Wow, I didn't expect one of the 3D printed parts I made to show up on LGR. This doubly made my morning!

We actually sold those Teac cleaners. There were 2 types, that one you have and another that had a sort of paper "disk" that you added fluid to and they would spin up and take some of the dirt off the heads when you did the old DIR prompt thing - snake oil or not they sold well and I have a strange memory that the sales rep said that "dry" one you have had a special coating that attracted the dirt ordinary disks would leave on the heads (like cassette heads) and because of that you didn't need fluid. And strange as it may seem they did seem to work. I would assume by now though any "coating" would have worn off/evaporated but I can confirm I got at least 2 computers working again that would not read from the A: drive using them.

"Clint why are you cleaning floppy drives at 4AM?" "Because I've lost control of my life"

Be kind, rewind that floppy.

I worked at University years ago, and we used brand-new 3.5 disks for cleaning. Format the disk 3-5 times, drive is now clean! The disk used for cleaning would get put in our 'free disk' pile. We ran tests to compare cloth/alcohol systems and new disks....new disks always worked better for cleaning. Since there were lots of bone-headed grad students, we taught everyone the 'new disk' trick. Worked every time!

That music is The 4 Seasons by Vivaldi. In case any one was wondering

LGR is more confused at the end of the video, then the beginning. I nominate this for video of the year.

Some day LGR will accidentally summon the Old Gods using a random floppy disc he found.

"Plop, greetings, blerbs, whatnot" If that isnt a ringtone, I dont know what is...

I don't care if it doesn't do anything. Those animations are super cute.

9:33 Clint slowly descends into floppy disk madness...

when you're out of focus, it's not LGR blerbs but LGR blurs

I think it's a placebo, just like those fake cleanup apps on phones nowadays that don't actually cleanup at all. Kudos for the effort put into the disc though. They could easily show a simple text prompt but went ahead and put full on animation and music on this thing.

3:49 Lovely bit of broken English in the instructions: "Other Personal Computor (sic) and Word Professor" 😆

Mark personally helped me set up my IBM 5155 with XT-IDE. He’s a great dude and makes some cool, niche products. So cool to see him featured here!

My first instinct when the files didn't show up in DOS on the Windows 98 PC was "oh, they're hidden, so dir/ah". The music is Vivaldi's Four seasons, but they're not in the right season. When the computer date is April it plays Winter and in July it plays Spring.

That label has strong "Change da world. My final message. Goodbye" energy

"It is not 4 in the morning. I am not that insane". Well well I guess I'm insane.

KZfaq: hey, want to watch a guy being confused with an old floppy disk? Me: kinda

I had a bunch of 5.25 in floppies I needed to clean a few years back (they had been stored in someone's garage so a lot of them had mold or something on them), and to make it more possible I constructed a device with my Lego Mindstorms NXT to aid me. Wish I had a picture of it, i had a retractable arm for the spindle and used one of the wheels wrapped with rubber bands to turn the disk, with a wheel with a tire being what I used to turn it with my hand. I also had the data window rest on a piece that I attached a microfiber cloth to.

Maintenance made easy. How responsible!

Clint, I think you've got 1/2 of a complete set. I didn't have this but I had something similar. This TEAC seems to be a region specific thing. What I had was a more generic floppy drive cleaner, which came with two discs: one was the traditional cleaning head, the other one came with a cleaning program, that did something similar. Basically, you would put the data disc in first, wait for it to load, and it would prompt you to insert the other disc. The loaded program would run a specific set of drive command to spin the cleaning disc.

Oh man, I had one of these! When I saw that cleaning boy you actually opened a part of my brain that hasn't seen the light of day for over 20 years. I haven't thought of this stupid thing for so long but I completely remember the animation now, thanks...I guess.

That was the great part about midi files. You could fit tons of them on a floppy disk.

I’m just old enough to have barely used some floppy disks when I was a kid, and have been watching your videos for years. This is literally the first time I learned floppy disks have an actual disk that spins inside of them. I literally just thought that the tape was a static tape that somehow held that much data, and now I feel silly :)

I remember some VHS cleaners were regular tapes coated with a cleaning solution. I wonder if the same thing is going on here. If that's the case, the solution is probably long gone by now.

From the makers of your favorite DVD rewinder. This is certainly a unique one.

