Civileme wrote:
>
> Of course, with any
> modem purchase you are likely to receive by the munificence of
> AOL a brilliantly colored coaster suitable for absolutely
> anything you can imagine to do with it. Older modems carry the
> added benefit of a high-quality 3.5" floppy suitable for holding
> data after erasure.
Back in the early 90's, those of us on the CP/M groups tested
a whole slew of those AOL floppies. What we found out was
disturbing. It SEEMS as if they are written to with a high
write current. These disks have tracks that either do not
format properly (the earlier data 'prints thru') or the track
is wider than normal and creates errors when rewritten.
The end result was that AOL floppies are fine for what they do:
port AOL programs. They should not be formatted, erased or
used otherwise. Compuserve floppies were better, but not by
much. Lots of people lost lots of data with those!
If you think about it for a bit, a floppy that is being mass
marketed and probably going to be discarded, is not likely to
be of very good quality. I bet the magnetic film was kinda
spotty or poor and they made it up by stepping up the webbers
on the write heads.
--
Ramon Gandia ============= Sysadmin ============== Nook Net
http://www.nook.net [EMAIL PROTECTED]
285 West First Avenue tel. 907-443-7575
P.O. Box 970 fax. 907-443-2487
Nome, Alaska 99762-0970 ==== Alaska Toll Free. 888-443-7525
