Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

But the weird thing is both original disks were fine in my 286's 1.2 MB drive the one time I put them in there, & by coincidence the one command I ran to exercise them both was diskcopy, giving me a full duplicate of both disks, & both copies work just fine in my XT.

It's a good thing neither IBM nor Microsoft put copy protection on their DOS boot/install disks.

It's hard to tell from the label. The icky label is the Startup (boot) disk, & the good label is the Operating disk. The mylar of the Operating disk is just as damaged. It does explain why it wouldn't boot in my XT.

You'd think that a boxed set of disks still in shrinkwrap would be best protected from damage. Nope. this is the underside of a DOS 3.3 boot disk that sat unused & protected in a tyvek sleeve, in a special pocket, in a 3-ring binder, in a box, under shrinkwrap for 31 years. Look at the mylar disc visible through the oval access hole.

The IBM DOS 3.3 User Guide has a yellow bird character in some of its illustrations.

"If you've ever wanted to see the Internet fold itself up into a burrito and consume itself hungrily over the course of four minutes, you've come to the right place." - NPR, introducing what's supposed to be a news article.

Frankly, that pretty well describes birdsite.

I'm quickly learning that for IBM-compatible retrocomputing, life becomes a lot easier if newer vintage PCs are restored & operational first.

I heard that my orange excuse for a head of state gave a speech at the UN General Assembly today, & when he boasted that he did more than any previous US administration, he got laughed at. Politely, of course, but openly laughed at. This makes me so happy.

I realized something this morning.

With 3.5" floppy disks, unformatted HD disks are 2 MB, & DD disks are 1 MB, so HD disks have twice the capacity of DD disks.

But with 5.25" floppy disks, unformatted DD disks (assuming double-sided) are 500 KB, & HD disks are 1,500 KB, so HD disks have 3x the capacity, not twice.

Later TIL there was a seldom-used "quad density" between DD & HD in 5.25" standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk

Today was a spinning-wheels day. No progress, nothing done, despite every effort.

The new floppy drive belt is too wide. Everything else is perfect, but it's too wide to sit right in all three channels.

In good news, the seller I got the replacement from has better communication than most businesses. They want me to send both belts (new & bad) to make sure I get the right-width one.

Be careful what you test your new Retr0brite techniques on, folks. This is the main case of a Macintosh Plus 1Mb, signed by Steve Jobs among others on the inside, and shows what happens when you guess wrong on something pretty valuable.

(This eBay listing sold, but I'm not the buyer.) https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Apple-Macintosh-Plus-1MB-SIGNED-BY-Steve-Jobs-Rear-Back-Case-DEFORMED-/263939311552?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137

Who is General Failure, why is he reading drive A, & why does the question not make sense?

Nope. The motor just isn't turning the belt, but it isn't free-spinning either.

I hope it's because the motor ribbon missed the PCB connector when I reassembled the floppy drive...

Now the motor didn't turn. :/

The new 180 mm belt came in, and wrapping it around the floppy drive spindles & pulley felt exactly as hard as it needs to be.