So, I have a large collection of vintage Mac games, something in the
order of 160 or so, most of which are "big box" games, about half of
which are CD-ROM and the other half floppy disk. Sadly, but inevitably,
many of the floppy disks are now dead; they do not mount to desktop.
Seeing as they're all 30 or more years old, it's no surprise that disk
rot has finally got them, but still a bit sad.

It did make me wonder, though, is there any value in going to the
effort to restore the disks? I mean, I know the answer is "No, none
whatsoever" but... the idea that these games are now little more than
ornaments on my shelf rather than actual useable software depresses me
a little.

It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place the
software back onto them?

On 2024-06-15, scole <vintageapplemac@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, I have a large collection of vintage Mac games, something in the
> order of 160 or so, most of which are "big box" games, about half of
> which are CD-ROM and the other half floppy disk. Sadly, but
> inevitably, many of the floppy disks are now dead; they do not mount
> to desktop. Seeing as they're all 30 or more years old, it's no
> surprise that disk rot has finally got them, but still a bit sad.
>
> It did make me wonder, though, is there any value in going to the
> effort to restore the disks? I mean, I know the answer is "No, none
> whatsoever" but... the idea that these games are now little more than
> ornaments on my shelf rather than actual useable software depresses me
> a little.
>
> It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
> are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
> corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place
> the software back onto them?

I made disk images of all of my old floppies years ago in anticipation
that eventually, the data on the floppies would succumb to bit rot.

I'd bet you that reformatting those dead floppies will result in
perfectly usable disks that you could store data on. But the only way to
be sure is to give it a shot.

And as you suggested, I'm betting a whole lot of that software is
available on sites like Macintosh Garden as well.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2024-06-15 10:59:23 +0000, scole said:
>
> So, I have a large collection of vintage Mac games, something in the
> order of 160 or so, most of which are "big box" games, about half of
> which are CD-ROM and the other half floppy disk. Sadly, but inevitably,
> many of the floppy disks are now dead; they do not mount to desktop.
> Seeing as they're all 30 or more years old, it's no surprise that disk
> rot has finally got them, but still a bit sad.
>
> It did make me wonder, though, is there any value in going to the
> effort to restore the disks? I mean, I know the answer is "No, none
> whatsoever" but... the idea that these games are now little more than
> ornaments on my shelf rather than actual useable software depresses me
> a little.
>
> It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
> are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
> corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place the
> software back onto them?

Be careful ... if they're really old games, then some of those disk may
be fine, but simply won't mount on the newer drives / computers. (Not
that it makes any difference to you being able to use the disks unless
you can find an older drive / computer that can read them or one of the
expensive hardware devices that can be used to read them.)

If they really are dead, then there's no real way to resurrect them.
You can try apps that claim to recover lost files from disks, but the
chances are exztremely low you'll get anything useful from them and
most likely nothing at all.

In comp.sys.mac.vintage, scole <vintageapplemac@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, I have a large collection of vintage Mac games, something in the
> order of 160 or so, most of which are "big box" games, about half of
> which are CD-ROM and the other half floppy disk. Sadly, but inevitably,
> many of the floppy disks are now dead; they do not mount to desktop.
> Seeing as they're all 30 or more years old, it's no surprise that disk
> rot has finally got them, but still a bit sad.
>
> It did make me wonder, though, is there any value in going to the
> effort to restore the disks? I mean, I know the answer is "No, none
> whatsoever" but... the idea that these games are now little more than
> ornaments on my shelf rather than actual useable software depresses me
> a little.
>
> It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
> are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
> corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place the
> software back onto them?

I gather archivists use special hardware, search for "Greaseweazle",
that is better at finding every fluctation of magnetic flux. And also
imaging multiple times, sometimes.

See also:
https://hackaday.com/2024/02/28/flux-is-your-friend-for-archiving-old-floppy-disks/

If it is a game or program that has not previously been preserved (in
non-cracked format) there are probably people who will be happy to
borrow the disk to image it with their hardware and then return it. (If
you are willing to take the risk. Even with honest people, mail gets
damaged sometimes.)

