From: bv@wjv.com   
      
   In article <1169881540.218497.271570@a34g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,   
   turnkit  wrote:   
   >sounds like you could use the help.  that's a lot of conversion going   
   >on...   
      
   >Personally, if it were me, I'd ship the disks off... it's an expertise   
   >that is probably difficult in it's own right... for example, what to do   
   >if the disks start shedding?  How many drives do you have?  Getting   
   >cw2dmk working is a bit tricky anyway...   
      
   I've been working with rotating media for years - and have been   
   working with magnetic media for far far longer than I'd like to   
   admit.   
      
   Shedding disks are really hard to do anything with.  But having   
   good disks to start with helps.   
      
   How many drives do I have.  I have NO idea.  I have at least   
   three 5.25" DS/DD that I had on the model I.  A couple so standard   
   5.25" and one that came from a pre-production run of the   
   Shugart first 5.25" drives - with a hand-written serial number   
   in th 1600 range.  And some places started serial numbers at 1000.   
      
   So it's either about the 1600th or the 600th 5.25 floppy ever made.   
      
   As to 8" drives?  Let's see.  There is the dual-extenral set   
   that RS sold - that I bought when a store started dumping all of   
   them.  THere is also a single drive version.  At least three   
   machine with operating disks.  Two of the full-height Shugarts   
   in single power supply cases that I ran on my S-100.  And at least   
   two newer thin drives that I got with an extra Max80.   
      
   I even used to have 8" drives on my PC running DOS 2.0 !!!   
      
   IOW - I have more drives than anyone really needs.   
      
   Actully I have more computers and/or pieces than anyone needs. :-)   
      
   And I really won't have to do any conversions in a machine.  I've   
   done it before and it's awfully easy just to get a disk running   
   on a machine and then turn kermit loose and have it sent to another   
   machine.  I've retreived partially failing hard drives that way.   
   [And you can save things on OSes such as XP that won't boot because   
   of corruption, and boot with the stanalone Knoppix from CD - which   
   on my machine dedicates 500MB to a RAM drive, so I can tar up MS   
   files [yes that works] onto a file in the RAM drive, and then ftp   
   to one of my Unix machines.   
      
   I've also been known to go down to the lowest level and edit   
   bytes on floppies and hard drives.   
      
   And when I was CE at a recording studio we were in the $50.000   
   per year buying column from Scotch, Ampex and Agfa.   
      
   The only time I'd send something out is if it would require   
   dissassembling the HD that the high-end recovery places do.   
   But I've never had to do that as all the important things have been   
   backed up? :-)   
      
   It's amazing how much you can learn working with small computers   
   for over 30 years.   
      
   /brag modd off  :-)   
      
   Bill   
      
   --   
   Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)