I haven't used a floppy disk in years, and I just watched an 11 minute video on a head-cleaning floppy. Nice job.

0:00 LGR channeling his inner-Brutalmoose.

I believe that was released in a combo pack with the 'Double Your RAM' software!

In the floppy disc era, I bought a cleaning set that included two floppy discs and a bottle of cleaning solution. One disc had a DOS program similar to yours that you loaded into memory before using the other disc with the material for the cleaning solution to be applied. The program then stepped you through the process and provided the number of reps the disc needed to clean the head. After so many uses it had saved a use file on the program disc to prompt to replace the cleaning disc. I do not remember the brand name so can’t help with researching further info.

My guess it's working like one of those VCR head cleaning VHS tapes that show stuff on screen as it cleans. Magnetic media going across the head can usually dislodge dirt as it runs. Maybe it's doing it like that? A dry cleaner as opposed to a wet one with cloth and alcohol?

The disk holder should have an insert to place a magnet in, so you can really _clean_ that diskette!

Time traveling troll disk from 25 years ago 😁

Floppy discs were outdated when I was born and I have never seen anyone using them, but holy shit is this interesting. Clint, your channels are not even nostalgia fuel. For us, Gen Z, they feel like a museum.

Speculation's already done with regards to it being the dry type of head cleaner, but it is pretty fun how they have the animations for the cleaning process, which is just pure Japanese oddness, so worthy of being a mini-oddware thing... :D

3:49 "OTHER PERSONAL COMPUTOR & WORD PROFESSOR" 😂😂😂

I was not prepared to love this video as much as I did but here we are.

Love the floppy reading noise reminds me of loading a new game on my Amiga Like the way the cleaning mans strokes were perfectly sync'd with the disk noises

wow those floppy disk holders make me feel like there is hope in this weary world

I didn’t know I needed this but now I’m ordering one. Oh God please send help.

Are we sure its not loading some malicious software in the background? This was so enthralling!

The thumbnail preview is an infinite loop of putting the disk in, turning it, taking it out... I was in a moment of deep thought when it caught my eye... I became mesmerised by it... I must have stared at it for ten minutes before I got snapped back to reality Holy shit

I was gonna say it reminds of me VCR head cleaners! The blank tapes you run through the machine to clean them. Really glad you got it figured out though!

Once the files disappeared I thought. "Please tell me he did a virus scan and it's not THAT kind of cleaner."

I think the only thing that got cleaner was the disk inside the disk cleaner, by spinning it, thus making the disk drive itself dirtier.

Lol I had one of those when I had my 386 and 486 DX2 66 and it's meant to "realign" you're reading head to "check" to see if it needs physical cleaning or just a reading head realignment. It's a diagnostic tool only. Not an actual drive head cleaner. Thanks for the nostalgia trip mate 👍. The seasons are just so you can do you're anual PC "cleaning" with your house cleaning 😂. It's TEAC brand after all! 😁

The SND files have names representing the seasons in Japanese. AKI is autumn/fall (秋), FUYU is winter (冬), HARU is spring (春) and NATU is summer (夏, though written using Nihon-shiki romanisation instead of the more comon Hepburn romanisation).

If not completely snake oil, it looks like maybe an attempt to use lots of rapid movements of the internals to vibrate or shake loose anything on the heads that might be interfering with read/write (like loose dust). Definitely wouldn't do anything to get rid of anything gummy or physically stuck.

Think it's supposed too have come with another disk that you swap out too which is why it takes a bit too load in, that second floppy is probably supposed too have those bristles on it or be copied over too the pc first before you run the program itself while having one of those cleaner bristle disks in there.

The Teac 4x4x32 bufferless cd burner was a legend. I burned around 3000 cd-s with it and it is still operational....somewhere in the attic :-)

That little 3D printed disk opener rotator cleany thing is pretty cool. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I am of the generation that had hundreds of 5 1/4 and thousands of 3.5 floppies. My guess is that dirty disks became more of a problem recently with the resurgence of interest in rehabbing old computer gear. So you’ll have a lot more floppies in bad shape needing cleaning. Wasn’t as much of a problem back when the disks were all new and not being stored in an attic or garage or shed. Such a gadget might have existed back in the day, but I never saw or heard of one.

