Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.
I've not had these old Macs booted since I read that message, been
hellish busy, but I just fired up my Performa 5320, applied some
alcohol to my Civilization floppies that had hitherto resolutely
refused to be read, et voila! The discs all mounted!
It took a few attempts, actually, maybe 4 or 5 applications of alocohol
to each disk before each finally mounted. I was able to back-up each
floppy to hard disk, too.
A great result! I intend to work through my entire collection of
big-box floppy games. :)
I have ditched a lot of disks over the years that refused to mount.
Damn shame, as if I knew this trick I could probably have salvaged a
lot of them. PD, newsletter/user groups stuff, magazine cover disks,
all lost, like tears in rain. :(
Anyway, massive gratitude to Mr Finnigan for the tip!
*I cannot reply to the post where the tip was given, as it seems
Eternal September has suffered a catastrophic failure and lost all
messages older than a couple of months. I hope Ray Banana gets them
back!
Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.
I've not had these old Macs booted since I read that message, been
hellish busy, but I just fired up my Performa 5320, applied some
alcohol to my Civilization floppies that had hitherto resolutely
refused to be read, et voila! The discs all mounted!
It took a few attempts, actually, maybe 4 or 5 applications of alocohol
to each disk before each finally mounted. I was able to back-up each
floppy to hard disk, too.
A great result! I intend to work through my entire collection of
big-box floppy games. :)
I have ditched a lot of disks over the years that refused to mount.
Damn shame, as if I knew this trick I could probably have salvaged a
lot of them. PD, newsletter/user groups stuff, magazine cover disks,
all lost, like tears in rain. :(
Anyway, massive gratitude to Mr Finnigan for the tip!
*I cannot reply to the post where the tip was given, as it seems
Eternal September has suffered a catastrophic failure and lost all
messages older than a couple of months. I hope Ray Banana gets them
back!
In article <140920240727420035%vintageapplemac@gmail.com>,
scole <vintageapplemac@gmail.com> wrote:
Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.
I've not had these old Macs booted since I read that message, been
hellish busy, but I just fired up my Performa 5320, applied some
alcohol to my Civilization floppies that had hitherto resolutely
refused to be read, et voila! The discs all mounted!
It took a few attempts, actually, maybe 4 or 5 applications of alocohol
to each disk before each finally mounted. I was able to back-up each
floppy to hard disk, too.
A great result! I intend to work through my entire collection of
big-box floppy games. :)
I have ditched a lot of disks over the years that refused to mount.
Damn shame, as if I knew this trick I could probably have salvaged a
lot of them. PD, newsletter/user groups stuff, magazine cover disks,
all lost, like tears in rain. :(
Anyway, massive gratitude to Mr Finnigan for the tip!
*I cannot reply to the post where the tip was given, as it seems
Eternal September has suffered a catastrophic failure and lost all
messages older than a couple of months. I hope Ray Banana gets them
back!
That's great news! And sorry to hear about the other floppies you threw away - I
also tended to do that, though mostly with old blanks that initialization. Will
try the isopropyl alcohol next time. Since they're not making them anymore, I
feel really bad about throwing floppies away ... even though I have enough to
last until I'm 100 I think :-)
Could you please take a moment and check which of your floppies have been preserved on macintoshgarden.org already? You might have something not archived
yet that we run in danger of losing forever otherwise ...
Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to restore
"dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use isopropyl alcohol.
in article 140920240727420035%vintageapplemac@gmail.com, scole at vintageapplemac@gmail.com wrote on 9/14/24 12:27 AM:
Well, it's been a few months since I posted to the group asking how to
restore "dead" floppies, and one tip* that was given was to use
isopropyl alcohol.
Sorry to reply so late, but does this involve swabbing the disk with alcohol or somehow soaking its dust catcher? I happen to have the opposite problem: almost all of my disks are now unwritable!
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