🚀 go-pugleaf

In <32290ce2...@news.cyberport.com>, tan...@cyberport.com (Warren Young) writes:
>ea...@wwa.com (the kumquat kuriosity) wrote:
>
>>Agreed. I've rubbed some high-powered magnets (not fridge magnets, but a
>>large metal jobber that can hold a full manilla folder to the file cabinet)
>>over an 800K floppy... did the scrub-scrub motion for about a minute or
>>two, and popped in the disk. fine.
>
>Well, guess what: I can't get the media to fail, either.  This
>wouldn't bother me if I hadn't lost so much data on floppies.  Grrrr.
>Well, we have a phone test box at work that will cause a phone to
>ring.  So, I'll take my old AT&T slimline phone (with mechanical bell)
>down and continue this.
>
>So, a question: what is it that will cause a disk to go bad in the
>five minutes it takes me to drive to work?  It sure as heck isn't
>magnetism.  :-/  I can't count the number of times I've gone home to
>grab something, put it on a floppy, drove to work, and couldn't read
>the disk.
>
>= Warren -- http://www.cyberport.com/~tangent

I've had this happen a couple of times, too, and I don't
think it's due to differences in head alignment between the
diskette drives (Other diskettes have worked fine).  I
suppose it could be due to thermal variations possibly
causing oxide failures, but this is rather unlikely,
especially given that the diskettes work fine (no bad
sectors) after reformatting.  I've wondered if it might be
due to the diskettes being too close to the cables which
carry power to the tail/brake lights in the automobile? (I
typically lay my brief-case on the floor immediately behind
the driver's seat).  These cables will be carrying several
amperes of current, and the magnetic field generated will
not necessarily be nullified by an opposite current since
automobiles (may) use the chassis as the return path.  Hmm,
I may have to investigate this in more detail (Now, if I
only had a magnetometer).

Dave

P.S. I HAVE successfully erased 3.5" floppies using a pair
of magnetic mount antenna magnets by holding the magnets
about .25 inches apart (which is sort of tough to do, due to
their pull), and inserting the 3.5" diskette between them
momentarily.  A friend had given me a box of diskettes of
unknown heritage (e.g., possibly virus contaminated).