So I suppose my next question concerns floppy controllers - anyone know much about these and how they work, what I should be looking for etc?

You probably want an ISA multi-IO card, those usually have a FDD controller on'board. Ideally it should have jumpers for configuration so you can disable the parts of it that you don't need (to avoid conflicts with other hardware you may already have on-board).

Overheat wrote:

Oooo - that latter option sounds more appealing - i shall have to look into that 😀

I highly recommend one of these Lacie USB floppies:
http://www.ebay.com/p/LaCie-External-Floppy-D … -FDD/1100058505

I bought one because they support both 1.44MB and 720k disks. I use it regularly on my Windows 10 system to to get files to and from my IBM 5150 (with a 3.5" drive) or other old systems.

Also, make sure the cable you're using that has all 5.25 connectors is in fact a floppy cable and not an MFM hard drive cable. They look nearly identical aside from the placement of the twist. The twist should be on the same wires on your standard floppy cable as it is on the one with 5.25 connectors. If a different set of wires are twisted then it is likely an MFM cable and this would obviously not work! I did this last year and it was quite puzzling.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I highly recommend one of these Lacie USB floppies: http://www.ebay.com/p/LaCie-External-Floppy-D … -FDD/1100058505 […]
Show full quote

Overheat wrote:

Oooo - that latter option sounds more appealing - i shall have to look into that 😀

I highly recommend one of these Lacie USB floppies:
http://www.ebay.com/p/LaCie-External-Floppy-D … -FDD/1100058505

I bought one because they support both 1.44MB and 720k disks. I use it regularly on my Windows 10 system to to get files to and from my IBM 5150 (with a 3.5" drive) or other old systems.

Also, make sure the cable you're using that has all 5.25 connectors is in fact a floppy cable and not an MFM hard drive cable. They look nearly identical aside from the placement of the twist. The twist should be on the same wires on your standard floppy cable as it is on the one with 5.25 connectors. If a different set of wires are twisted then it is likely an MFM cable and this would obviously not work! I did this last year and it was quite puzzling.

Those aren't 5.25" drives. AFAIK 5.25" drives were never made in USB flavor. 😀

kixs wrote:

Tuff one. BIOS only supports one unit.

I'm not sure it will work with a separate controller as it also has to be configured via BIOS. But then again it might work/display B: if BIOS finds it is available.

You would need a separate controller that provides its own BIOS, AFAIK. Then you disable the floppy controller in the computer's own BIOS, and enable the one in the controller card's BIOS. However, I'm not sure whether it will be conflict free.

IMHO, the easiest would be to pick up a late Pentium 3 or early Pentium 4 box with dual floppy disk drive support in its BIOS. Especially the Pentium 4's should be available for little money...

Maybe the BIOS is just limited to one drive, but the chipset can still drive two drives.
In this case it is perhaps possible to unlock the setting(s).
https://www.bios-mods.com/

yawetaG wrote:

kixs wrote:

Tuff one. BIOS only supports one unit.

I'm not sure it will work with a separate controller as it also has to be configured via BIOS. But then again it might work/display B: if BIOS finds it is available.

You would need a separate controller that provides its own BIOS, AFAIK. Then you disable the floppy controller in the computer's own BIOS, and enable the one in the controller card's BIOS. However, I'm not sure whether it will be conflict free.

IMHO, the easiest would be to pick up a late Pentium 3 or early Pentium 4 box with dual floppy disk drive support in its BIOS. Especially the Pentium 4's should be available for little money...

You could use a BIOS extension from a FDD card such as the KW-530D (you can find it here: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/rom/rom.htm), burned in an EPROM and installed e.g. in a ROM socket on a NIC; it would provide the necessary functions for a separate multi-IO card's FDD controller without using the motherboard's BIOS functions. I've done that in a XT computer to enable support for high density floppies.

stamasd wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I highly recommend one of these Lacie USB floppies: http://www.ebay.com/p/LaCie-External-Floppy-D … -FDD/1100058505 […]
Show full quote

Overheat wrote:

Oooo - that latter option sounds more appealing - i shall have to look into that 😀

I highly recommend one of these Lacie USB floppies:
http://www.ebay.com/p/LaCie-External-Floppy-D … -FDD/1100058505

I bought one because they support both 1.44MB and 720k disks. I use it regularly on my Windows 10 system to to get files to and from my IBM 5150 (with a 3.5" drive) or other old systems.

