Trick for making 1.44mb floppies work as 800k floppies - not working anymore

[System6+Vista]

Good afternoon again, I know that it's not the ideal / recommended method but it always used to work for me successfully - can't figure out what I'm now doing wrong! On a 3.5" 1.44mb disk, the hole in the upper-left, is usually open, right? I remember just taping over it so as to appear to the machine as having no hole / closed hole, but I've tried 10 different floppies, using all sorts of different tapes and such, tried in both of the floppy drives of a SE I have, they never complete formatting process!? Any ideas?

I realize purchasing some from eBay is the way to go - I don't have $ to dedicate for this especially with the arm & leg price I had to pay to get any ADB keyboard. I have many, many extra ADB mice if anyone ever wants to trade.

 

[Skate323k137]

I would probably be more than willing to trade some 800k floppies for a mouse. Shoot me a PM if you'd like.

 

[LaPorta]

With time, these disks all wear out a lot. Given that the 1.4 MB disks use a different magnetic field than 800ks, I can not even imagine just what happens with degraded media and the difference. With new disks, it was dicey at best. Now it probably would almost never work.

 

[System6+Vista]

Thx for the responses.... LaPorta, I'm not sure I understand - the 'stock' of floppies I'm using are the same ones I used in 2009-ish to do this previously (assuming you meant that floppy disks made in more recent years would be less likely to work than earlier-produced 1.44mb disks).

 

[LaPorta]

Sorry, what I meant is the floppies are now 13 years older than they were then….enough time for media to wear out significantly.

 

[Johnnya101]

/\ This, age wears them out (plus just plain old wear...). Brand matters too. Sony disks seem to hold up great, other brands not so much. I've got some 20 year old NOS 1.44s that only work half the time, even being new.

 

[techknight]

Hit it with a bulk tape eraser. Then it will work fine.

magnetic media builds residual magnetism from the earth and other nearby things, and floppy drives cannot change the magnetic flux between tracks, and this will distort what is being read/written to in the tracks.

When you hit it with a bulk tape eraser, as long as the media isnt physically worn from serious use, or molded up, it will format just fine again.

 

[LaPorta]

Sweet. Where can one obtain said bulk eraser?

 

[Skate323k137]

That's pretty neat.

I found a small stash of 800k floppies, I've offered a few to OP. I may offer the others to other members once I hear back, as I have a floppy emu for both machines I have that use those floppy disks.

 

[lisa2]

I remember just taping over it so as to appear to the machine as having no hole / closed hole...

Technically, DS and HD disks have different magnetic properties and while this normally worked for me also, there is no guarantee this will always work.
Also, you don't need to tape the hole to use the 1.44 disk as a 800K in the SE ( unless it's the FDHD model ), as a normal SE with DS drives does not have the sensor for the HD disks. The need for covering the hole is to format or use the disk as 800K in a system that has a HD drive.

 

[System6+Vista]

This is a FDHD (dual floppy) SE model I've got. Never had one before without an internal hard disk. I also have an external Apple floppy drive reader - that one is ALSO 800k unfortunately.

techknight, thanks for this suggestion but is that not like eraser as in on a standard #2 pencil? If it's something which is specifially designed to erase magnetic media, I don't have one - could I use any magnet?

Most of these floppies I'm trying have never been used, I found a still shrink-wrapped box of IBM (branded) disks, and a no-name one too.