Magnetic Card Questions

[Sukiari]

(12-07-2020 10:57 PM)Kostas Kritsilas Wrote:  

(12-07-2020 10:38 PM)Sukiari Wrote:  Before worrying about the formulation I will probably just try making a template and trying various magnetic strip materials I have lying around. I used to punch holes in DD 3 1/2" floppies so I could format them as high density instead of double when I was a lad and I have quite a few of these disks still, they all work fine - haha! So I think the material's probably not terribly important especially considering the low data density on the card itself.

I remember doing that, way back when. It worked about 90-95% of the time, but some did end up not formatting correctly, or later on, spontaneously losing their data.

I don't have any floppy diskettes around any more. It seems like a lot of magnetic media has gone the way of the dodo bird. Even thinks like QIC tapes, VHS/8mm/4mm and audio cassettes are getting hard to come by. I can't find any of them as new, and many are now "collectibly" items, overpriced to the extent that you may as well just by the regular magnetic cards.

AFAIK there are only three ostensible manufacturers of minicassettes left. A US company, which is probably mostly supported by the government, a Chinese company, which offeres cassettes under different trade names and with different colors and labels, but clearly all on the same equipment, and Sony which some people think use the Chinese company now.