The vast majority of my floppy disks I've bought over the years are starting to die. I don't know if it's the weather or if I'm just not caring for them right, or what, but I feel like this is something that isn't just isolated to me. I've decided to replace the floppy drives in my systems with emulators running off of USB. I've researched them quite a lot but I wanted to get some input from people who may have more experience in the matter. The drive I've been looking at the most is the HxC2001. My main concern is compatibility across the largest number of platforms, as I own a large number of non-standard and/or obscure computers and hope to own more. The price is my second concern with the HxC, depending on the drive, some of them cost in the hundreds. That's quite a hefty pricetag for something I would really like to have in every single computer I own that now currently has a floppy drive. Is that price worth it? I'm impressed by their list of compatible machines, but is that misleading? Is that something most floppy emulators can do? Can the 20 dollar ones that advertise that they are specifically for CNC machines and keyboards work for the majority of things I would like them to work for? Another thing I like about the HxC is the fact you can flash images directly to the emulator from another computer via USB cable, which would make it easier to say, have them all connected to a master computer so that you can just write a script to make flashing a drive with a specific image as easy as running a command. Another question I have is only really a minor one and applies to any of these emulators. They're all in the 3.5'' form factor, what would be the best way to mount these in computers that only have front panel spots for 5.25'' or 8'' drives? I'm sure I've seen 5.25" to 3.5" bay converters in the wild before, is there anywhere that would sell that sort of thing? I think that about covers the major concerns I had, anything else from people who have experience with this sort of thing; advice, stories, insults, anecdotes, etc. would be appreciated.

Advthanksance