Also, make sure the cable you're using that has all 5.25 connectors is in fact a floppy cable and not an MFM hard drive cable. They look nearly identical aside from the placement of the twist. The twist should be on the same wires on your standard floppy cable as it is on the one with 5.25 connectors. If a different set of wires are twisted then it is likely an MFM cable and this would obviously not work! I did this last year and it was quite puzzling.

Those aren't 5.25" drives. AFAIK 5.25" drives were never made in USB flavor. 😀

Heh, obviously I was referring to the 5.25" drive he's trying to use in his computer. 😀

Someone suggested using an external 3.5 since the system only supports one floppy.

I've never looked insude one of those USB FDDs, are they all USB inside or a regular floppy with USB to FDD adapter? If the latter, it would be possible to use the adapter for a 5.25" FDD as well.

FWIW someone makes and sells 5.25"-to-USB adapters http://www.deviceside.com/ They aren't cheap ($55). Also they're read-only.

There's also this http://www.kryoflux.com/?page=home but it starts at about 100 euro. 🙁

(edit) I've opened one of my USB 3.5" FDD units, and it looks like it's all USB inside. There's a small microcontroller board that is connected on one side to the USB cable, and on the other side directly to the magnetic heads (using a 4-conductor flexible cable for each) and to the motor (using again a flexible cable with 7 conductors, 4 thick and 3 thin). It looks that using that board for a 5.25" floppy drive, while theoretically not impossible, would be a complex task.

Overheat wrote:

Hello,

I received the drive today. I've installed it and I'm stuck. So, if you might be able to help me, that would be great. I've tried using both cables that were provided (one has the 5.25" connector, a standard floppy connector with a twist and one without. The next cable has two 5.25" floppy connector one but otherwise is the same) and I can't seem to get both my 3.5" drive and my new 5.25" to appear in DOS. I assumed that one would be a: and the other would be b: but when I try to swap to b: it just uses the same drive again. Please tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Thank you in advance.

Two things:
1) BIOS support required for two drives
2) The drive cable end with the twist in it is always A drive. If there is no twist in the cable, both drives are B drive. If both drives are A drive then you've put the cable in backwards with the twist between the 3.5" 34pin on the motherboard and the other connectors on the cable.

It should be
Motherboard ====straight to B drive ==~twist~==A drive

Most floppy cables that have connectors for 5.25" drives usually go
Motherboard ====3.5"==5.25"==~Twist~==3.5"==5.25"
Though I've seen them with the connectors the other way around, it usually depends on the age. If the cable has only 5.25" connectors, then it will likely have it as all three connectors (as floppy controller cards for XT/AT were this way), a cable with 3 5.25" style connectors without a twist is actually a MFM/RLL hard drive cable. Some times there are edge-connector extensions to connect the card-edge version to a 3.5" drive, usually part of the 3.5" to 5.25" bay kit.

I'm not aware of any P4 or later system that supports two floppy drives, let alone 1.2MB drives. Floppy drives typically are ISA hardware, and it was up to the motherboard manufacturer to add additional chips if they wanted to support it. i845 motherboards typically only support the 3.5" Floppy, and 3.5" LS120/LS240 drives connected via IDE(PATA) connectors.

Incidentally, there is no support for USB floppy drives in Windows 10.

My suggestion is if you want to read a 5.25" disk and have acquired such drives, you will need to build a Pentium 3 system or earlier (eg i440BX chipset, i810 chipset), keeping in mind that Windows XP is the last OS that will recognize a 5.25" disk (personal experience.) You may need to clean the drive before trying a disk or it may scramble it.

stamasd wrote:

I've never looked insude one of those USB FDDs, are they all USB inside or a regular floppy with USB to FDD adapter? If the latter, it would be possible to use the adapter for a 5.25" FDD as well.

FWIW someone makes and sells 5.25"-to-USB adapters http://www.deviceside.com/ They aren't cheap ($55). Also they're read-only.

