Magnetic Card Questions

[Kostas Kritsilas]

(12-07-2020 10:38 PM)Sukiari Wrote:  

(12-06-2020 03:42 AM)Kostas Kritsilas Wrote:  I wonder how hard it would be to "make" new cards. I think the basic shape is easy to duplicate (just use any of the existing cards as a template), and probably getting the thickness right wouldn't be too hard. What might take some (or a lot of) effort is getting the magnetic material/oxide coating right, in terms of magnetic characteristics and abrasiveness. There are magnetic strips on the back of most bank cards, at least up here in Canada, so getting a magnetic strip onto a plastic substrate is not something that has disappeared as a process. Another approach might be to see the companies that make business card type fridge magnets, maybe they can be pursuaded to make a non magnetic version on a thinner substrate?

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 things 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 "collectible" items, overpriced to the extent that you may as well just by the regular magnetic cards.