The head thrashed on the abrasive section of the disk to clean. You can heat that in your video on the first pass. FWIW, Teac was a major manufacturer of both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch drives. I still have several of each size in my old spare parts boxes. Finally, you commented on the spelling "disc". This was much more common for 3.5" discs while disk was more common for 5 1/4 and 8 inch discs but the two spellings were used interchangeably.

I know a dude who regularly interrupts his own unboxing videos with the words: "Let's have closer look at this - on the bench." :D

I have a cleaning disk, it's not currently in my house, but one thing i do remember clearly, is that the material of the disk had been replaced with a felt pad and that the mechanism for the shutter was completely gone (including the track, so it wasn't just removed) only the recess remaining. It came in one of those "blister" packages that you could slide the cardboard out of, and it came with a eyedrop sized cleaning solution. I also vaguely remember that in the instructions it said that it would work only for the duration of the "prescribed" drops, and you were supposed to drop a decent amount at the four lines indicated in the felt pad (a cross). I mean, it worked, certainly i revived my Sharp printer and writer's reading unit with it a few years ago. It kept returning error, i remembered i had this thing and i tried it, like nothing to lose, right? And it worked, i was able to use the floppy. I have a similar product but for CDs and there's a tiny little brushed glued unto the disk about half way through an usual write cycle. That one i've no idea if it works or if it came with anything besides the CD case (no instructions, just a fonty title).

I love the Blerbs channel so much Clint, it lets me see so much more cool content from you!

Using Vivaldi's 4 seasons of summer for the different seasons. How charming.

Part way through I was sure it was going to be a translation error and it'd just be a disk that added a reminder to clean your house every 3 months. It just keeps getting weirder!

My mom used to make me use those. Its an enema. You get to watch soothing window cleaning animations while the gutty works are being voided. Aretha Franklin invented it in 1907 for the world's fair held in the Alaska fairgrounds. It was cold that year.

I swear I had a copy of one of those I picked up at a PC show in either King of Prussia, PA or AC, NJ a long time ago. ...long time. So much nostalgia...

The mylar disc in the disk might have a texture to it. I've seen the same thing with VHS cleaning tapes

Lol at Vivaldi “Four Seasons” appropriately associated with the calendar.

This is so reminiscent of your review of Goat Simulator. That's the video that got me started with you way back when.

Wonderful video! Thanks so much for sharing. I got a kick out of seeing you so confused and trying to figure out the mystery!! 😁

I think you're supposed to swap the disk for one with the cloth thing after you run the exe

I would be really curious to see what the drive is doing internally. It almost sounds as if the files are forcing the head to move completely from side to side, perhaps you could pull a drive and take the case off and then observe it to see if the program is forcing the read/write head to behave differently than it normally would when reading a traditional disk.

DOS trick: use " dir /a /w " to show files will all attributes (HSRA) in a wide listing. See " dir /? " for more information, and " help dir " for too much information.

Oh wow. I had one of these back in 97 or 98 with a UK company called Linear Computers, the instructions that came with it said it should only be used occasionally to avoid wearing the drive heads. And disc is more common this side of the pond btw!

It's cross platform with PC-98,so cute to see some MAG file format going on :)

LTO Cleanig Tapes for Tape Libraries are also only a kind of a blank Tape.

Drive cleaning, the multimedia experience! I was half expecting it to ask for a 2nd, actual brush loaded disk, that you maybe didn't have yet.

I had a similar type for a VHS recorder, that had what looked like a normal tape. You put it in and press play, and wait until the picture on screen because "cleaner" as the tape cleaned the head, so was pretty cool You actually get to 'see' the effects of the cleaning as it happens.

Vivaldi's 4 seasons. Classy touch.

I went into this expecting it to be something like CCleaner for 1994 but I'm left more confused than informed.

My guess: the floppy is made of special material. If you've ever seen a cleaning tape for a DDS, DLT, or LTO drive it looks like "normal" tape. The tape has different magnetic properties to clean the head. So even though it looks like normal tape, it's not. I'm guessing TEAC did something like the magnetic tape drive cleaning, but with a disk.

