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Undumped X-Men game? Need to buy 5.25 floppy drive, could use advice.

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First post, by Paranoid_Andy

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Hey all.

I recently acquired a large amount of older PC games on mostly floppy disks. One is an X-Men game from 1989 and it says on the box "Version 2".

I can't seem to find any evidence of this "Version 2" being dumped. I'm thinking I may have a few other games like this so it would be a good idea to get a 5.25 floppy drive and upload them to wherever old PC games are typically archived. Archive.org I guess? Or maybe the REMOVED thingy?

Anyway, I'd be happy to help contribute to the community but I need a little guidance please. I need to know what kind of 5.25 drive would be a good choice for me to get as it seems there's 2 kinds of common 5.25 floppies that exist but I guess not all drives read both.

I saw a video saying that a Teac FD-55GFR is a good drive that can read both. It looks like a working condition one starts around $70.00+tax+ship on Ebay which is more than I'd like to spend on a drive if I can help it.

So my main question is, does anybody know of a good/decent 5.25 drive brand that reads both types of disks that is also less than $70.00?

I was going to get a Greaseweazle adapter to plug the drive into my PC via USB since that seems to be a good option according to several videos I saw.

Thank you for any help at all!

Last edited by DosFreak on 2025-06-30, 13:54. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 6, by WolverineDK

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Well depending on your location in the world. There is at least one person I can think off, that can help you dump the game. And that is Shelby from Tech Tangents,

https://www.youtube.com/@TechTangents

And Adrian Black from Adrian's Digital Basement

https://www.youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement

But there are probably others too, that can help you. I hope it helps some.

Reply 2 of 6, by wbahnassi

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Any 1.2MB IBM-compatible drive should work. I know the Teac has a reputation, but it's not my favourite for several reasons.

  • It's the noisiest among all drives I've ever used (under normal operation of course)
  • Doesn't have an upper cover, so collects dust easily on its sensitive internals
  • No disk eject mechanism. Many other drives have an ejection spring to pop out the disk the moment you twist the lock

I prefer the Panasonic drives over Teac, but there are other good brands as well (Canon, YE-Data, Chinon, Mitsubishi).

Finally, note that dumping images of 360KB disks using 1.2MB drives involves a few options that need to be correctly specified in Greaseweazle or any other imaging tool you use. Also, using 1.2MB drives to write back 360KB images is not good. You need a pure 360KB drive to write back such images properly.

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti

Reply 3 of 6, by DosFreak

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Removed name of so called "abandonware" collection in OP.
You can donate to archive.org as per forum rules, just don't hint, link or suggest on how to acquire it there.
Thanks

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Make your games work offline

Reply 4 of 6, by Paranoid_Andy

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@WolverineDK Thank you for the suggestions. I'll be trying to do it myself if possible since there may be other games I come across. I try to avoid mailing things as I'd rather not risk loss/damage if I can help it. I'll keep them in mind though if I absolutely can't get it myself, thank you!

@wbahnassi Thank you for the info. Several things you mentioned I didn't know about so I'll probably end up getting 2 drives eventually it seems. I'll take a look around at the brands you mentioned and see if I can find a better deal. Thanks again!

@DosFreak Noted, thanks for the heads up.

Reply 5 of 6, by WolverineDK

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Paranoid_Andy wrote on 2025-06-30, 22:56:

@WolverineDK Thank you for the suggestions. I'll be trying to do it myself if possible since there may be other games I come across. I try to avoid mailing things as I'd rather not risk loss/damage if I can help it. I'll keep them in mind though if I absolutely can't get it myself, thank you!

Adrian Black has made quite a few videos about diskette drives. Heck he even has a second channel too. So if you want to go down a cool rabbit hole, you could always search on his channels with the searchwords "diskette drives" (without the brackets /quotation marks). His second channel is this one.

https://www.youtube.com/@adriansdigitalbasement2

Last edited by WolverineDK on 2025-07-04, 19:41. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 6 of 6, by Paranoid_Andy

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@WolverineDK

Good to know! I definitely will check it out. Seems I need all the info I can get haha.

Thank you again!

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