>>> Aluminum foil, just enough to cover the window, held in place
>>> by black tape should be fine

>> It does work, or adhesive aluminum foil or
>> write-protect stickies for floppies

A small piece of aluminum foil under either masking tape or
electical tape works quite well to block light on EPROM windows.


> Some people are surely going to be wondering what the heck
> write-protect stickies are. Some of us are wondering why you aren't
> calling them by their correct name -  write-enable stickies. :=)

I disagree with your terminology of "write-enable stickies"
and will continue to call them write-protect stickers.

The sticker did not enable writing to the diskette.

The sticker did write protect the contents of the diskette.

On a 5-1/4" diskette, normal blank media has a notch in the
upper right corner (on the side).  The presence of the notch
tells the system that it is allowed to write on the diskette.

To write protect the diskette, you applied a "write-protect
tab" to cover the notch.  You stuck it to the front, folded
it over the edge, and stuck it to the back (and itself via
the notch).

Some software distribution diskettes did not have a notch --
at all -- so that normal, unmodified drives could not write
to them.  These diskettes protected non-hardware-literate
from accidental error.  Or you just used an X-acto knife to
cut a notch in such diskettes.

The write protect tabs came in silver and black.  They
commonly came with an aluminized surface (silver ones) that
work very well as EPROM window covers.  The black ones are
essentially good quality electrical tape, slightly thicker
and stiffer.  I don't know if they properly block light on
EPROM windows or not.

						Lee Jones

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