There is no modern hardware that supports reading and writing to a 5.25" floppy drive. If one was a genius they might be able to rework an external USB 3.5" drive to use a 5.25" drive but would take some major work 😀

Horun wrote on 2020-09-12, 01:26:

There is no modern hardware that supports reading and writing to a 5.25" floppy drive. If one was a genius they might be able to rework an external USB 3.5" drive to use a 5.25" drive but would take some major work 😀

Well, there is the Kryoflux : https://webstore.kryoflux.com/catalog/product … &products_id=30 , which is read/write and the Fc5025 http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html , which is read-only .

These are meant to be used through USB on modern PCs with vintage 5.25" floppy drives (and also 3.5" ones in the case of the Kryoflux) for archival and/or data forensics purposes .

darry wrote on 2020-09-12, 01:33:

Horun wrote on 2020-09-12, 01:26:

There is no modern hardware that supports reading and writing to a 5.25" floppy drive. If one was a genius they might be able to rework an external USB 3.5" drive to use a 5.25" drive but would take some major work 😀

Well, there is the Kryoflux : https://webstore.kryoflux.com/catalog/product … &products_id=30 , which is read/write and the Fc5025 http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html , which is read-only .

These are meant to be used through USB on modern PCs with vintage 5.25" floppy drives (and also 3.5" ones in the case of the Kryoflux) for archival and/or data forensics purposes .

Yeah I knew about those Kryoflux, last I checked they were over $200 and looks like the price has not changed much and still are out of stock (have been since the Covid thing started iirc). That is the only read/write if you can ever get one.
added: a few years ago stumbled on someone trying to build a arduino based one but it never came to final and the project was given up afaik

AntiRevisionism wrote on 2020-09-12, 00:24:

-3.5 Floppy - connect to some sort of USB adapter and then connect via USB internally or externally? Use an LS-120 drive + PCIE IDE controller card instead?

If you go on eBay there are a ton of inexpensive internal USB floppy controllers with a USB on one end and a 34-pin floppy connector on the other. I've never tried one.

Well, there is the Kryoflux : https://webstore.kryoflux.com/catalog/product … &products_id=30 , which is read/write and the Fc5025 http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html , which is read-only .
These are meant to be used through USB on modern PCs with vintage 5.25" floppy drives (and also 3.5" ones in the case of the Kryoflux) for archival and/or data forensics purposes .

Pricey indeed, and feature set a bit overkill, but might not be a bad option if it comes back in stock.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-09-12, 02:04:

AntiRevisionism wrote on 2020-09-12, 00:24:

-3.5 Floppy - connect to some sort of USB adapter and then connect via USB internally or externally? Use an LS-120 drive + PCIE IDE controller card instead?

If you go on eBay there are a ton of inexpensive internal USB floppy controllers with a USB on one end and a 34-pin floppy connector on the other. I've never tried one.

I use an IDE LS-120 on a Jmicron IDE/SATA PCIE controller under Windows 10 .

If you want to try an IDE LS-120, here are a few useful (IMHO) tips .

a) It did not work for me with an IDE to SATA converter when the SATA controller is in AHCI mode (possiblybly because AHCI implies DMA mode and my LS-120 only support PIO mode 3) .
b) It only worked for me with the Jmicron controller forced into legacy IDE mode and the drive connected to the IDE connector .
c) It only worked with Microsoft standard IDE drivers installed for the controller, not the Jmicron ones .

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-09-12, 02:04:

AntiRevisionism wrote on 2020-09-12, 00:24:

-3.5 Floppy - connect to some sort of USB adapter and then connect via USB internally or externally? Use an LS-120 drive + PCIE IDE controller card instead?

If you go on eBay there are a ton of inexpensive internal USB floppy controllers with a USB on one end and a 34-pin floppy connector on the other. I've never tried one.

These will probably only work with 1.2MB drives (I doubt they will let you set or auto-detect a 360K one) and will likely only work with 1.2MB floppies (read and write) and maybe 360K ones (read only recommended if using a 1.2MB drive) . This is mostly conjecture on my part, so feel free to prove me wrong .

darry wrote on 2020-09-12, 02:47:

These will probably only work with 1.2MB drives (I doubt they will let you set or auto-detect a 360K one) and will likely only work with 1.2MB floppies (read and write) and maybe 360K ones (read only recommended if using a 1.2MB drive) . This is mostly conjecture on my part, so feel free to prove me wrong .

