If you have no need for the drive and dislike its appearance, you can easily sell it. These are rather sought after by retro PC nerds. Even untested you could probably get 50€ for it.

It seems these were much more common in North America than in Europe. I've never seen a 5.25" drive in someone's home before. They were however rather common in businesses and schools.

We had our first PC in 1987 (an XT clone) and it came with a single 5.25" floppy drive (we added a second one later to be able to copy disks). Back then the 3.5" floppies were only a thing I would see at friends houses when I'd go to play on their Atari ST machines. All my PC games were in 5.25" floppies, this was the common standard in game shops - some games would include both formats in the box but this was not a common occurence. (there was often a coupon that you had to return with a payment to get the 3.5" floppies if you needed them).

I have several 5.25" floppy drives, but I've been looking to get one with a grey bezel for a while now. From my own experience and also from looking at adverts in old computing magazines, it seems grey/brown floppy drives were the norm in the late '80s / early '90s. Before that in the mid '80s, 5.25" foppy drives were often black (think IBM PC) and after that in the mid '90s it seems OEM were increasingly switching to beige drives to match the color of the case.

Here's an illustration of the grey drives / beige case look:

Floppy drive faceplates came in all shapes and colours 😉
As you can see on the photo below - even the same brand floppy drive could have white-ish, gray or even black faceplate. Grey-ish floppy drives were designed for use in cases with grey accents or which were just grey (like Commodore PC-10 - but then again, IIRC PC-10 had white floppy drives mounted at the factory). Back then system builders didn't really cared much if the shade was slightly or even totally off.

5,25" floppies were still a common thing in 1995 - drivers were frequently shipped on 1,2MB 5,25" floppies and they were added to books as well (being thin they fitted behind the cover - better than 3,5" floppies. After 1995 publishers switched to CD-ROMs).

A book published in 1995:

Yep. I never had a 5.25" floppy (IBM PS/2 in 1988, in use until 1996...) which was a major handicap back then. I basically had to smile sweetly at a friend with a more regular 286 to get him to copy everything to 3.5", which worked fine with drivers etc, but games with copy protection were another matter. I believe I never managed to get Powermonger (bought in 1991 or so) working on that computer :'(

dionb wrote:

Yep. I never had a 5.25" floppy (IBM PS/2 in 1988, in use until 1996...) which was a major handicap back then. I basically had to smile sweetly at a friend with a more regular 286 to get him to copy everything to 3.5", which worked fine with drivers etc, but games with copy protection were another matter. I believe I never managed to get Powermonger (bought in 1991 or so) working on that computer :'(

I recall something like 5,25" external floppy drives that could be connected to paralel port...

HanJammer wrote:

dionb wrote:

Yep. I never had a 5.25" floppy (IBM PS/2 in 1988, in use until 1996...) which was a major handicap back then. I basically had to smile sweetly at a friend with a more regular 286 to get him to copy everything to 3.5", which worked fine with drivers etc, but games with copy protection were another matter. I believe I never managed to get Powermonger (bought in 1991 or so) working on that computer :'(

I recall something like 5,25" external floppy drives that could be connected to paralel port...

Indeed. However back then stuff wasn't cheap and I was a schoolboy without income. By the time I had my own PC and at least the theoretical choice to spend money on beer or computers, it was no longer an issue.