I recently purchased a CPC6128 with an internal disk drive on Ebay. But I don't have any disks to try on it. Just by looking around on Ebay I see that these floppies are damn expensive. 170 Euros for a box of 10? 17 Euro for a single disk? :-[
the 3in disks are rare, they havent made new ones in decades..
its cheaper to run a external 3.5in drive..
That's over the top. You can find original disks with games for that price. You should be able to find blank disks for under €10.
Bryce.
Quote from: salvogendut on 09:10, 16 July 25. Just by looking around on Ebay I see that these floppies are damn expensive. 170 Euros for a box of 10? 17 Euro for a single disk?
Unfortunately a few scalpers seem to dominate the market. I've seen a few examples where good deals were sold very fast just to turn up again in parts for (in sum) several times the price of the original deal. (I wouldn't even be mad if there would be an additional service but they don't care about anything and sell exactly like it is, just for 3x the price. )
This has driven the prices up again. A year ago the more normal price for a disk was around 2-5€ per piece, depending on the quantity sold. 10 disks for around 30€ was typical. With the scalpers being present these opportunities are more rare and it's more in the 50€ range for 10 disks (if sold by a private person).
Quote from: Bryce on 10:05, 16 July 25You should be able to find blank disks for under €10.
Generally speaking I agree but it's not easy to find disks on short notice. You need to be very patient.
In the past every now and then there was an acceptable offer but that's really rare today. In the last 30 days across Europe these is a single sold offer where you could get 10 disks for around 50€. Everything else were single disks für 8-25€ per piece. Absolutely crazy.
Quote from: salvogendut on 09:10, 16 July 25I recently purchased a CPC6128 with an internal disk drive on Ebay. But I don't have any disks to try on it. Just by looking around on Ebay I see that these floppies are damn expensive. 170 Euros for a box of 10? 17 Euro for a single disk? :-[
Sometimes they get sold on ebay.de for 5 Euros or less per piece.
Reasons for being expansive:
- Fewer 3" discs were produced compared to 3,5" or 5.25" discs
- They are more stable and have better quality
- Production stopped quite a long time ago
On the other hand, lots of users switch to floppy emulators, then they often sell their disc and then you can get them cheap. :)
A year or two ago Roland Perry mentioned on Facebook that he expects that large quantities of 3" disks must be hidden in storage of companies that used the PCW. While I think that most of that was disposed 20 years ago he might not be totally wrong with it - at least for the UK. The PCW sold in the 8 millions and most of those PCWs needed a lot of 3" disks, probably more than the average "games collector" needed on a CPC 6128. I wouldn't be surprised if there could be a few thousand 3" disk waiting for us to be discovered.
Imagine you have just gotten a brand new box of 3" floppy disks.
Would you really trust them to store "important" data?
IMO These days, relying on 3" floppy disks seems far too risky (and the same goes for any type of floppy disk, actually).
How much more do they have to become more expensive to make it worth making your own?
I am happily waiting for when 3'' floppies replace the USD as the world's reserved currency. I think I have a few dozens but not sure where they are stored...
BTW, on top of my previous post: it's similar to tapes, I'm very nostalgic for the format. The tactile experience of inserting a tape or floppy disk is something our modern Gotek or mass storage devices will never replicate...
I still own a few disks and tapes only for that specific reason, but I expect read failures on them.
I understand easily why people still try to buy them.
Quote from: rexbeng on 15:05, 16 July 25I am happily waiting for when 3'' floppies replace the USD as the world's reserved currency. I think I have a few dozens but not sure where they are stored...
OPEC may already be considering trading oil in 3in Floppy rates?
Bryce.
Quote from: norecess464 on 14:31, 16 July 25Imagine you have just gotten a brand new box of 3" floppy disks.
Would you really trust them to store "important" data?
IMO These days, relying on 3" floppy disks seems far too risky (and the same goes for any type of floppy disk, actually).
Well, mostly true but not for 5 1/4 discs, all my 5 1/4 discs still work perfectly. They are super reliable.
Quote from: norecess464 on 15:17, 16 July 25I still own a few disks and tapes only for that specific reason, but I expect read failures on them.
I understand easily why people still try to buy them.
That's the point. Most people probably don't need disks but having at least a few ones to enjoy the feel and sound is part of the magic.
Quote from: norecess464 on 15:17, 16 July 25it's similar to tapes [...] I still own a few disks and tapes only for that specific reason, but I expect read failures on them.
Earlier this year, I tried out a 464 for the first time (because I wanted to test a new app), which I'd gotten from a friend in the late 90s. It still had a tape in it (from 30 years ago), and I was able to load and play Cauldron from it :o ;D
The same goes for all the 3" discs I've tried. They work perfectly.
It's a big difference with 3,5" discs and burned DVDs, many of them are scrap today.
