Floppies not reading?

[Gamer of the Ages]

I jsut got a 1040 and it came with some floppies but some don't work. Does anyone know if they can be fixed or is it hopeless?

[Alchy]

This is the problem with an ancient magnetic storage medium. Assuming the best-case scenario, which is that it's the disks at fault rather than the disk drive, the chances of you fixing those disks are not good - basically, ones have become zeros and vice versa.

This is why I was harping on about CF adapters in the other thread. Floppy disks are a nightmare.

[Gamer of the Ages]

Well I assumed the disc was bad because some worked. So no hope of fixing it? Sucks...

[Alchy]

Fixing what? The data or the disk? Neither have much chance of recovery if they're damaged.

You might want to try a floppy head cleaner for the drive, but I wouldn't hold out much hope.

[Gamer of the Ages]

Well thanks for the help.

[Storm]

Unless there was something unique on the floppies, don't spend time on them. Everything Atari is dumped, so get a clean copy of whatever it was from the dark reaches of the net and rewrite it on a fresh floppy.

[Gamer of the Ages]

Fortunately one floppy I got is blank.

[Storm]

Fortunately one floppy I got is blank.

It's ordinary PC DD floppies, so it's not hard to find more blanks or get a bunch or used ones you can reformat. Same thing for Amiga: Ordinary DD (or more rarey HD) floppies.

[7Force]

And you can format HD disks as DD ones...because let's face it, you're not gonna find new DD disks any time soon.

[Gamer of the Ages]

Yeah most likeley not. Though when going through stuff I found a sealed Zip disc, so you never know.