VOGONS


First post, by obcbeatle

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Hello ... I found an old 1.2 MB 5.25" Internal Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) among a box of my older PC parts. I believe this used to be mounted in a 486SX PC (my first computer). When I connect it to my A7V333-X motherboard ... it still works (powers up)! But I have no 5.25" disks to see if it will read disks. I threw them out years ago 🙁 So my question is ... the latch in the top left corner of the front of the FDD does not move the drive head down all the way down ... i.e. the latch doesn't move the drive head down as far as I can move the drive head pushing it gently with my finger. I assume this is normal because there is no disk in the drive ... and that once inserted the disk allows the latch to lock in place ... and then allows the drive head to move all the way down? Sorry for the stupid question. I just can't remember. I haven't seen or used a 5.25" FDD in years 😀 Lastly ... if I wanted to buy a 5.25" disk to test this drive ... where can you get them cheap? I checked eBay and Amazon and they are either bundled by the box ... or just priced higher than I care to pay. I guess I could try to find an old DOS game that installs via 5.25" disks. But with my luck the drive head won't work and it won't be able to read disks ... or one of the many 5.25" game install disks that I buy will be bad 😀 Just curious. Thank you.

Reply 1 of 2, by Nprod

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It varies with the brand, i have a drive here that doesn't let you swing the latch at all if there's no disk inserted, this is to prevent the heads from crashing into eachother. You can cut out a piece of thick paper into the shape of a floppy and insert that to check. Drives normally have such a cutout from the factory so that everything can be secured during shipping.