Quote from: abalore on 16:00, 16 July 25Well, mostly true but not for 5 1/4 discs, all my 5 1/4 discs still work perfectly. They are super reliable.
I totally agree. My family's Amstrad PC 1512's 5" 1/4 floppies were never failed us back in the day. We used to take daily backups on same floppies for years and they always hold intact. I can hardly say the same for my 3" discs. It's the format or the drive itself, not sure. But they keep having bad sectors nonstop.
Quote from: dodogildo on 17:13, 16 July 25Quote from: abalore on 16:00, 16 July 25Well, mostly true but not for 5 1/4 discs, all my 5 1/4 discs still work perfectly. They are super reliable.
I totally agree. My family's Amstrad PC 1512's 5" 1/4 floppies were never failed us back in the day. We used to take daily backups on same floppies for years and they always hold intact. I can hardly say the same for my 3" discs. It's the format or the drive itself, not sure. But they keep having bad sectors nonstop.
Like most things, companies always start "optimising" technologies over time. I'd guess that the quality (layer thickness, materials, chemicals, etc) of the magnetic carrier were reduced to a minimum over time to save money / increase profit. So I would expect 8in / 5.25in disks to be more reliable than the later products.
If you look at the very first CD's that came out, they were almost twice as thick and twice the weight of the CD's at the end of the CD era. The plastic used changed (If you bend them, the old ones splinter and later ones just bend with fracture lines) and the thickness of the aluminium layer was halved. Later CD's have much more read errors compared to the older ones.
Bryce.
I have a few Maxell disks which are still shrink-wrapped and in 100% mint condition. Might sell them for a completely excessive price ;D
Quote from: BSC on 20:20, 16 July 25I have a few Maxell disks which are still shrink-wrapped and in 100% mint condition. Might sell them for a completely excessive price ;D
10 of them boxed, original. Perhaps I would swap for a Porsche 959. :-)
Quote from: BSC on 20:20, 16 July 25I have a few Maxell disks which are still shrink-wrapped and in 100% mint condition. Might sell them for a completely excessive price ;D
Might want to hold onto them a little bit more. Look what happened to those pesky bitcoins! ;D
Quote from: norecess464 on 14:31, 16 July 25Imagine you have just gotten a brand new box of 3" floppy disks.
Would you really trust them to store "important" data?
Absolutely! For 100%. And that's what I do in real live! I had much more problems with dying PCs or USB sticks getting bad (inusable) instead of bad 3" discs.
From the discs I bought by myself (beginning at 1987) they all work perfect still after all that time. However, I did had few problems with recently (during the last 10 years) 3" discs. Probably they got stored at an improbable place.
Quote from: GUNHED on 14:49, 20 July 25Probably they got stored at an improbable place.
Hmm, what kind of places? Who's the enemy, humidity?
Hmmm, i've hundreds of discs here, but i don't need them all ..... but they are used and never tested ones ...
And i don't know what is on this discs ....
Quote from: harzretro on 07:30, 23 July 25Hmmm, i've hundreds of discs here
Well... seems like you can get on a nice weekend trip if you test and sell them ;-)
And I am curious: What did you do with the CPC to get to so many 3" discs? Or was it a PCW/Joyce?
Ohhh, i got the discs with the cpc's ...
I've some CPC's .... and should sell some ...
Quote from: harzretro on 11:53, 23 July 25and should sell some ...
Please make sure not to sell to cosmoretroshop. He will just list them again, but for more money.
Quote from: eto on 12:01, 23 July 25Quote from: harzretro on 11:53, 23 July 25and should sell some ...
Please make sure not to sell to cosmoretroshop. He will just list them again, but for more money.
That is one of my problems, that is why i prefere to swap stuff instead of sell things
Quote from: dodogildo on 10:47, 21 July 25Quote from: GUNHED on 14:49, 20 July 25Probably they got stored at an improbable place.
Hmm, what kind of places? Who's the enemy, humidity?
Yes, I guess that's one important point. And also drastic change of factors (humidity, temperature...) during the cycle of day.
I don't even want to mention magnetic fields (power lines ...) else this thread will get derailed.
Quote from: harzretro on 07:30, 23 July 25Hmmm, i've hundreds of discs here, but i don't need them all ..... but they are used and never tested ones ...
And i don't know what is on this discs ....
Offtopic: You can use FutureOS to look at them very quick...
- Put disc
- Klick at the drive Icon
- look at directory
- change to next disc...
But now for every disc you just need to press D for DIRectoy and you can swap the disc immediately, because the drive motor will not run any longer. :)
Sorry for getting off-topic, hope this hint is of general interest. :)
I did a format and verify with the spare disks that I got over the last 4 years.
About 2/3 have bad sectors. Brand did not matter but the source I got them from did matter a lot.
