Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[dmccunney <den...@gm...>]

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 5:33 PM, Thomas Mueller <mue...@tw...> wrote:

> I never had a USB floppy drive but have experience with regular floppy drives, 3.5" and 5.25".
>
> In the later years, I had great trouble with floppy drives.  Ability to write was lost before the ability to read.  5.25" floppies seemed to have better shelf life than 3.5".
>
> FreeDOS did better than Linux with floppy drives, and Linux did better than FreeBSD or NetBSD.
>
> Error messages you got with that floppy disk were roughly consistent with what I would get with floppies from 1995 and thereabouts.
>
> Even floppies that I had never used proved unusable.

That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
deserved what you got.

Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
lying around.

> Tom
______
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519