5.25" Floppies - Seen a USB solution?

So go cheesy. The floppy interface never really changed much over the years (assuming that you're not talking about the idiosyncratic Apple floppies), so it should be possible to attach a 5.25 drive to a gutted 3.5 USB floppy enclosure. You'll need one of those reducer adapter card thingies, but the cable signals are the same.

Lacie do an external floppy USB drive. We've got a couple lying around the office that have rarely been used...

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10086

I recently found a 5.25 floppy with a Basic program I wrote on it. As well as a few papers for school. I'm going to turn it in as part of my portfolio for grad school this fall semester. I think it was used 23 years ago!!!

Sdashiki said:

for those who say put a 5.25" in a 3.5" enclosure or whatnot, where the hell do I find a working 5.25" drive!!!?

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you could go to goodwill or similar and look around for an old computer with a 5.25" drive, then just take the drive out.

Sdashiki said:

for those who say put a 5.25" in a 3.5" enclosure or whatnot, where the hell do I find a working 5.25" drive!!!?

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Most IT departments have rooms or closets that end up as hardware graveyards. There always seems to be a dead computer somewhere with surviving floppy drives.

If not, Google around. Bare 5.25 drives are still available, used/tested or new-old stock. They can be had for under $10 a piece, less if you want to buy a box of 10 just in case. I remember when the discs used to sell for that much!


[edit: Also, if there are no budget issues and you don't want the hassle of a scavenger hunt, there are data conversion services around that could do the transfer for you. ]

Sdashiki said:

im in that closet/room as we speak.

LoL

and not a working 5.25" and machine to match.

my next trick is to take this 5.25" drive from a busted 286, a move it to a celeron Windows 85 machine. hopefully I can switch the CDR with the 5.25" drive.

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I might be making this up, but I think I remember something about voltages or something being different with 5.25 drives, so you can't put one in a usb floppy case.

grabberslasher said:

I might be making this up, but I think I remember something about voltages or something being different with 5.25 drives, so you can't put one in a usb floppy case.

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That kind of depends on the age of the drive. Older ones needed the 12V lead, later ones only needed the 5V.

I'd go kludge personally. Go to the local junk shop or goodwill and locate any PC with a 5.25" floppy drive and an IDE hard drive. If one or the other doesn't work, replace it with something off eBay or whatever, but it doesn't matter what the OS is or even if it supports a CDRW. Even DOS'll do.

Once you have all the floppies on the hard drive, just pull it and stick it into a 3.5" case--should work fine. At that point, you can do whatever you want with the data.

I've been wanting to get disk images of some old Apple game disks, and I THINK there's a way to cobble it together with either the LC with an Apple ][ personality card and 5.25" drive (which I actually have), or a //c+ with the built-in 3.5" drive and external 5.25" one. My problem is I need functioning images to run with an emulator; if it was just data, I'd do the above.

Sdashiki said:

My guess is I need to find a floppy drive 5.25" that works IDE.

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That would be a rare beast, if such a thing ever existed.

All the 5.25"s I could scrounge up have an odd connector.

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Is it a card edge connector? That used to be the standard. Electrically they are the same as the later pin type. PCs of a certain age often had adapters or dual-connector cables to deal with this (especially PCs with both 3.5 and 5.25 drives running off the same controller).

Inside the old machines is the first place I'd look.

Sdashiki said:

I got a stack of like 100s of 5.25" floppies...you know old school real FLOPPY disks, ones that are actually floppy when you shake em.

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Old school?

Check this out:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/07/huge_floppy_disk.html

steve_hill4 said:

Old school?

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The disk in the middle is the old school 8 inch floppy used back in the 60's.

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Only off by a decade or two. I still have a couple of 8" floppies from my PDP-11 days in the late 70s early 80s. I don't know what's to the left of the 8"er.

EDIT: Wiki claims that the 8" was released in 1969 so the article seems OK, but just barely.

B

balamw said:

Only off by a decade or two. I still have a couple of 8" floppies from my PDP-11 days in the late 70s early 80s. I don't know what's to the left of the 8"er.

EDIT: Wiki claims that the 8" was released in 1969 so the article seems OK, but just barely.

B

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Too old for me, (born 1982), but I remember using 5.25" discs as I was growing up all the time.

Don't know the exact details on the larger one, but being a LaserDisc owner, I recall reading it was the same as one of those babies, just in a cartridge for protection. 12" in size and for the video variety, you could get either 30 or 60 minutes of video and audio per side, (30 to get closer to DVD audio and video quality). Analogue though, so you can't compare data capacities with a DVD.

Was still trying to find a decent set of Star Wars OOT LaserDiscs, (after first set purchased got "lost in transit" from the US), but with Lucas releasing the new 2-disc DVD versions with original theatrical versions on disc 2, I'll hold off for now, (still will get though as LaserDisc versions weren't completely original and had some minor revisions). This will take me up to 5 copies of the OT on September 11th.

I have some old computer stuff at my moms house in CT, I am going back this week, Ill check and see if I still have some old "legacy" stuff.

Google around. I remember seeing a schematic online a couple years ago to wire an old 5.25" floppy to an IDE port (or it might have even been USB, I can't remember). I was going to figure out a way to capture and save (and possibly use an emulator for) all my old Apple //c software, but I gave up on it, realizing it would be neat but pretty pointless overall.

Sdashiki said:

I got a stack of like 100s of 5.25" floppies...you know old school real FLOPPY disks, ones that are actually floppy when you shake em.

I had access to a few archaic 286's that had 5.25" drives in them, but they both conked out and wont read anymore.

I am having one hell of a time finding a USB solution, or anything for that matter that would work in a newer machine.

The trick is to get these floppies to a CD-R....

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Hello Sdashiki,

I saw your post and read the thread, as I had the same question. I read this thread and I enjoyed it very much; very thoughtful posts.

Here is what I found during my search. Besure to click the "details" button to obtain price and informtion. Let me know if this fits the bill. I certainly hope this helps.

hxxp://computers.zipzoomfly.com/zipzoomfly525inexternalusbenclosure/index.html

(hxxp = http)

I plan to by one real soon.

All the Best & Regards,

The Redlander


Below, pic of Teß & Jade.

Photo: 5.25" External Floppy Enclosure

I found that I could download a picture of the 5.25" External Floppy Enclosure that I found. Here it is. I hope this helps too.

Regards,

The Redlander

You do realize..that this thread is about 3 years old?

fireshot91 said:

You do realize..that this thread is about 3 years old?

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Hello Fireshot91,

Yes, but it is hard to keep old people from sharing. Irrespective, there is much old usable data locked in old floppies; I want to help keep it a theme. I am a old UNIX main-framer and I recall all the sizes of floppies.

I am still on the prowl, though.

Thanks for your post.

Enjoy,

The Redlander

Redlander said:

Let me know if this fits the bill. I certainly hope this helps.

hxxp://computers.zipzoomfly.com/zipzoomfly525inexternalusbenclosure/index.html

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Unfortunately this is an enclosure for IDE devices like CD-ROM drives or even maybe an IDE HDD, so it won't work with a 5.25" floppy drive.

B

There are some things that are best left to die.

For example, my dear domestic partner insisted on saving a ZIP drive that I had reluctantly kept around specifically to read zip discs from her employer of 8 or 9 years ago.

Our 9 y/o kid stepped on it a few days ago (don't ask) and I have now declared a moratorium on actively contributing to the retrieval of information content unknown for at least 5 years.

Quietly deep-sixing data that's at least a decade old hurts historians only, I think. Unless of course it's really hot email from a few girlfriends/boyfriends back...