This video turned onto a bit of a monster. Part was recorded before the Pimping the 128D video then the rest afterwards. I ended up with many hours of footage which mostly got left out because watching 100 disks being cleaned was Soooooo boring :) If anything was unclear or I missed a point then please reply here. Edit. I just saw an excellent video from VCF SW 2024 that covers archiving. ua-cam.com/video/OhlAhlC7FDg/v-deo.htmlsi=KYIAXjWdx4uYZ6B-
Fantastic video! I have not seen another video that covers this topic. Loved seeing Hitchhikers, Bards Tale and Hackers. All of those I had back in the day. Keep up the great work!!!!
As someone who's been rescuing and archiving floppy disks for 30 years, I was happy to see 99% of the advice here was exactly right, and very well presented. The only comment I have is that it isn't necessary for the alcohol to dry inside the disk, as it evaporates very quickly and also acts as a lubricant. In fact, letting the alcohol sit on the wafer for a longer period of time may actually slightly dissolve the binder. So rather than wait for the inside to dry, just go ahead and image it. (A better lubricant is cyclomethicone, which is very slick and evaporates after a few minutes; it's good for reading those "screechy" disks where the binder is dissolving.) Also, you kept referring to the disk jacket as a "sleeve" -- the sleeve is the paper folder a diskette is stored in; the jacket is the physical container of the wafer inside. But that's a minor niggle, and overall this is a great video. I look forward to your next videos!
I will look into cyclomethicone as I was wondering if there was a good way to lubricate the jacket sleeve😅😎🤓 This is a well worded Compliment sandwich! Many internet users could learn a lot from this post on how to correct someone without trolling! Seriously, Thank you for the corrections.
@@RavenWolfRetroTech Occupational hazard of having a minor amount of OCD ;-) but also understanding the work that goes into this kind of experiment, and also the production of a UA-cam video. Thanks for being understanding :-) and I truly am looking forward to your next videos, and I am subscribed.
A better test might have been to try dumping the disks with something like ZoomFloppy. I fear that would probably show a lot more failures as it checks all tracks. I have the same 3D printed jig that you use but instead of a microfibre cloth, I use 70% IPA medical wipes (pre-injection wipes as they're labelled). I have huge success rates with these but I would go through quite a lot of them - usually 1 wipe per disk. Thanks for taking time to make the video. Much appreciated.
I agree that would have been an improvement but I have 1000s of disks and that is a very slow process. I have used the Greaseweazle and zoom floppy but usually if the disk is clean and runs smoothly then, if it can boot or read a directory, then the failure rate is pretty low.
Great video! it has inspired me to make another run at cleaning some of my old disks. I have a lot of user disks. Maybe you could make a video on the best and most reliable way to load old user programs and save them to a new disk. Or maybe there is a safer place to save old user programs. Just curious about options .
User programs are usually not protected so a file copier or something like a greaseweazle or ZoomFloppy will work. On my own old disks I used a ZoomFloppy on my PC and read them into D64s using CBM Command in VICE
I received a non working Oceanic OC-118N drive last year and all it had was a mechanical problem where it jammed the disk so hard that the motor wouldn't turn properly. It came with a floppy inserted, and the disk inside was all mangled and deformed around the hub ring by the motor trying to spin it. After repairing the drive I cleaned that floppy like you did with the same cleaning jig and a q-tip just for the fun of it. When both sides of the q-tip got a dark brown color I had little hope it'll work. But to my surprise, both sides of the floppy wrote and read error free ;-)
Wow I am surprised that worked. I had to look up that drive and I see that it is the same as the Excelerator+. Oceanic was right here in Springfield, just a few mile from my home!
My original disks from the 1980s have been pretty good, but they were stored in a dry cupboard, but I did transfer them all over to "new old disks" I shipped from the US to Australia. The other big problem in "testing" old disks is the dirt they put on your drive head and the damage they can cause, and then the need to clean the drive head. Unless it's something special, I've found it simpler to download from the net the program and then transfer it to a "new old disk". Doing a lot of testing old disks will put a lot of wear and tear on the drive.
A friend gave me his old C64 and software that included the original Sid Meier's Pirates! complete in box. But the disk was crushed against the manual and severely bent. I replaced the folio sleeve like in this video and it still works perfectly! I was thrilled that the media was still able to run after being in that condition!
I may have mostly the original tape games for my Commodore 64, but i also have the original 5,25" floppy disk games 😺👍🕹️. In fact, i still have a legendary classic game DEFENDER OF THE CROWN (boxed) for my Commodore 64 😺👍🕹️. I wish, i could find all three original games of THE BARD'S TALES series 😹👍🕹️. I also have the original 3,5" floppy disks for my Amiga 500 😺👍🕹️. A big retrospective like 👍🕹️ from Vantaa, Finland 🇫🇮.
