🚀 go-pugleaf

In <4vvdb4$6...@lex.zippo.com>, h...@slc.unisys.com (Helge Moulding) writes:
>* the refrigerator magnet - most fridge magnets aren't strong enough for
>  two pieces of paper, never mind a floppy disk. And fridge magnets aren't
>  likely to damage the floppy, either, as weak as they are.

I knew a Burroughs Field Engineer who ran into this kind of thing.  After 
being called out several times to work on the drives, he investigated a bit
deeper and found the user storing the floppy on the side of a cabinet with 
a magnet. What made it worse was that this wasn't your ordinary floppy - it
was a Burroughs specialty commonly known as a '3/6'(pronounced 'three-six')
drive.  These were rather high-density 8 inch floppies that were originally
intended to hold 5MB.  The designers had problems getting the inner 
cylinders to work, so they dropped them and ended up with an 8" floppy
holding 3MB.  The drives usually came in pairs, thus the designation 3/6.
The problem for the user is that these things came factory-formatted, and
the drives couldn't re-format them.  Once a disk was damaged, all you could
do was throw it away.  What made this really hurt was they they cost about 
$35 to $50 per disk(ouch!).

Ben
-- 
Ben Coleman tng...@mindspring.com     |
Senior Systems Analyst                |
TermNet Merchant Services, Inc.       |
Atlanta, GA                           |