- the discs from some sellers were either mostly good and the bad disks only had a few bad sectors
- from other sellers almost all of them were bad and most of them with lots of bad sectors
I could revive some sectors by using a magnet and formatting the disc again. I will try again with a stronger magnet as I couldn't find it yesterday and used smaller ones.
One interesting aspect: Even some discs that I used in the past which worked actually had bad sectors. You might think your disk ist fine - until you format it again.
The tool I used is MultiMark. It is quite fast to format disks, then verifies them and marks bad sectors so the disk can be used without the risk of writing to the bad sectors. For disks with only a few bad sectory this seems to be quite reliable. If the disk has many bad sectors I would not do that as some sectors seem to change with every format/verify.
MultiMark also has a directory feature. So you can select the drive once and then just hit D to output the directory of the current disk.
QuoteI have a few Maxell disks which are still shrink-wrapped and in 100% mint condition
Same. I found someone in our local retro group selling a bunch of sealed and some near-new. There may not be a guarantee of 100% good sectors on sealed ones since they still mould. However pricewise on ebay you could make something from it. I would rather keep mine, given how difficult it is to find them here in Australia.
What I did find is that the near new ones had a few with bad sectors. Looking through the Greaseweazel facebook page some people have had success with 80% IPA (not the beer) removing mould. That may not always be the cause
Some of the no-name brand discs (another batch) were that bad I've experimented with transplanting 3.5" (cut/pate) into a 3" disc. It kind of works, but getting perfect circumference is difficult to last the least.
Quote from: darkhalf on 09:56, 25 July 25Some of the no-name brand discs (another batch) were that bad I've experimented with transplanting 3.5" (cut/pate) into a 3" disc. It kind of works, but getting perfect circumference is difficult to last the least.
How do you open them and put everything back again? I tried with one and I can't get it back together.
Quote from: darkhalf on 09:56, 25 July 25some people have had success with 80% IPA (not the beer) removing mould
Indeed I just could fully revive one disk that had dozens of bad sectors before. However on other disks there was little or no improvement.
What also worked quite well is using a strong magnet to demagnetize the disk and then format again. At least for disks with only a few bad sectors about 1/3 no longer had bad sectors. And a lot of the rest has improved with less bad sectors.
QuoteHow do you open them and put everything back again? I tried with one and I can't get it back together.
I've found it very difficult. You have to use a knife or similar to break the plastic apart and then super glue to put it together. I did about two and found it took a lot of time. Getting the slider in place with the spring loading and holding it place took many tries
QuoteHowever on other disks there was little or no improvement.
What also worked quite well is using a strong magnet to demagnetize the disk and then format again
Agreed with cleaning no improvement. I've also tried the magnets too. So far I've not had much success reviving what I have so far, but others on the greaseweazle page with other disks have, so will need to try some others. I got a batch for free from market place recently which have some sides okay and other sides bad sectorsI've found the cheap non name discs have many bad sectors and the oxidisation looks 'off' compared to better discs like the Amsoft (hardly any bad sectors) or the Maxell discs
Perhaps we should learn from this guy
Quote from: eto on 16:00, 24 July 25from other sellers almost all of them were bad and most of them with lots of bad sectors
I've had this - I think it might be something to do with the way they may have been wiped - 20 disks all with bad sectors. Non were readable, and then after using Multi Mark, they all seemed to be about the same size - I wonder if a magnet had been run over the "top" of the disks. Other than this, they looked to be in "good" condition.
I think trying to get a strong magnetic wiper might restore them - no harm in trying.
I quite enjoy exploring other peoples disks - basic programs, or self made "compilations" ...
I recently purchased from a computer swap meet 300 3.5" disks for 20AUD (!)
Mixture of DD and HD formats (mainly HD so have taped the corner to use them as DD)
About 1/3 of these are showing failures on reading images with Greaseweazle. Of those 2/3 working and being reformatted with Parados, a small amount have format failures when formatting using D2 format
Mainly the format failures are around tracks 158,159 (the edge) with some with the occasional inner track failure.
QuoteI quite enjoy exploring other peoples disks - basic programs, or self made "compilations
Interesting discovering finding what other people have left over. Some PCW discs I converted over and was able to read the files in CPM. There were a few BASIC programs in there for PCW and a few PCM programs ran (with the 90 column screen format)
Quote from: tubs74 on 14:51, 20 August 25I think trying to get a strong magnetic wiper might restore them - no harm in trying.
A strong magnet did indeed help with many. In most cases it reduced the bad sectors, sometimes even made the full disk working again. But in some cases it didn't help at all.
Mostly bad sectors came not from the magnetic surface.
Storing in a wet atmosphere is a problem (cellar f.e.) Then you have pimpels out of water and dust on your disc...
xesrjb