VOGONS


First post, by brad1982_5

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Hi guys

I'm trying to put together some form of a usb floppy adapter to make a regular 3.5" floppy drive with a USB interface.

The only part I need is the USB to 26 pin adapter this is found in some not not to many USB floppy drives.

This guy has a BYTECC BT-144 model floppy drive that has the adapter inside. This is what I need His YouTube video is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91MblZpho1A

Then my plan is to finally adapt that with this little 26 pin to 34 pin adapter I have already shown here.

The BYTECC BT-144 floppy drive is not available to purchase in the United Kingdom so I wonder if anyone else know what other model external USB floppy drive have this type of connectivity inside? Or even better just the adapter alone?
All the USB floppy drives I have the USB wiring goes straight into the PCB of the floppy drive so I am unable to use those.
This is the adapter I have.
20170218_100621_resized_1.jpg
Any help will be greatly appericated. Many thanks

Reply 2 of 12, by Artyom15

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I have to ask... why? My (admittedly very limited experience) with floppies so far is that if your computer has a header or comes with a drive? You're good to go. Need a USB floppy drive? Your computer will fight you every step of the way dealing with them.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy buying floppies. They're just so *neat*.

Reply 3 of 12, by yawetaG

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Artyom15 wrote:

I have to ask... why? My (admittedly very limited experience) with floppies so far is that if your computer has a header or comes with a drive? You're good to go. Need a USB floppy drive? Your computer will fight you every step of the way dealing with them.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy buying floppies. They're just so *neat*.

Seconded. Especially considering that many USB floppy disk drives lack the firmware to be able to write or read unusual floppy formats, *and* that there isn't exactly a regular floppy drive shortage.

If you simply want to have an internal USB floppy, just connect the USB cable to an USB header on the motherboard...

Reply 4 of 12, by brad1982_5

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rfsapiens wrote:
Hello, […]
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Hello,

There is already some kind of adapter like this available 😀

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291979703444?_trksi … K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

With the best regards,

Rfsapiens.

Actually have bought one of these and it's great! Strange how it only reads 1.44MB formatted disk and not 720KB ones.

Reply 5 of 12, by brad1982_5

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Artyom15 wrote:

I have to ask... why? My (admittedly very limited experience) with floppies so far is that if your computer has a header or comes with a drive? You're good to go. Need a USB floppy drive? Your computer will fight you every step of the way dealing with them.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy buying floppies. They're just so *neat*.

The motherboard does not have a floppy controller. Just wanting a regular looking internal floppy drive in the case. Purely cosmetic rather then having a external USB floppy drive.

Reply 6 of 12, by brad1982_5

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yawetaG wrote:
Artyom15 wrote:

I have to ask... why? My (admittedly very limited experience) with floppies so far is that if your computer has a header or comes with a drive? You're good to go. Need a USB floppy drive? Your computer will fight you every step of the way dealing with them.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy buying floppies. They're just so *neat*.

Seconded. Especially considering that many USB floppy disk drives lack the firmware to be able to write or read unusual floppy formats, *and* that there isn't exactly a regular floppy drive shortage.

If you simply want to have an internal USB floppy, just connect the USB cable to an USB header on the motherboard...

True that can be done the it's just the external looking drive can't be psysically mounted in the case without heavy modifcation and still won't look like a genuine regular floppy drive. All purely for cosmetic reasons.

Reply 7 of 12, by kenrouholo

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Maybe pick up an external LS-120, remove it from its external case (exposing a standard 40-pin IDE interface), and put it in your case as an internal drive.

Downside #1: Not all systems will use an IDE LS-120 drive as a replacement for a standard floppy-interface drive. If you want to use this drive for booting, it may not work on some machines the same way.

Downside #2: You'll need to find a faceplate for the drive or use a PC case with the floppy faceplate molded in. You can then remove the plastic button on the LS-120 with one tiny screw and some maneuvering, leaving behind the metal tab that is similar on many standard 3.5" floppy drives. I did this and it fits in my Dell B600R Pentium 3 case perfectly. Maybe a faceplate for a standard floppy drive would also fit but it's less likely since those will need to clip into the drive, rather than just have the drive placed right up against them and screwed in place.

Not a solution that'll always work but it's an option maybe.

Yes, I always ramble this much.

Reply 8 of 12, by Tetrium

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yawetaG wrote:
Artyom15 wrote:

I have to ask... why? My (admittedly very limited experience) with floppies so far is that if your computer has a header or comes with a drive? You're good to go. Need a USB floppy drive? Your computer will fight you every step of the way dealing with them.

Doesn't mean I don't enjoy buying floppies. They're just so *neat*.

