Date   : Tue, 17 Jul 2007 03:57:54 -0500
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Insurance costs

Dominic Beesley wrote:
> I've recently had a fairly disasterous flood in my house that has destroyed
> a load of my kit.

Ouch :(

> Luckily all but one of my beebs seem to fire up ok but all my discs
> (precious personal stuff not backed up for 20 odd years!) and disc drives
> have got broken! What should I put down for

Disks are remarkably forgiving of this kind of thing. Take the magnetic 
surfaces out of the jackets, clean with warm soapy water, allow to dry 
thoroughly, pop into a new temporary jacket and you should be able to get the 
data off.

Electronics generally are too - it's only if they're powered on when wet that 
problems really arise. Note that dirt tends to get trapped in switches, 
variable resistors etc. and they need a proper dismantling and cleaning though 
(and motors are particularly problematic - your floppy drives are probably 
toast for this reason)

> 4 * WE 51/4 disc drives 1 * Teletext adaptor 1 * bbc b with S/W RAM 1 *
> Dual trace oscilloscope 20Mhz

Difficult.

At one end, all of that's free from freecycle lists etc. if you don't mind a 
bit of waiting.

Via other collectors / for sale lists, then maybe 10 per drive, 20 for the 
Teletext adaptor, 15 for the beeb, 30 for the 'scope?

If the insurance firm are serious about paying out "need it now" prices, then 
dig around on the web for specific models of drives, 'scope etc. being sold. 
I've seen disk drives going for close on 100 pounds from some resellers for 
instance, because they're catering to people who want an exact match for some 
old piece of process control equipment.

cheers

Jules