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Ancient DOS games on 5.25 inch floppy - how to ?

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First post, by Vipersan

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So ...I have a modernish tower equipped with a 3.5 inch floppy drive ..
checked that it works ...
A: is recognised
powered down and replaced the 3.5 inch floppy with a VINTAGE PC TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25" 5 1/4" Floppy
I recently aquired ..
My tower only supports 1 floppy at a time ..so no A / B
option ..but A can be selected as 360kb 5.25 or 1.2mb 5.25 ...or various 3.5 inch 720kb / 1.44mb or 2.88 mb
The 5.25 inch floppies I am trying to read are a full disk set of Leasure Suit Larry III ...which according to the label on the box are MSDOS disks 680k
I am a bit out of my depth here ..but assumed I can simply swap the connector on the end of the floppy cable from standard 3.5 inch to 5.25 inch edge connection ..
The cable I'm using has both ..both before and after the 'twist' in the cable.
So my questions are ..
pre twist or post cable twist ..and what do I set in the bios ?
Assuming I can even read the disks in widows XP...??
Is there anything else I should be aware of ?
Obviously at this point the floppy drive is an unknown as it isn't new ..but does accept floppy disks and does spin up the disks.
Advice welcomed..
rgds
VS

Reply 1 of 7, by AlaricD

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You want the sole drive use one of the connectors at the extreme end of the cable. You only use one of the connectors connector closer to the controller when you have more than one floppy diskette drive. The cable such as you have lets you be flexible on a system supporting two floppies, so if you have one 5.25" and one 3.5" drive you can choose which one is A: by putting that drive on one of the two connectors beyond the twist.

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Reply 2 of 7, by AlaricD

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Vipersan wrote:

TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25" 5 1/4" Floppy

A can be selected as 360kb 5.25 or 1.2mb 5.25 ...or various 3.5 inch 720kb / 1.44mb or 2.88 mb

and what do I set in the bios ?

Set it up as a 1.2MB 5.25" drive-- that's what that Teac is.

"The Big Bang. The ultimate hero of low frequency. The divine intergalactical bass drum connecting the tribes of our solar system."
Yello
"Solar Driftwood"

Reply 3 of 7, by Vipersan

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gonna have to experiment some more I think ..
possibly the drive isn't fully funtional ..though the stepper motor pulls the heads back on powering the computer ..if I pull them manually toward the centre..
and the disk motor spins ..
but nothing is read ..
I guess the heads could be faulty though they look ok ..and are nice and clean.
I'll trythis unit in another computer tomorrow.
but if the TEAC is faulty I'm going to be gutted..
rgds
VS

Last edited by Vipersan on 2018-06-23, 10:19. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 7, by Jo22

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@Vipersan Which kind of computer are you using ?
I had issues with a Socket 7 machine that had a Gigabyte motherboard (GA586 series) and my 1.2MB drive did NOT work with it.
When I installed an ISA floppy disk controller, the drive worked fine. The 5.25" drive was NOT faulty.
It was the on-board floppy controller that was too new/too weak to drive that big old drive. 🙁

Edit: My dad's copy of Leisure Suit Larry I (AGI game) had an old copy-protection.
It would not work on Windows XP directly, since it (game) checked the disk for bad sectors.
These bad sectors can't be copied. They were specially made in the factory.
Maybe it is similar for Larry III, not sure.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 6 of 7, by Vipersan

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Well guys ..
This will be interesting ..
another project I've now started ..
Just placed an order for a KryoFlux unit ..
anyone used one ?
I have done some reading on this subject ..and although I dont have many PC or DOS 5.25" floppies ..
I do have a lot of unknown floppies ..
AppleII ..Comodore etc ..
Unlabled for the most part ..so no idea what is on them.
..and of course ..
no idea if the Teac drive is ok ..atm
Certainly it looks in really nice condition ..
I'm attaching a photo.

If the hype is to believed ..I _should_ be able to raw image most if not all these floppies..
wish me luck.

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  • DSCF0044.JPG
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Last edited by Vipersan on 2018-06-23, 10:33. Edited 1 time in total.
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