8 inch floppies, decaying

[steven at malikoff.com]

Adrian said:
> Tonight I got my imaging PC to successfully read some of the 8” disks from my CPT8500 word processor using one of its own Tandon TM848-01 drives, sadly it seems the boot disk is toast but I’ve been able to dump some of the data disks as well as the Utilities. Since I have a box of unused disks
I thought I’d try writing back an image but got a lot of CRC errors. Closer inspection of the disk itself shows this - http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/8inchFloppyImaging-7.jpg <http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/8inchFloppyImaging-7.jpg> - which looks like damp.>
> Is it actually the magnetic coating breaking down? Dare I attempt cleaning?


If it was me I certainly would attempt cleaning, after all it was unreadable anyway. Perhaps try cleaning a test area with a cotton bud (Q-tip)
and isopropyl alcohol. If the stuff comes off without oxide removal then I'd slice the top edge off the jacket to remove (with clean disposable
gloves on a lint-free surface) and clean the whole disc and finally put into a clean jacket.

Steve.