Homebrew PCBs

In article <4257211D.31C39B54@...>,
   Stephen Bartlett <tower.op@...> wrote:
> A friend, who works in the local tel co CO tells of a coworker who, in
> the days of floppies, used a magnet to secure his backup disk to the
> side of a file cabinet, where he could easily find it when
> needed.....and then needed it...

Interesting!

About three years ago many cardboard boxes full of floppy disks, there
must have been several thousand disks, arrived at the place where I work
(A stores and maintenance depot) from head office. All the contents had
been transferred to other media and they were for disposal. The trouble
was no-one quite knew what to do with them - there were obvious fears that
they might contain sensitive data. Our boss told us we could have some of
them for our department's use and we could have some ourselves as long as
we were careful what we did with them. As it turned out, as far as I could
see they were CAD files from the drawing office and, unless you had the
right program, unreadable - also rather boring I suspect.

I regularly go to a computer fair for Acorn computers (No I don't suppose
you've heard of them but don't worry about it) and there is always a
charity stall so I suggested to my boss I take some along there - but how
to clean them?

Next door to where I work is the BBC's tape services department with whom
we are on good terms. One of their functions was (it's running down now as
you might expect) to recycle used tape. Not surprisingly they have an
industrial bulk eraser - quite large - drop your tape on a conveyer belt
and a minuet or do so later it emerges the other end nicely wiped.

I took round some floppies put them through and low and behold still
perfectly readable!