PC floppy cable twists...

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: PC floppy cable twists...
>   From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
>   Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 17:05:50 -0700
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
>
>On 10/20/2005 at 7:42 PM Allison wrote:
>
>>Media wear, I've had disks spinning for years in clean environments and 
>>several dead drives that were still fine.
>
>Dirt happens.  It gets between the head and the media and doesn't do any
>favors to either.  I've got several diskettes in my collection that have
>the oxide coating worn clear through on the directory track.  Better to
>either stop the motor or lift the head.   Around here, during the driest
>months of the year (August and Sepember), the clay soils turn to a very
>fine powder and become airborne. Hoiuse dust during those months tends to
>have a brownish color.
>
>Add to this that most PC's have fans on the power supply that are set to
>exhaust air from the box, which means that the drive slot is a convenient
>entry point for contamination.  It used to be that fans were set blow the
>other way and filters were used.

That is a PCism. That being those fans that suck unfilterd crud and 
cruft into the system.  

In the summer we do get brown dust from whatever.  All of my systems 
cooling and air flow get attention even if it requires some card stock
and tape duct work.  Fans blow in and filters keep cat hair and 
other deutrius from getting in those places where it's going to do bad 
things. I find that tends to keep the inside of my PCs clean too. I
turn the fan around and add a filter. Beats having a hairball clogging 
the cpu fan and crashing the system.

Under those conditions I don't worry about my media unless its old 
and unknown. 

Allison