4am ( https://mastodon.social/users/a2_4am/ ) mostly works with Apple II
disks, but his crowd does some Mac stuff. I knew him from Twitter first
some years ago. All of his stuff ends up at archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/apple_ii_library_4am

Elijah
------
there's so much educational software there

scole wrote:
>
> It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
> are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
> corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place the
> software back onto them?
>

In many cases I've found that I can clean the magnetic media (the "cookie")
and get a successful copy from Disk Copy 4.2. Have you ever tried cleaning a
floppy disk in this way? I've used the technique for many 5.25" Apple II
disks as well.

https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=456

--
]DF$
The New Apple II User's Guide:
https://macgui.com/newa2guide/

On 2024-06-17, D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> wrote:
> scole wrote:
>>
>> It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
>> are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
>> corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place
>> the software back onto them?
>
> In many cases I've found that I can clean the magnetic media (the
> "cookie") and get a successful copy from Disk Copy 4.2. Have you ever
> tried cleaning a floppy disk in this way? I've used the technique for
> many 5.25" Apple II disks as well.
>
> https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=456

Back when computers used 5¼ floppy disks, my father taught me to use a
similar method since the inside of the floppy jacket was soft fabric. In
some instances, we even removed the disks from their jackets completely,
washed them in alcohol, allowed them to dry, and put them back into the
jackets. We rescued many a floppy that way!

Of course that won't help if the data on the disk is corrupted due to
magnetism and so on. In that case, the best you can do is erase,
reformat and restore the data from another source.

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 17 Jun 2024 21:34:13 GMT, Jolly Roger wrote:

> On 2024-06-17, D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> wrote:
>> scole wrote:
>>>
>>> It should be trivial to find digital back-ups of these on the web but
>>> are these disks physically beyond use now, or is it just data
>>> corruption? If I were to format the disks, would I be able to place
>>> the software back onto them?
>>
>> In many cases I've found that I can clean the magnetic media (the
>> "cookie") and get a successful copy from Disk Copy 4.2. Have you ever
>> tried cleaning a floppy disk in this way? I've used the technique for
>> many 5.25" Apple II disks as well.
>>
>> https://macgui.com/news/article.php?t=456
>
> Back when computers used 5¼ floppy disks, my father taught me to use a
> similar method since the inside of the floppy jacket was soft fabric. In
> some instances, we even removed the disks from their jackets completely,
> washed them in alcohol, allowed them to dry, and put them back into the
> jackets. We rescued many a floppy that way!
>
> Of course that won't help if the data on the disk is corrupted due to
> magnetism and so on. In that case, the best you can do is erase,
> reformat and restore the data from another source.

Before I graduated to the Mac ecosystem, I was a member of a user group
for one of the "home computers" popular in the early 1980s. One of our
members had a particularly messy desk which ended up having a speaker
perched atop a stack of 5¼" floppies. Months of music quite effectively
rendered the data on those disks quite useless.

Not all floppy disks are created equal. When my spousal unit did customer
support for an antivirus software company, she told of an infected disk
received in the snail-mail (a normal occurrence back then), that after
being analyzed, could not be erased by any means, even after several
passes with a powerful magnet. They finally resorted to running the disk
through the shredder.

--
chrispam1@me.com is an infrequently monitored address. Email may get lost.
Networking: What happens when, for as long as a moment, billions of
things simultaneously fail to go wrong. -- Dan Farkas, 3/3/2007

Chris Schram wrote:
>
> Not all floppy disks are created equal. When my spousal unit did customer
> support for an antivirus software company, she told of an infected disk
> received in the snail-mail (a normal occurrence back then), that after
> being analyzed, could not be erased by any means, even after several
> passes with a powerful magnet. They finally resorted to running the disk
> through the shredder.
>

There is one brand of 3.5" floppy disk whose prognosis is overwhelmingly
negative. These disks are typically found in a black plastic shell, which
makes them easy to spot. What happens is that the ceramic read/write head of
the floppy drive strips the magnetic coating from the substrate. Unlike in a
hard disk drive, the read/write head of a floppy disk does indeed contact
the surface of the media. Probably the binder or surface lubricant failed
after 35+ years, who knows? I rarely have this trouble with Sony disks and a
few other brands.

When you've got a complete track scratched off the surface of the disk, that
makes data recovery pretty tough! :-{

This looks like a pretty good article, and it treats several of the
difficulties that I too have encountered:
https://goughlui.com/2013/05/19/project-kryoflux-part-6-dealing-with-difficult-disks-and-drives/

As with many physical artifacts, the conditions of storage affect their
well-being. As a general rule of thumb, I say that if you store your disks
in the same rooms of your house where you are usually comfortable
year-round, then the disks will be happy too. :-)

--
]DF$
The New Apple II User's Guide:
https://macgui.com/newa2guide/