Ah I was only talking about 3 1/2" in the first place. I wonder whether they work with 5 1/4" at all.

I have one of the USB adapters hooked up to a 1.44MB drive and it works fine. It has a standard USB plug so I had to add an adapter to change that to internal USB - I used the cable off an old USB port bracket to get two internal ports.

darry wrote on 2020-09-12, 02:44:

I use an IDE LS-120 on a Jmicron IDE/SATA PCIE controller under Windows 10 . […]
Show full quote

I use an IDE LS-120 on a Jmicron IDE/SATA PCIE controller under Windows 10 .

If you want to try an IDE LS-120, here are a few useful (IMHO) tips .

a) It did not work for me with an IDE to SATA converter when the SATA controller is in AHCI mode (possiblybly because AHCI implies DMA mode and my LS-120 only support PIO mode 3) .
b) It only worked for me with the Jmicron controller forced into legacy IDE mode and the drive connected to the IDE connector .
c) It only worked with Microsoft standard IDE drivers installed for the controller, not the Jmicron ones .

Good hint. Perhaps that's the reason why my LS-120 did not work with my onboard controller working in RAID mode.

AntiRevisionism wrote on 2020-09-12, 00:24:

I am planning on putting together a modern Zen 3 system using an new-old stock ATX case from the mid 90s. I would like to to ad […]
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I am planning on putting together a modern Zen 3 system using an new-old stock ATX case from the mid 90s.
I would like to to add support for a few internal retro drives, mainly:
-ZIP (100MB)
-3.5 Floppy
-5.25 Floppy (probably 1.2MB variety)

I recommend SCSI for ZIP.

I think I had very much the same idea as you, heh! (picture link) You'll quickly find that cooling/airflow will be your biggest problems to overcome. You might end up having to mod in additional cooling.

For what it's worth, you can use an IDE-SATA adapter to plug an IDE ZIP drive into a SATA port - most adapters that support CDROM drives also work fine with ZIP drives, since they both use the same ATAPI protocol. This is how I use mine. Saves an expansion slot!

Annoyingly, Windows 10 gives you the generic "Removable Drive" icon on the ZIP drive in this configuration, despite the fact that the OS still has a zip drive icon in a system DLL somewhere. I got this fixed on mine with a registry edit to change the drive icon. (If you want help with this, ping me and I can dig out the exact value to set.)

I also have a 3.5" floppy connected through one of the USB adapters plugged into an internal USB port, works fine but they have issues formatting corrupt or unformatted disks. As far as I know these adapters only work with 3½" drives, not 5¼".

I have a kryoflux but only use it for disk imaging - the write support still seems kinda in progress, and it only lets you write a whole disk at once (kinda like a CD).

kepstin wrote on 2020-09-14, 00:38:

For what it's worth, you can use an IDE-SATA adapter to plug an IDE ZIP drive into a SATA port - most adapters that support CDRO […]
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For what it's worth, you can use an IDE-SATA adapter to plug an IDE ZIP drive into a SATA port - most adapters that support CDROM drives also work fine with ZIP drives, since they both use the same ATAPI protocol. This is how I use mine. Saves an expansion slot!

Annoyingly, Windows 10 gives you the generic "Removable Drive" icon on the ZIP drive in this configuration, despite the fact that the OS still has a zip drive icon in a system DLL somewhere. I got this fixed on mine with a registry edit to change the drive icon. (If you want help with this, ping me and I can dig out the exact value to set.)

I also have a 3.5" floppy connected through one of the USB adapters plugged into an internal USB port, works fine but they have issues formatting corrupt or unformatted disks. As far as I know these adapters only work with 3½" drives, not 5¼".

I have a kryoflux but only use it for disk imaging - the write support still seems kinda in progress, and it only lets you write a whole disk at once (kinda like a CD).

One thing I find slightly annoying under Windows 10 is the absence of a sofware eject option on the context menu of the LS120 .

darry wrote on 2020-09-14, 00:52:

One thing I find slightly annoying under Windows 10 is the absence of a sofware eject option on the context menu of the LS120 .

Software eject does work on the SATA/IDE ZIP drives in Windows 10. And on Linux, fwiw.

Edit:

1Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
2
3[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\E\DefaultIcon]
4@="%SYSTEMROOT%\\System32\\imageres.dll,37"
5
6[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\E\DefaultLabel]
7@="ZIP Drive"