What are the chances that my double-density Atari floppies work?

[Oyeve]

I still have my Atari 800XL and the 1050 Double-density drive. I recently came across my shoebox of 5 1/4 floppies and was thinking about getting an rf converter to hook it up to my HDTV. Being these discs are at least 30 years old, what are the chances they can even be read?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Very small. But, hey, worth a shot.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Only one way to find out so let us know what happens. I used to have an Atari 130xe with the floppy and I remember it taking almost 20 minutes to load f15 strike eagle. I used to love the covox voice master with the talking head which was way cool for back in the day. That 9 pin dot matrix Atari printer was loud as all get out and the tractor feed made a mess when I wanted to print something. I'll never forget having to tear it from the edges to get my printed pages.

 

[hhhd1]

clear any visible dust if possible before trying to run it.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Very small. But, hey, worth a shot.

You'd be surprised. I pulled my Commodore 64 and its floppies out of storage a couple of years ago and have all the disks I tried, only 1 didn't work. I was shocked, especially since the disks had been stored in a garage for a number of years.

 

[Mike64]

I still have my Atari 800XL and the 1050 Double-density drive. I recently came across my shoebox of 5 1/4 floppies and was thinking about getting an rf converter to hook it up to my HDTV. Being these discs are at least 30 years old, what are the chances they can even be read?

Really no way to tell in advance, I've been able to read some really old discs and not others stored in the same containers with no apparent distinctions I could think of (not being able to even vaguely remember exactly which machines I used to write which discs in the first place.) I'll second the comment to carefully clean every surface you can of dust and dirt before even trying, though...

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

bout 2 years ago i pulled my trs-80 4p and its discs out from the barn. about 3 of every 4 discs read. i was impressed with how fast it booted to trsdos and dosplus heh

 

[corkyg]

I have several boxes of software on 5.35" floppies, but no capable drive. I did try some 3.5-in flops dated 1993, and they read perfectly. If the disks were stored in a cool, dry place, they should be OK.

 

[JimmiG]

You'd be surprised. I pulled my Commodore 64 and its floppies out of storage a couple of years ago and have all the disks I tried, only 1 didn't work. I was shocked, especially since the disks had been stored in a garage for a number of years.

I should try my Commodore 64 tapes and floppies and see if they work. I guess the floppies are more likely to work than they tapes...they were terrible even back in the day.
Also have a bunch of 3.5" floppies from my Amiga 500 and Amiga 1200.

Then again I'm not sure the machines themselves work any more due to leaking caps and batteries...

 

[Railgun]

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