Only my few modern systems (with more then 1 core) don't have a floppy drive installed, but even my Phenom II X4 has a floppy header on the motherboard (I specifically hunted down one of the very few motherboards that did have a floppy header), just in case I'll need it in the future.
I have another older system (which I call my database rig) which I use to burn ISO's (I learned the hard way not to use original media (mostly Windows CD's) in unknown optical drives) and write floppy images to diskettes using Winimage. My database rig (which used to be my main rig before I got my Phenom II one) also has a copy of th99, webpages with info, drivers, music, virtual machines of multiple older OS's and more and of course it also has a floppy drive.
My database rig is never connected to a network btw.

I have a couple USB ZIP drives and USB floppy drives which I use to transfer files across and if need be, I can always use one of my already completed rigs for quickly creating a boot disk and such.

I always say: Having the right tools is already half the work done 😁

I did also buy a USB floppy drive so I can prepare floppy disks with my main rig 😀.

The USB floppy drive I use is a Ebay sourced Sony 2x drive from 2003. I think I paid ~$5 for it.
The Sony drive is quiet, fast and reads damaged disks better than most drives.
There are plenty of usb floppy drives on Ebay if you cant find one locally.

I use an IBM USB FDD.

I have a Toshiba PA3109U USB floppy drive and it works just fine with 720KB floppies. I've written Amiga, Apple II, Mac, and of course PC floppies in there with good results.

I really should have taken stock of my situation before starting, but I was sure I would be able to get one of those other boxes working with relatively little fuss. While my main workstation still has an IDE header they left the floppy header off (unsuprisingly). I have an older dual processor Athlon board with all the legacy interfaces still but then I'm back to putting another box together, as opposed to sorting one out that is mostly together anyway. I probably should limit the amount of time I spend messing with this stuff today as I won't get to any of my other projects.

My Phenom II x4 machine has a multi card reader that also includes a 3.5" floppy drive. For a machine as old as the Tandy you'd probably need a 360k 5.25" drive or a 720k 3.5", and the only way to get those these days is to buy a used one as the "standard" floppy drive has been a 3.5" 1.44mb for a long time now. And don't even think about trying to reformat a high density floppy to a lower capacity as that usually ends in tragedy for your data. You're also going to need low density media to go with your low density drive, I'm afraid, so finding a suitable drive is only half the battle.

Well can't you use low density media with a high density drive, even if you can't format a higher density as a lower one?

I forgot how truly little space these old systems had.

snorg wrote:

Well can't you use low density media with a high density drive, even if you can't format a higher density as a lower one?

I forgot how truly little space these old systems had.

I think most 1.44 drives can read and format 720kb disks, though I'm not sure about the newer 1.44 drives

snorg wrote:

Well can't you use low density media with a high density drive, even if you can't format a higher density as a lower one?

I forgot how truly little space these old systems had.

They can read them but they can't write them reliably. You're looking for a drive to make a boot floppy, aren't you? You won't be able to make a good boot floppy for a system with a 720k drive from a 1.44mb drive. If your Tandy could handle a bootable 1.44mb drive you could make a 1.44mb boot floppy, though. I'm not sure if the built in floppy controller in that system can even read/write 1.44mb floppies.

I made backups of some 720k floppys with my USB drive.
I have also formatted lots of 720k disks with normal 1.44 MB floppy drives during the years.
I do not even think I ever owned a (IBM PC) 3.5" 720k diskdrive. Even my IBM PS-2 55-SX had a 1.44 😀
If you format a 720k disk in a modern OS you often have to specify the number of tracks and such.
I think that is a fault of the OS not the drive though.

sliderider wrote:

snorg wrote:

Well can't you use low density media with a high density drive, even if you can't format a higher density as a lower one?

I forgot how truly little space these old systems had.

They can read them but they can't write them reliably. You're looking for a drive to make a boot floppy, aren't you? You won't be able to make a good boot floppy for a system with a 720k drive from a 1.44mb drive. If your Tandy could handle a bootable 1.44mb drive you could make a 1.44mb boot floppy, though. I'm not sure if the built in floppy controller in that system can even read/write 1.44mb floppies.

That's the problem. There is a built-in controller in the Tandy but it doesn't support high density disks, for that you need a separate controller. I might get lucky and find an old 16 bit HD controller in my junk box in the attic but I don't know for sure if I have one.

SquallStrife wrote:

I have a Toshiba PA3109U USB floppy drive and it works just fine with 720KB floppies. I've written Amiga, Apple II, Mac, and of course PC floppies in there with good results.

How did you write amiga floppies on a usb floppy drive? Or so you mean you are just writing 720kb FAT floppies and reading them using dos2dos or something? Ife done the latter but not the former.

DonutKing wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

I have a Toshiba PA3109U USB floppy drive and it works just fine with 720KB floppies. I've written Amiga, Apple II, Mac, and of course PC floppies in there with good results.

How did you write amiga floppies on a usb floppy drive? Or so you mean you are just writing 720kb FAT floppies and reading them using dos2dos or something? Ife done the latter but not the former.

Yeah, the latter. I don't have a CatWeasel or anything like that.