Seconded. Especially considering that many USB floppy disk drives lack the firmware to be able to write or read unusual floppy formats, *and* that there isn't exactly a regular floppy drive shortage.

If you simply want to have an internal USB floppy, just connect the USB cable to an USB header on the motherboard...

I tend to agree. But I have to admit that the thought of using an USB external drive internally (and make it kinda seem like it is a plain ol' internal floppy drive) does appeal to me a bit.

I do agree that the inability to support unusual formats is a dealbreaker to me. I actually build my last rig explicitly around a board with both IDE and floppy connectors just so I could use it for the uncommon formats one day.

To me:
Internal real floppy > external (but rigged to be internal and limited to 1.44) USB floppy

kenrouholo wrote:
Maybe pick up an external LS-120, remove it from its external case (exposing a standard 40-pin IDE interface), and put it in you […]
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Maybe pick up an external LS-120, remove it from its external case (exposing a standard 40-pin IDE interface), and put it in your case as an internal drive.

Downside #1: Not all systems will use an IDE LS-120 drive as a replacement for a standard floppy-interface drive. If you want to use this drive for booting, it may not work on some machines the same way.

Downside #2: You'll need to find a faceplate for the drive or use a PC case with the floppy faceplate molded in. You can then remove the plastic button on the LS-120 with one tiny screw and some maneuvering, leaving behind the metal tab that is similar on many standard 3.5" floppy drives. I did this and it fits in my Dell B600R Pentium 3 case perfectly. Maybe a faceplate for a standard floppy drive would also fit but it's less likely since those will need to clip into the drive, rather than just have the drive placed right up against them and screwed in place.

Not a solution that'll always work but it's an option maybe.

Why bother removing an LS-120 from its enclosure and using that internally if you can use an internal LS-120 right away?
And most motherboards that don't include the 34p floppy header anymore probably also don't have any 40p IDE headers anyway.

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Reply 9 of 12, by kenrouholo

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Tetrium wrote:

Why bother removing an LS-120 from its enclosure and using that internally if you can use an internal LS-120 right away?
And most motherboards that don't include the 34p floppy header anymore probably also don't have any 40p IDE headers anyway.

To point 1: Way more available and can be found super cheap
To point 2: Good point. Edit: Though PCI and PCIe IDE cards are easier to find than floppy... by far.

Yes, I always ramble this much.

Reply 11 of 12, by rknize

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I just wanted to reply to this thread to give my experience. I have tried to do the very thing that the OP was intending: to find a way to hook up an existing floppy drive to the motherboard via some sort of USB bridge. I tried several ways:

1) A USB-to-26pin adapter PCB taken from a cheap USB floppy drive connected to a slimline drive that is part of an old CF/SD card reader (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91MblZpho1A).

2) The USB-to-26pin adapter from #1 connected to a 26pin-to-34pin adapter (http://r.ebay.com/24yLTm). This was then plugged into a real 3.5" floppy drive.

3) An eBay USB-to-34pin adapter (http://r.ebay.com/QMRv48) connected to a real 3.5" floppy drive.

All three methods gave the exact same results. They all worked as expected in terms of reading and writing floppies, but with one annoying caveat: once per second the drive light will flash and if there is no disk in the drive, the stepper motor will move back and forth one step. It gets annoying quick and the exercise on the stepper is not ideal. This happened with several different floppy drives from Teac, Mitsumi, and NEC. It happened regardless of the host OS (Windows 10, OS X, and Linux). It always behaved exactly the same, including the slimline drive that was part of my old CF/SD card reader.

However, when I used the slimline drive from the old USB floppy drive (from option #1) with any of the other adapters, it worked great. So I ended up swapping the slimline drive out of the CF/SD card reader with the one from the USB floppy drive and used method #1. It's not ideal, since the reader is so old I have to keep my other card reader in there as well (the old one does not even support SDHC cards).

My theory is that there is some sort of polling going on by the USB bridge to check for the presence of a disk. I'm guessing that it power-cycles or resets the FDC front end, which makes the drive glitch. Probably some power saving feature. Note that it doesn't matter if I power the drive from the adapter or directly from the power supply. The only thing that stopped the glitching was to use a disk drive that is designed for it. I did not investigate if USB power management was somehow to blame.

Anyway, I hope that helps anyone who passes through here in the future.

Reply 12 of 12, by rknize

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Oh, and one more thing: those $15-$20 USB floppy drives on eBay/Amazon all seem to be *used* drives in new shells. I had to buy a few of them to try to get a good one. It doesn't matter which "brand" you pick. They all seem to be the same. They don't always have a USB-to-26pin adapter, either. Some have the USB bridge built into the drive.