and en/de-coding schemes, and repaired
others, and read a lot (in one ear out the other probably).
I figure there are a few failure modes that would be easy for amateurs
(like me) to recover, like low-gain, dissipated magnetics (grain
randomization, etc), and such, that would be amenable to software
repair.
With platters, there are clean-room issues as well as very
difficult alignnment issues - imagine how difficult it would
be to re-align a read head with the concentric bands on a
platter that may have been slightly misaligned from its
original hub, especially at contemporary densities.
Floppies are a different matter.
- John