Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

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.

For a website now long gone, I made the 403 error page by taking a Forbidden Planet movie poster, word-arting "forbidden file" over it, & captioning it, "Uh oh, skipper, you upset Doctor Morbius."

On the one hand, WLinux is for Win10. :<
On the other, no systemd! :D