[vcf-midatlantic] Looking for working 5.25" 1.2MB drive to borrow/rent

John Heritage john.heritage at gmail.com
Fri Nov 26 19:06:42 UTC 2021


Hey All! :)

I have a small amount of old 5.25" floppies I'd like to read some data off
of.  Does anyone have a working 5.25" HD drive that I could borrow?

I have a Socket 7 system and a pair of 5.25" drives that seem bad.

Drive 1 read a couple of disks "ok" -- the data was intact, took several
tries.  After swapping to Drive 2 to see if it was more reliably, Drive 1
now won't power up.

Drive 2 also would read some disks but even less reliably than drive 1.  I
took the protective cover off of Drive 2, carefully used some canned air,
and then carefully alcohol swabbed the read/write heads (as I have in the
past with my Atari 8bit drives).  Let it sit, and it read one more disk,
but since then  - even with additional cleanings won't read or write
anything.

I have both some old OEM disks (i.e. copies of PCBoard) I've tried using,
and also a box of definitely unused 1.2MB floppies that look very clean,
and can't get either config working.  I'd actually like to read that
PCBoard disk if possible so I stopped 'testing' with it and just focused on
the clean unused disk.

Anyway, I'd love to rent or borrow a 5.25" HD / 1.2mb drive that is good.
I can paypal over some $ as a deposit or whatever if necessary.  I have
about 12 disks I want to read data off of and then i'll be done with the
drive.  I'm located in the King of Prussia PA area but have no problem
driving wherever if in person is preferred.

Thanks!
John


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