Love it! Those are amazing games. Defender of the Crown is the game that I ordered along with my Amiga 500 back in the day! I am not sure if it made it into the video but there were 2 copies of Bards Tale III and none of the disks work :-(
Excellent video and perfect timing. I have been cleaning and imaging a very large collection of disks. Mostly magazine and user group disks. I know most of these are already imaged so I don't stress too much. But my own personal collection is another story and I am getting through most of those. My own collection needed very little cleaning. My large lot of Loadstar and Compute!'s Gazette disks on the other hand were really bad. I had to resort to removing the disks from the jacket and that resulted in a good percentage imaged. A 1571 and a zoomfloppy with nibtools is perfect for imaging and testing these old disks. I have done over 2000 to date and still a lot to go. No where near the 10-20k you have though! Yikes that is daunting.
Thanks RacerX. I have not tried the 1571 with my ZoomFloppy, just a 1541. I'll give it a try. I have noticed that magazine disks are usually very low quality and have had terrible recovery rates with them
@@RavenWolfRetroTech Yes I have found the same. Though I have some exceptions it seems the disks they used were not great. Especially true for the Loadstar disks in the newer issues of the early to late 90s. I can usually tell by looking at the jacket what kind of disk it is. The ones with circular rivet marks seem to be better and the ones with no rivet marks on the back seem to be Athana. Their early first 2 years or so they used Opus disks (they actually were a reseller too) and I found these did not hold up. If you open the disk you will see the liner has turned mostly brown. To me this is the liner going bad either from excessive heat or chemicals I am not sure. But I do have duplicates of some issues from collections that were stored at room temperature and some of them are fine. The liner is saturated with some kind of lubricant. So perhaps that lubricant on some brands turns bad after time? Also I have found that the 1571 in particular is very sensitive about junk on the disk. The squeal sound you showed I have heard all too many times and usually like you,I find the disk now has grooves on it. Using a 1541 though I have really not found that to be an issue. I am guessing since the 1571 has 2 heads there is more touching the disk vs the 1541 that has a felt pad on the top that actually seems to clean the disk a tad bit. I have noticed that if I image a disk that shows errors then do the backside often it is fine. Then if I flip the disk again to do the front it comes out fine. I guess it has to do with the felt pad sweeping away some minor crud. The 1571 just collects it in the grooves of the heads. Anyway if you ever need someone to test something or bounce ideas off for this stuff, please feel free to contact me.
Great video. I’ve gone through a similar exercise with any eBay lots of 5.25” disks I’ve picked up. Have you tried any heat treatment before ? Was curious if it would help with the mould as well as rebonding the oxide to the plastic.
I was thinking I would start by just putting some bad ones in my attic for a while. It is very dry and the attic fan keeps the temp below about 120 in the summer. I don't have a food dehydrator so my options are limited.
LOL! I'd be renting (errr hiring) a few high school kids to clean the hoards of disks I found worthy at first glance. I got tired just looking at the mass amount of disks you had! haha
Went through all the old disks back in the 90's and converted them to images, then purchased a CD burner and put them all on it. Probably have some stuff that isn't archived on the internet
Sadly, because I moved to the Amiga in 1988, Most of my disks were lost (I was in the Army at the time). Fortunately one box of about 10 disks was saved including my DDM source code and they all read fine. Funny enough if you saw my earlier video (2020?) where I thought the back sides were bad on a couple, I later realized that they were written on my C128/1571 using a little KERNAL hack I had created (called Duo-Drive) that let me use side one as device 8 and side 2 as device 9 in 64 mode, so they cannot be flipped in a 1541 as they are spinning backwards.
I have passed a few boxes of user disks, along with some MECC disks and magazine disks, on to members of PDX Retro Forest and am going to have a way for Patrons to get them for the cost of shipping... With DDM taking a ton of time over the last year I have been feeling like I need to get them to people that will enjoy them more. Right now they take a ton of space in my storage shed and, while dry, are still deteriorating as time passes.
This video turned onto a bit of a monster. Part was recorded before the Pimping the 128D video then the rest afterwards. I ended up with many hours of footage which mostly got left out because watching 100 disks being cleaned was Soooooo boring :) If anything was unclear or I missed a point then please reply here.
Edit. I just saw an excellent video from VCF SW 2024 that covers archiving. ua-cam.com/video/OhlAhlC7FDg/v-deo.htmlsi=KYIAXjWdx4uYZ6B-
Fantastic video! I have not seen another video that covers this topic. Loved seeing Hitchhikers, Bards Tale and Hackers. All of those I had back in the day. Keep up the great work!!!!