There's also this http://www.kryoflux.com/?page=home but it starts at about 100 euro. 🙁

Yay, these aren't cheap. Neither in price nor in quality. 😉
But at least they do work nicely (I heard so) and are platform independed (mostly).
I guess they aren't that good for retro gaming, though. But nice for computer archivists.

stamasd wrote:

(edit) I've opened one of my USB 3.5" FDD units, and it looks like it's all USB inside. There's a small microcontroller board that is connected on one side to the USB cable, and on the other side directly to the magnetic heads (using a 4-conductor flexible cable for each) and to the motor (using again a flexible cable with 7 conductors, 4 thick and 3 thin). It looks that using that board for a 5.25" floppy drive, while theoretically not impossible, would be a complex task.

Careful with that, some of these drives don't use the standard Shugart interface, but something proprietary.
And even if they do, the likely have their settings hard-coded for 1.44MB (18sectors/80tracks/2 sides/300rpm or something).
So unless someone finds out how to re-program / flash these chips, they won't work properly, I think.

stamasd wrote:

(edit) I've opened one of my USB 3.5" FDD units, and it looks like it's all USB inside. There's a small microcontroller board that is connected on one side to the USB cable, and on the other side directly to the magnetic heads (using a 4-conductor flexible cable for each) and to the motor (using again a flexible cable with 7 conductors, 4 thick and 3 thin). It looks that using that board for a 5.25" floppy drive, while theoretically not impossible, would be a complex task.

It might be possible that older USB floppy disk drives still consist of a separate regular floppy disk drive and a separate floppy-to-USB controller, the only problem being that finding such drives might be difficult because people probably never bothered to check the internals...

Thank you for all of your replies, my machine is a DOS build PII 350MHz, and has a Windows 95 dual boot, so I don't really want to go down the USB route. I much prefer the idea of a floppy controller, however they all seem rather pricey, so I want to make sure it will definitely solve my problem first. If I disable the floppy controller in my BIOS and I get a floppy controller card that supports two drives, will this fix things do you think?

Overheat wrote:

Thank you for all of your replies, my machine is a DOS build PII 350MHz, and has a Windows 95 dual boot, so I don't really want to go down the USB route. I much prefer the idea of a floppy controller, however they all seem rather pricey, so I want to make sure it will definitely solve my problem first. If I disable the floppy controller in my BIOS and I get a floppy controller card that supports two drives, will this fix things do you think?

here you go. $12 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Multi-Function-ISA-Co … mQAAOSwnbZYGPQM

You could also use the floppy controller on a SCSI card such as the Adaptec AHA1542CF which has its own BIOS and functions independently of the main system BIOS. Like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/Adaptec-AHA-1542CF-15 … y4AAOSwtnpXnYTX

Sorry to bother this thread, but I would like to know what 5,25 Floppy-Drive is the smallest drive. I would like to put it in my scovery2x which is a very small desktop-pc with a full 5,25 bay (currently equipped with a CD-Rom). I am planing to get a PCI-SCSI Controller to hookup an external CD-Rom, so I can use the 5,25bay for a floppy. Thx

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-04-07, 06:27:

Sorry to bother this thread, but I would like to know what 5,25 Floppy-Drive is the smallest drive. I would like to put it in my scovery2x which is a very small desktop-pc with a full 5,25 bay (currently equipped with a CD-Rom). I am planing to get a PCI-SCSI Controller to hookup an external CD-Rom, so I can use the 5,25bay for a floppy. Thx

Are you looking for shortest length or are you looking for shortest height?

shortest length, normal height.

Hi all, thought it a better idea to just ask my question here than to start a new thread.

What should I look for when buying a retro rig if I want to make sure it supports a 5,25" floppy drive?

Background: I already have the drive and I'm looking to buy a rig that I can use it on. I have a bunch of old floppies (not DOS formatted btw, but that's another matter) that I want to save the data from which is why I really need this 5.25" drive to work.
I know even "later" systems up to Pentium 3 can have support these drives, but I don't know which ones do, as I'm not sure what to look for in the motherboard. Someone suggested if the mobo still has ISA slots then there will definitely be support for 5,25" drives. Is that a good indicator?