Cool I had good experiences with Verbatim by far the most reliable in all the formats.
Darren,
Yeah, the company belonged to Mitsubishi Chemical. They bought it from Kodak. The media was so hot because when each batch, or "web" as we called them, was made at the media plant in Sunnyvale California, they assigned a number to it. When we ran them through the certification process in our two clean rooms, we checked for missing and extra pulse, modulation, and other defects. Our "A" grade media had to show 80% of the written signal read back on the read pass. Most of that stuff went to Microsoft because they were releasing windows and all the other software they had on floppies at that time. The errors encountered in the certification process were put on our network, so that Sunnyvale had them as soon as they were run. The media gurus tweaked the mix until we had 98% of the product passing certification at 80% signal (80% MP).
That was using analog certification. Later we upgraded the equipment to digital certification, and had the capability to certify, format, and fill a disk with software, in 12 seconds including the time required to insert into the drive and eject from the drive. We wrote to both sides at the same time at 1200 RPM. Remember those America on Line disks that were everywhere? We made them by the millions, shipping them in 50 piece blocks. I got to the point where I could completely take a floppy drive apart, clean it up and re-install and align the heads in about 10 minutes. I always took the heads appart to clean them. We also increased the speed of the disk assembly equipment in steps. We went from 5 production lines to 6 and still doubled our production. We were putting out 16 Million a month when Microsoft decided to go to CD versions of Windows 95. They told us that they had 500 Million disks in a warehouse, and didn't need any more. Kinda chopped us off at the ankles, so to speak. I had worked there for 6 1/2 years, when Mitsubishi Chemical decided to pull the plug. They sold all the production facilities to CMC Magnetics, a company from Tiawan. I had the honor of installing the robots and computers controlling them in what they called "clean rooms", and teaching them how to run and maintain them! What a joke! They took out a wall and moved the machines in using a DIESEL fork lift. That must have driven their air particle count into the stratosphere! Did I mention that they were still running all production lines while doing this? They also were not very careful about how they lifted the machines with the fork lift. I spent many hours replacing crushed multi-wire sensor cables, bent pneumatic cylinders. and other damage. They even dropped one of them from 6 feet onto the concrete floor. I was not very happy when I saw that, and it took a while to adjust around the bent frame which I had no way to repair. Water under the bridge, eh?
Verbatim buys their products from other manufacturers and sell them under the Verbatim name. We used to make disks for other companies too, and some banks.
It all worked out well though, because while I was over on the other side of the world (12 time zones away from home) I received a call from my current employer inquiring if I was interested in a position. I have been with them for 16 years so far. It is also high speed robotics, but much more advanced, and for a different purpose, and I am a senior engineer. Four more years and I can really retire.
Ciao for Now
Paul
