NOS 800K Floppies / Goodwill Computer Pgh

[Scott Baret]

I had a bit of time to spare today, so I went to the Goodwill Computer Works store in Pittsburgh. There's only one of these stores now for those of you who may stop by the area--the Lawrenceville location is now the sole Computer Works (the one on the South Side has closed, as I found out the hard way after driving to the South Side first).

The selection of Mac stuff was OK. They had a handful of iMac G4s, a few sealed StyleWriter cartridges, several Apple USB keyboards, and a bunch of the baseball-shaped speakers.

PC stuff was hit or miss. There were some pretty legit systems there as well as a bunch of parts. The parts ranged from good and useful to "why would anyone buy this?" (lots of 56K modems).

Software was almost nonexistent. There was really nothing outside of a few copies of Myst. There weren't even any video games (although there were a few video game parts like controllers and cables).

Then there was the floppy bin. They had about 30 boxes of brand new Verbatim HD floppies--and ONE of 800Ks.

For $2, who could resist? I'll be formatting all ten of them sometime this week--let's see how disks at least 24 years of age do here!!!

 

[insaneboy]

got a box of NOS 3M 1.44MB floppies. about 50% failed formatting

 

[uniserver]

yes i had about the same results as you insaneboy.

 

[Scott Baret]

I've had varied results in the last two years:

3M DS/HD from early 90s: 10/10 (YEAH!!!)

IBM DS/HD from late 80s/early 90s: 6/10

IBM DS/HD from late 80s/early 90s #2: 8/10

Verbatim DS/DD from mid 80s: 6/10

I'm going to predict 7/10 for this box. Time to put lil' Plussy into action and see what we can do!!! Hopefully will finish up my work early tonight so I can do this ASAP!!!

Also, worth noting--these are the first 3.5" floppies I've seen with "A Kodak Company" written underneath the Verbatim logo on the disks themselves. I've seen it on boxes and 5.25" labels, but never on 3.5" sliders. The disks are blue like most Verbatim DS/DD 3.5" disks (the HD ones are beige).

Apparently these disks have a "lifetime warranty" as per the box. Hmm...Verbatim is clearly still around, so maybe they'd honor that if some of these fail?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Apparently these disks have a "lifetime warranty" as per the box. Hmm...Verbatim is clearly still around, so maybe they'd honor that if some of these fail?

I've been tempted to try to take advantage of those as well. Have lots of lifetime-warranty 3M, including some still shrink-wrapped.

 

[mcdermd]

I'm sure they would say something like the "lifetime" of a floppy disk is ten years.

 

[Concorde1993]

Have lots of lifetime-warranty 3M, including some still shrink-wrapped.

I wonder if they would still honour the warranty on their L-750 Beta tapes. ;D

 

[redrouteone]

Oh I am sure they would be more than happy to exchange them, if they had any left.

 

[Scott Baret]

Well, we're 1 for 1 so far!! Used one of the disks last night on my Plus. Can we have nine more good disks?

 

[krye]

I regularly buy NOS 800K floppies by the 50's on eBay and they're always good. They seem to last forever as long as they were stored correctly. (Not too hot, not too cold.) My Dad gave me a stack of 300 floppies he'd had in the garage for 20 years and half of them failed on format.

 

[techknight]

Speaking of which, I had a box of about that many floppies retired from the school computer lab. Obviously most of those failed format. Out of maybe 300, I have 15 left that still work. I obtained them in 04, about half were bad then. and only 15 survive today.

Aside from that, I picked up 4 boxes of NOS shrinkwrapped powerbook apple floppy disks from mendelsons in dayton oh. I think there were 3 more left and i never went back up there again.

I only opened 1 box and all of those were still good. so far. not one has failed and I have used the heck out of them for 7.5NAD, and etc..