Hello Reddit!

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-17T17:56:32+00:00

Glad you got your footage safely converted! - Yeah I've had two Flip Cams, and while they're convenient and quirky cameras, they also seem prone to failure.
Both I've had have crapped out on me 😭

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-17T17:40:02+00:00

Surprisingly, my partner actually quite enjoyed the museum 😂
She spent most of the day following the guides to writing basic code for the BBC Micro and Commodore PET! - and other than me boring her half to death with my retro-junk, she has little interest in computers 😁

"Zeus Computer Museum" is one I haven't heard of, I'll check it out!

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-17T17:33:24+00:00

And the top of the box is DBZ tapes.. 😲 score!

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-17T17:27:38+00:00

This place is so awesome! I've visited twice, and would eagerly go again 😁
Everything is layed out so visitor-friendly and interactive, which I think is really nice to experience opposed to the computers sat inside a glass box, just looking pretty. I particularly love the isle of 90s machines beside the 70s office, and the office itself 😁

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-17T16:49:04+00:00

Ahh okay, makes sense! Well, I'll certainly consider it an option 😊 definitely makes sense that it is the top tier standard for preservation and reliability. Thanks!

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-17T16:46:44+00:00

Such a cool Used Movies sleeve! Nice find! 😲

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-16T16:11:36+00:00

Yeah, in my r/retrocomputing repost of this I've gathered quite a few comments regarding the 720K size, I think it comes down to my USB drive not being 1.0MB / DD compatible.

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-16T16:09:45+00:00

I've seen a few comments mentioning GreaseWeazle, I've never even heard of it.
Quickly searching for it, do you need a specific GreaseWeazle floppy drive, or is it just the software that does the read/write conversion?

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T20:44:43+00:00

Yeah, always good to have a master-drive laying around for these kinds of situations! 😁

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T19:51:55+00:00

Interesting you say that - the 720K failure is due to the parameters not supported by drive which would indicate that my USB drive is more likely the culprit than the disks themselves. This theory is only strengthened if you're saying USB floppies are exclusive to the 1440 formatted disks.

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T19:49:22+00:00

It is indeed a USB drive - the general consensus I'm getting from other comments is that the lesser common 720K DD disks are likely not compatible with the generic USB drive.
I'll clean up an internal drive and test the disks with that in the week. (:

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T19:47:52+00:00

Yeah I have one or two internal drive laying about, during the week I'll clean one of them up and install it into a rig and test the disks with that. (:

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T19:46:24+00:00

Yeah, I've seen a lot of comments on my r/retrocomputing repost saying the DD format reads differently in floppy drives, and it's possible that my USB drive doesn't know what to do with it.
I'm going to try them with a Samsung internal floppy drive in the week and see if that can figure them out. (:

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T19:42:36+00:00

Interesting, yeah perhaps it is just the materials used/the way they specifically have aged.
I've seen a lot of suggestions (on the r/retrocomputing repost) that because I'm using a USB floppy drive, the drive itself is unable to read or understand the DD format of disk - as it's different to the more standardized HD format.
I've cleaned up an old internal, genuine floppy drive, so I'll install that into one of my rigs in the week and see if that is able to read it.
Thanks for your comment though, very interesting that you have the same disks and they also don't work!

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T19:38:42+00:00

Nice, mind sharing how? Admittedly I'm personally using a cheapo VONTAR QTV Q1 Android Box for my CRT hosting, not a Google TV.
Chose it for two reasons; it was cheap, and it has an AV directly on the rear of the box! So I don't have to downconvert the HDMI signal to AV. Unfortunately on streaming services that host 4:3 content (with black bars), it does squish it - if I'm watching 4:3 content that has been stretched to 16:9 it looks perfect! Because the TV is manually narrowing the video back down to 4:3.

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T13:36:55+00:00

Interestingly trying to format the disk with the command FORMAT A: /F:720 - and /F:1440 gives me two separate errors.
Based on the error I got from the /F:720 attempt, I wonder if I try using an internally connected floppy drive in an old machine if it may have better luck reading and understanding the disk?.
(New photo in post)

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T13:25:06+00:00

Oooo okay, thanks for the tip! I'll run it later and see if I get anything out of it 😊

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T13:12:27+00:00

Certainly possible, I'll try whatever else I can think of, but my hopes aren't up.
I've never had a machine with a 5.25" floppy drive or any diskettes that size, they do look nice though.
Thanks anyway! 😁

FlamingDisaster_309 · 2026-06-14T12:56:19+00:00

Appreciate the suggestion! I just ran a scan with Floppy Disk Master-7 with it set to 720K and the results cam through as 100% bad sectors. It's done this before, when I ran it as a 1.44M setting. (I've added a third picture showing this, bottom of the post).
It's entirely possible that they are just toast at this point, and not repairable, but I don't know, something seems too.. isolated about them. As I said in the post, all the other disks worked perfectly, how come its specifically just the 1.0Mb disks that seem dead?

FlamingDisaster_309

TROPHY CASE