CHARLES ANGELICH wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

CA>> If you are like me you have data and software dating back to your 
CA>> 'begining' interest in computers. I have 100s possibly 1000s of 5 
CA>> 1/4" floppy disks from the old 360k format up to the 1.2meg format 
CA>> in boxes and am thinking a great deal of the data is already lost 
CA>> (won't read).

RJT> Much of that old stuff is on 360s here. Though I even have
RJT> a whole box of the 1.2s new, still shrink-wrapped. 

CA> I remember when my XT was still working some of the 360s wouldn't 
CA> read in the newer 1.2 meg floppy drives. I'm hoping most will.

I think it was more common for the problem to be the other way around, 
where a 360k drive wouldn't read something that was written on a 1.2M drive
because it wrote a skinnier track.

CA>> I have _one_ machine with a 5 1/4 floppy drive in it (an old 286) 

RJT> Got one "pc" (this one I'm typing on), but also a number of other 
RJT> drives around, not to mention all the cp/m boxes that have nothing 
RJT> else.

CA> I have old drives but would need a floppy controller and old style
CA> ribbon cable etc.

Got a bunch of those,  including the original IBM controller,  and cables
with edge connectors to match.

CA> Would hate to have to go through all that but I waited too long to 
CA> 'update' my 'archives'. :-(

CA>> and am wondering how long it would take me to transfer all of them 
CA>> over to CDs. 

RJT> Maybe not as long as you might think. That older stuff was
RJT> much less bulkier. 

CA> True the files are smaller but the floppy drives are slower as 
CA> well.

Not necessarily.  The speed of the interface is pretty well standard, 
until you got to newer MBs that would support 2.88M drives,  but those
still run the older drives at the slower speed.  The trick is to do it on
some platform that lets you do something else while you're waiting,  or use
more than one machine so you don't have to wait at all.

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