Thanks Frank!
This was another very interesting retro video of the disks. Thanks a lot for sharing your findings of those old disks from the Stone Colection :-)
My pleasure!
As someone who's been rescuing and archiving floppy disks for 30 years, I was happy to see 99% of the advice here was exactly right, and very well presented. The only comment I have is that it isn't necessary for the alcohol to dry inside the disk, as it evaporates very quickly and also acts as a lubricant. In fact, letting the alcohol sit on the wafer for a longer period of time may actually slightly dissolve the binder. So rather than wait for the inside to dry, just go ahead and image it. (A better lubricant is cyclomethicone, which is very slick and evaporates after a few minutes; it's good for reading those "screechy" disks where the binder is dissolving.)
Also, you kept referring to the disk jacket as a "sleeve" -- the sleeve is the paper folder a diskette is stored in; the jacket is the physical container of the wafer inside. But that's a minor niggle, and overall this is a great video. I look forward to your next videos!
I will look into cyclomethicone as I was wondering if there was a good way to lubricate the jacket sleeve😅😎🤓
This is a well worded Compliment sandwich! Many internet users could learn a lot from this post on how to correct someone without trolling! Seriously, Thank you for the corrections.
@@RavenWolfRetroTech Occupational hazard of having a minor amount of OCD ;-) but also understanding the work that goes into this kind of experiment, and also the production of a UA-cam video. Thanks for being understanding :-) and I truly am looking forward to your next videos, and I am subscribed.
It's always a treat when you upload videos, it's guaranteed to be quality content! Thanks for this :)
Wow, thanks!
Excellent video!! Haven't seen a video on this topic before. Thanks for sharing
Thanks Rudy, I am hoping it helps people. I am finding this can be a very panful process!
A better test might have been to try dumping the disks with something like ZoomFloppy. I fear that would probably show a lot more failures as it checks all tracks.
I have the same 3D printed jig that you use but instead of a microfibre cloth, I use 70% IPA medical wipes (pre-injection wipes as they're labelled). I have huge success rates with these but I would go through quite a lot of them - usually 1 wipe per disk.
Thanks for taking time to make the video. Much appreciated.
I agree that would have been an improvement but I have 1000s of disks and that is a very slow process. I have used the Greaseweazle and zoom floppy but usually if the disk is clean and runs smoothly then, if it can boot or read a directory, then the failure rate is pretty low.
Good video, and thanks for the cleaning tips along with the tips on what disks will contaminate your drive and if the risk is worth the reward.
Great video! it has inspired me to make another run at cleaning some of my old disks. I have a lot of user disks. Maybe you could make a video on the best and most reliable way to load old user programs and save them to a new disk. Or maybe there is a safer place to save old user programs. Just curious about options .
User programs are usually not protected so a file copier or something like a greaseweazle or ZoomFloppy will work. On my own old disks I used a ZoomFloppy on my PC and read them into D64s using CBM Command in VICE
Awesome, i will look in to this. thanks again!
I received a non working Oceanic OC-118N drive last year and all it had was a mechanical problem where it jammed the disk so hard that the motor wouldn't turn properly. It came with a floppy inserted, and the disk inside was all mangled and deformed around the hub ring by the motor trying to spin it. After repairing the drive I cleaned that floppy like you did with the same cleaning jig and a q-tip just for the fun of it. When both sides of the q-tip got a dark brown color I had little hope it'll work. But to my surprise, both sides of the floppy wrote and read error free ;-)
Wow I am surprised that worked. I had to look up that drive and I see that it is the same as the Excelerator+. Oceanic was right here in Springfield, just a few mile from my home!
My original disks from the 1980s have been pretty good, but they were stored in a dry cupboard, but I did transfer them all over to "new old disks" I shipped from the US to Australia. The other big problem in "testing" old disks is the dirt they put on your drive head and the damage they can cause, and then the need to clean the drive head. Unless it's something special, I've found it simpler to download from the net the program and then transfer it to a "new old disk". Doing a lot of testing old disks will put a lot of wear and tear on the drive.
A friend gave me his old C64 and software that included the original Sid Meier's Pirates! complete in box. But the disk was crushed against the manual and severely bent. I replaced the folio sleeve like in this video and it still works perfectly! I was thrilled that the media was still able to run after being in that condition!
That is awesome, Pirates is such an Amazing game!
I may have mostly the original tape
games for my Commodore 64,
but i also have the original 5,25" floppy disk games 😺👍🕹️.
