If you actually have diskettes from that era that you care about, you might want to image them using a low-level magnetic flux reader - the devices are actually quite inexpensive, and this would ensure that the data is preserved for the foreseeable future.

Well, he said an old MFM drive, so he's probably referring to an MFM hard drive rather than diskettes. That was the common parlance for MFM HDDs back then.

> you might want to image them using a low-level magnetic flux reader - the devices are actually quite inexpensive

Link? Googling that term shows at most probes that register a single scalar value, not something that can image a diskette. (Nor were those "quite inexpensive")

I wouldn't agree with "quite inexpensive" (start at $100~$200 and then you need a drive as well) but there are some of the options out there for low-level magnetic floppy imaging.

https://applesaucefdc.com

https://www.kryoflux.com

https://discferret.com/wiki/DiscFerret

As an alternative to going hunting for hardware that will read your MFM disks, you might also have an idle look around for retrocomputing groups that are nearby(ish). Someone might live within a viable distance, or you might be able to bring the disks to a meetup. I understand sending disks off is also a thing, but given their age and the weakness of the magnetic fields in them I'd shy away from subjecting them to potential erasure via postal conditions. Unsure if this perspective is overparanoid.

How many colors were you able to get with moving graphics? From the article the CRTC hacking needed to get the last 512 colors is too CPU intensive for anything but static images on an 8088.