First post, by bjt
- Rank
- Oldbie
Been imaging a lot of floppies recently and thought I'd post a few things I've learnt. Feel free to add!
- Number one enemy - head contamination. Once the heads are heavily contaminated, the disk is toast, and any good disks you insert will be damaged too. Clean the heads with isopropyl if this happens.
- Rotate the disk surface by hand to check it before inserting the disk.
- Clouds on the disk surface? It's mould, chuck the disk 😵
- Ditto for grit, large numbers of foreign bodies, etc. For a game, it's not worth the risk to your drive and other floppies.
- Lines on the disk surface - the oxide's been stripped away for that track. It's toast.
- The disk surface should look clean and shiny before you insert it.
- If you hear a high pitched noise when accessing the disk, remove it ASAP. That's the heads stripping off the oxide coating and getting fouled.
- An LS-120 drive (preferably a later Matushita model) is invaluable. Mine was able to read disks that my regular floppy couldn't.