Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uhccux!ames!ucsd!ogicse!plains!canders
From: canders@plains.UUCP (Carlin Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Are there "real" 1.44 disks?
Keywords: DS/DD, DS/HD, coercivity
Message-ID: <3424@plains.UUCP>
Date: 14 Feb 90 14:50:55 GMT
References: <5@libyan.cs.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: canders@plains.UUCP (Carlin Anderson)
Organization: North Dakota State University, Fargo
Lines: 26

--------
With respect to all those who have either purchased or contemplated 
purchasing a disk puncher to transform those inexpensive DS/DD 3.5's, my
advice is to forget them.  I purchased two different models, and had nothing
but trouble.  Both wanted to shatter the corners of the disks, and that was
nor acceptable.  These disks, by the way, were from MEI/Micro.
   Well, after ruining about 2 dozen disks this way, I tried something else:
I put an old pencil tip element on my soldering iron, and using a bad HD
disk as a guide, melted the extra sense hole in.  Using this method, I have
converted close to 100 disks, and only 1 has failed to format, when using
virgin disks.  If you try this with a prefiously formatted disk, there is a
high probability that the format will fail.  Of those formatted, only 2 have
failed within the last year, but there have been about 10 which have 
developed or formatted with bad sectors, usually about 10k worth.

   If you don't want to bother with this, MEI/Micro now has HD disks
available for discount, something like $.89 each/qty's of 25.


Carlin Anderson				North Dakota State University	
					Fargo, ND  58105
UUCP:		...!uunet!plains!canders
BITNET:		canders@plains.bitnet
INTERNET:	canders@plains.NoDak.edu       nu111783@vm1.NoDak.edu

----------------------------------------------------------------------------