The series of events I can imagine, as one possibility: 1. The program was written with a cleaning disk in mind. Install the program, then insert a cleaning disk, and run it. It tries to continually access the disk over that 10-15 second process, so the end user doesn't have to deal with confusing error messages. (you can test this by copying to the hard drive and running from there, see if it tries to actually access the disk drive) 2. Bootleggers got ahold of the original program. Slightly modified or not, they started selling a bootleg copy of the software only, no bundled cleaning disk. That might explain why there's a TEAC name brand on the label (to make it sound more official), and why Disc was 'misspelled'. I wish I could test this before commenting with pure conjecture, but I lack DOS-capable hardware or a floppy drive. (this was a comment on the dry disk cleaner video, which disappeared while I was typing this)

Vivaldi's The four seasons! LOL

So if the software doesn't do anything useful it can at least be nice to look at and listen to. Or so the developers thought.

I remember buying similar dry VHS cleaners when I was younger for the VHS players in my parents minivans. Did it whenever the sound started going out and they always seemed to get the audio working again for a good few months before it'd go back out again. I was 3 years old, so maybe it didn't work as well as my nostalgia tells me, but oh well. They always had some weird animation and music it played while it was cleaning and always would be like "now cleaning left audio channel" and what not. We'd buy them from a Walgreens or CVS and just plop them in and run them.

I remember those. they were shipped with the early teac 3.5 drives. As I recall the disk surface has a special coating and the included software loaded the drive head. I think they also used a different track each time the disk was used and needed to be replaced after a limited number of cleanings.

**FLOPPY HEAD CLEANER** *dramatic music blaring*

That is _weird,_ dude. Definitely seems like some sort of placebo, but the fact that it came from an otherwise reputable company, just... Wow.

I have a 3M VHS head cleaner which is just a VHS cassette tape that plays instructions on the screen while cleaning. It really works because I often need it to clean my player as old tapes and my shoddy maintenance cause the heads to get residue on them to the point it will not play. The cleaning tape looks to be magnetic tape possibly slightly thicker than standard VHS tape. But it is highly effective at cleaning the heads. The effect is almost instant.

I own a TI-59 which uses a magnetic strip thing to store programs on. The official package from TI came with a head cleaner that *looks* like the regular magnetic strips but it's actually slightly abrasive. The instructions say to only ever use it when needed, and sparingly at that. I get the feeling it can wear parts down. It also comes with a separate cleaning strip for the capstan/wheel assembly that pulls the strips though, and to clean it you hold onto the strip as it pulls it in, and then hold it in place while the capstan/wheel slips (which isn't easy to do as the motor is actually pretty powerful). I felt bad doing it because the poor little motor is straining so hard trying to pull it through! But anyway, enough TI-59 reminiscing :)

Any chance this is a clone product where they took the software from a real one but just put it on a normal floppy? Could have been a rip off back in the day.

Wow, that's a blast from the past. Who's up for some "Secret of Monkey Island"?🤷‍♂️

Used to have one many year sago that had data on it, and it did clean, but you could physically hear that it had some sort of an abrasive coating on the disk as it sounded rough when rotating in the drive. The one I had just had a countdown timer on the screen in a very large font, the sector and track it was cleaning and number of times the disk had been used, nothing as fancy as this!.

I could listen to those floppy drive sounds all day long. Also, guess I’m insane since I’m up after 4 in the morning.

How odd! You should disassemble the exe files and see if you can tease out what it's actually doing.

>placebo head cleaner disk comes in two languages >does not have a secret cherry blossoms mode for April SHAME, SHAME, SHAME

LOL @ your placebo theory! I used to run a lapper at Seagate back in the late 80's. Lapping was the final finish on the disk-facing plane of the reader head. My output would be sent to

Feels like something the Floppotron got inspired by. "If we make the disk drive make noises, it sounds like something's getting cleaned!"

Trust the Japanese to come up with software that leaves Clint speechless.. :D (I assume that the language is Japanese at any rate)

I think you’re supposed to swap to a cleaner disk while it’s doing the animation, just a guess

I really needed this video and your excitement today. Thank you soooooooooooo much.

Honestly, this reminds me of some VHS cleaners who don't have the "typical felt pads" used to clean the heads but has what appears to be metallic tape like a traditional VHS tape would. Actually, the VHS cleaner I still have is this very thing, but somehow it cleans the heads well anyway so I won't complain.

If I was a virus coder, I'd use such a disk to get it on your computer 😄

Thats the weirdest of the blerbworld. Highly doubt that has anyhing to do with TEAC... plot twist: it installs a virus while bedazzling you with vivaldi 😂

thumbs up for your archiving software habit!