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1993-02-01
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█████████████████████████████
█ LETTERS, NOTES, UPDATES █
█████████████████████████████
PO Box 457
Beachwood, NJ 08722
1992 December 16
Dear John,
I'm afraid collecting virtual books on floppy disks may be
futile. I've found examples of older disks (eight to ten years old)
decomposing. When any of the oxide breaks down, the residue seems
to build up on the heads of a diskdrive. The result is disk damage
when trying to format a disk for reuse, not only defective disks but
perfectly good disks. Sometimes only a few sectors are lost, often
more than fifty are marked bad. The worst was having Drive A format
only one side of a disk. Cleaning the heads worked eventually.
No question but that the CD has a longer shelflife than the
floppy disk. One of these days there'll be crystal ROM to give us
indestructible Star Trek libraries. That'll be the day for a library
to serve as focal point of a collective community or, at least, a
learning centre for an extended family of optimum size.
Amicably,
Dan de Parto
Editor's Note: Mr. de Parto did not mention the brand names of the
disks that gave him trouble. Does this mean that all those copy
protected disks we have from that era are soon to be dead? I have
some disks of a similar vintage, but have yet to have trouble.
Has anyone had similar difficulties with old disks?
One computer expert has speculated that CD-ROM disks may eventually
break down due to oxidation of the aluminum layer. (The writeable
CD-ROM disks use a gold layer, not aluminum.) Archival qualities
of various media also depend on the storage method.
█████████████████
█ Virus Warning █
█████████████████
The shareware book GARLIC MAGIC By George T. Knoblauch was
inadvertently shipped with a copy of the Stoned virus. A warning
to this effect was issued to all shareware distributors, so it is
unlikely that corrupted copies reached the public. Most, but not
necessarily all, shareware vendors routinely screen new disks
before adding them to their libraries.
If you have a copy of Garlic Magic, you can check your copy with
VirusScan or other virus protection programs. Clean copies are
available from Serendipity Systems or from Knoblauch.
█████████████████████████████
█ Address and other changes █
█████████████████████████████
███
The Genuine Article Magazine has changed its name to OVERBYTE,
and its publisher has a new address:
Dick Adler
402 Broadway
Venice, CA 90291
███
The Daydreamer and Waste Not, Want Not, both by Dan de Parto, are
now available in editions using the DART interface. The current
address for de Parto is:
Dan de Parto
P.O. Box 457
Beachwood, NJ 08722
███
Mail addressed to John Libertus, the author of READ.COM, was
returned by the post office and stamped "No forwarding address."
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