In fact, i still have a legendary classic game DEFENDER OF THE CROWN
(boxed) for my Commodore 64 😺👍🕹️.
I wish, i could find all three original
games of THE BARD'S TALES series 😹👍🕹️.
I also have the original 3,5" floppy disks for my Amiga 500 😺👍🕹️.
A big retrospective like 👍🕹️
from Vantaa, Finland 🇫🇮.
Love it! Those are amazing games. Defender of the Crown is the game that I ordered along with my Amiga 500 back in the day! I am not sure if it made it into the video but there were 2 copies of Bards Tale III and none of the disks work :-(
Excellent video and perfect timing. I have been cleaning and imaging a very large collection of disks. Mostly magazine and user group disks. I know most of these are already imaged so I don't stress too much. But my own personal collection is another story and I am getting through most of those. My own collection needed very little cleaning. My large lot of Loadstar and Compute!'s Gazette disks on the other hand were really bad. I had to resort to removing the disks from the jacket and that resulted in a good percentage imaged.
A 1571 and a zoomfloppy with nibtools is perfect for imaging and testing these old disks. I have done over 2000 to date and still a lot to go. No where near the 10-20k you have though! Yikes that is daunting.
Thanks RacerX. I have not tried the 1571 with my ZoomFloppy, just a 1541. I'll give it a try.
I have noticed that magazine disks are usually very low quality and have had terrible recovery rates with them
@@RavenWolfRetroTech Yes I have found the same. Though I have some exceptions it seems the disks they used were not great. Especially true for the Loadstar disks in the newer issues of the early to late 90s. I can usually tell by looking at the jacket what kind of disk it is. The ones with circular rivet marks seem to be better and the ones with no rivet marks on the back seem to be Athana. Their early first 2 years or so they used Opus disks (they actually were a reseller too) and I found these did not hold up. If you open the disk you will see the liner has turned mostly brown. To me this is the liner going bad either from excessive heat or chemicals I am not sure. But I do have duplicates of some issues from collections that were stored at room temperature and some of them are fine. The liner is saturated with some kind of lubricant. So perhaps that lubricant on some brands turns bad after time?
Also I have found that the 1571 in particular is very sensitive about junk on the disk. The squeal sound you showed I have heard all too many times and usually like you,I find the disk now has grooves on it. Using a 1541 though I have really not found that to be an issue. I am guessing since the 1571 has 2 heads there is more touching the disk vs the 1541 that has a felt pad on the top that actually seems to clean the disk a tad bit. I have noticed that if I image a disk that shows errors then do the backside often it is fine. Then if I flip the disk again to do the front it comes out fine. I guess it has to do with the felt pad sweeping away some minor crud. The 1571 just collects it in the grooves of the heads. Anyway if you ever need someone to test something or bounce ideas off for this stuff, please feel free to contact me.
Great video. I’ve gone through a similar exercise with any eBay lots of 5.25” disks I’ve picked up. Have you tried any heat treatment before ? Was curious if it would help with the mould as well as rebonding the oxide to the plastic.
I was thinking I would start by just putting some bad ones in my attic for a while. It is very dry and the attic fan keeps the temp below about 120 in the summer. I don't have a food dehydrator so my options are limited.
LOL! I'd be renting (errr hiring) a few high school kids to clean the hoards of disks I found worthy at first glance. I got tired just looking at the mass amount of disks you had! haha
And they would want to know why they are cleaning save icons :-)
Went through all the old disks back in the 90's and converted them to images, then purchased a CD burner and put them all on it. Probably have some stuff that isn't archived on the internet
Sadly, because I moved to the Amiga in 1988, Most of my disks were lost (I was in the Army at the time). Fortunately one box of about 10 disks was saved including my DDM source code and they all read fine. Funny enough if you saw my earlier video (2020?) where I thought the back sides were bad on a couple, I later realized that they were written on my C128/1571 using a little KERNAL hack I had created (called Duo-Drive) that let me use side one as device 8 and side 2 as device 9 in 64 mode, so they cannot be flipped in a 1541 as they are spinning backwards.
@@RavenWolfRetroTech that's a shame. I wish I still had all my shoeboxes of disks
Unless it is a disk with a rare title, I would just skip it with the numbers of them you have.
I have passed a few boxes of user disks, along with some MECC disks and magazine disks, on to members of PDX Retro Forest and am going to have a way for Patrons to get them for the cost of shipping... With DDM taking a ton of time over the last year I have been feeling like I need to get them to people that will enjoy them more. Right now they take a ton of space in my storage shed and, while dry, are still deteriorating as time passes.
what message?
I am not understanding :)