8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

[Scott Stevens]

On Fri, 7 Oct 2005 20:40:25 +0100 (BST)
ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote:


> I've pointed out several tinms here that the first disks I bought for
> my TRS-80 Model 1 cost me \pounds 5.00 _each_ (not a box of 10 or
> anything like that).. That mackine put 88K on each disk (single sided,
> 35 cylinders, FM (single desnity)). Point is, those disks are still
> readable 20 years later. 
> 
> I would like to be able to pay a reasonable amount -- say \pounds 5.00
> to \pounds 10.00 for a 3.5" disk with the same quality level. Because
> my data is worth a lot more than that.
> 

Maybe what's needed is a lower density format and/or a redundant
filesystem using the current media.  Surely a redundant filesystem or
lower density encoding scheme that only tried to fit 88K on a 3-1/2" HD
floppy diskette would succeed in having MUCH greater longetivity.  Maybe
there's a 'market' for something like that, i.e. a disk format where
data is written redundantly on ten zones of the drive or something.  It
really should be mostly a software problem.