ODwilly wrote on 2020-10-18, 01:44:

So it looks like anything newer than Core2 and AM2 socket has an issue with 5.25 floppy drives not being supported. And am2 boards with the AMD chipset being in issue while boards with Nvidia chipsets supporting the 5.25. That Gigabyte board you mentioned looks super promising, supporting the C2Q chips, having 3 pci slots and extra pcie x1 slots. A Q6600 or even the Extreme Edition is dirt cheap anymore and makes for even a great Windows 10 experience, so dual booting XP and 10 would be a fun experience. Not to mention 2gb sticks of DDR2 800 can be had for peanuts now 😀

Years ago I had been looking for a new board specifically with a floppy drive connector and it did at least have the option of mounting a 2.88MB floppy drive, though I ended up never trying before the board died.

It's a bit of a disappointment to know that support for 2 floppy drives was (apparently silently) dropped BUT perhaps it also gives us something to do now? 😜

Spiffles wrote on 2020-10-17, 03:01:

So I came up with this idea - build a relatively modern computer capable of performing most of today's tasks like - accepting mo […]
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So I came up with this idea - build a relatively modern computer capable of performing most of today's tasks like
- accepting modern LTE internet connection for browsing the web, watching YouTube etc
- era-appropriate gaming
- an HDD of at least around 80 GB capacity
- access to at least USB 1.1 for ease of moving data onto newer devices
- an overall "relatively modern" experience, so preferably WinXP compatible. Even better if later!
- primary role: reading and recording data storage media: both rather obscure and popular but obsolete ones: so CD/DVD, 5.25 floppy, 3.5 floppy, 750MB Zip, 2.3GB MO, multi card.

- Traditional 3,5'' floppy
- a 750MB IDE 3,5'' ZIP drive
- A DVD-RW drive - a single one for all purposes. IDE or SATA - doesn't matter. Doesn't need to be era-appropriate, just needs to work
- A 5,25'' floppy drive
- A HDD caddy
- An internal multi-card reader (so the mobo will probably need a USB socket on it)
- A 2.3 GB internal magneto-optical diskette drive, 3,5''

My main question here though is: is there even a way to have all of these things work on a somewhat modern system? Is there a mobo that supports 5,25x floppy but also has USB on it to plug in the multicard reader? What sorts of extensions would I need to accomodate all those IDE cables for the extra drives? Are there even post-486 era motherboards with enough connectors for all that stuff? Also, if such a system is possible, what era would be the latest feasible? Something like Pentium 4, maybe? I would imagine the motherboard should primarily feature PCI slots for all those expansion cards this build would probably need, like SATA/IDE controllers etc.

Could you advise what sort of hardware is the latest that could accomodate all of this stuff, what sorts of extensions/adapters would be needed and help me plan outall the hardware I'd have to get? Thanks in advance!

I'd first make a list of what exact formats you will want to support. Iirc ZIP 750 drives do not support ZIP 100 disks and 5¼in FFDs have some incompatibility issues between formats to some degree. 3½in FDD have a similar incompatibility, as (afaik) 2.88MB floppy drives are incapable of reading/writing 740KB floppies.

I reckon it should be easy to get a relatively modern mobo featuring internal USB.

In the end it will come down to saving as many internal connections as possible by using as many external ones as you can (and if you want, then somehow shoehorn them into a case making them seem as if they are internal drives?). ZIP and LS-120(/240?) came in USB, as do 1.44MB floppy drives. Afaicr most USB 1.44MB drives do not support other formats out of the box.

Ow man, there's so many different roads that you can walk to try and get what you want 🤣, but it may end up being a build made of compromises 😜
I don't have an external USB drive which is basically a FDD2USB adapter, but I do have a parallel one and it is able to mount at least a 2.88MB floppy drive, BUT iirc this drive only has drivers for Win9x and didn't appear to have any drivers for XP and newer at the least.
It could work if you're willing to dual boot though, but not sure if that is what you want.

sec, cat is distracting me I'll write more later xD

Anyway, I'd also advice you to also just start with the build. There will always be things unforeseen and specific to your requirements and situations.

Btw, which of the media drives do you have anyway?

Tetrium wrote on 2020-10-18, 13:12:

Anyway, I'd also advice you to also just start with the build. There will always be things unforeseen and specific to your requirements and situations.

Btw, which of the media drives do you have anyway?

None so far, this is so far only hypothetical, a random idea I got. I tend to do that a lot... anyway, I wanna purchase a few of these exotic drives and media and troll people by putting data on them with them having no way to read it 😁 I'll probably treat this as a long-term hobby project, all the components are quite costly (especially the rare drives) and not widely available. I just wanted to get my bearings around the technical aspects, and whether it's even possible. Seems like it is.

A SuperFloppy drive is definitely a good idea! Since it's IDE and compatible with regular floppies it could probably entirely circumvent the need for dual floppy support. Then again, there is also the HIFD, and having both would kinda feel redundant, especially since the media are practically non-existent and functionally overlapping with the ZIP (which in its final incarnation is superior to both), so I'll probably be sticking to a traditional 3,5'' 1,44MB drive after all. I don't think I need a JAZ drive or all those other super-obscure drives either - was just thinking to get as far as the returns aren't diminishing. With SuperFloppy, DVD-RW, ZIP, MO and perhaps a streamer, I would be able to read like 99,9% of all media existing on the market at the time anyway.

As the wise Tetrium wrote :

Tetrium wrote on 2020-10-18, 12:24:

I'd first make a list of what exact formats you will want to support.
In the end it will come down to saving as many internal connections as possible by using as many external ones as you can
Ow man, there's so many different roads that you can walk to try and get what you want 🤣, but it may end up being a build made of compromises 😜

I could not resist posting my version (P3 + W2k)

Dhigan wrote on 2020-10-18, 20:02:

As the wise Tetrium wrote : […]
Show full quote

As the wise Tetrium wrote :

Tetrium wrote on 2020-10-18, 12:24:

I'd first make a list of what exact formats you will want to support.
In the end it will come down to saving as many internal connections as possible by using as many external ones as you can
Ow man, there's so many different roads that you can walk to try and get what you want 🤣, but it may end up being a build made of compromises 😜

I could not resist posting my version (P3 + W2k)

Holy shit bro, now that's pretty much what I would like to have 😁 haha

I do realize it's pretty much pointless money expenditure at this point, but aren't all hobbies really?

Spiffles wrote on 2020-10-18, 14:49:

Tetrium wrote on 2020-10-18, 13:12:

Anyway, I'd also advice you to also just start with the build. There will always be things unforeseen and specific to your requirements and situations.

Btw, which of the media drives do you have anyway?

None so far, this is so far only hypothetical, a random idea I got. I tend to do that a lot... anyway, I wanna purchase a few of these exotic drives and media and troll people by putting data on them with them having no way to read it 😁 I'll probably treat this as a long-term hobby project, all the components are quite costly (especially the rare drives) and not widely available. I just wanted to get my bearings around the technical aspects, and whether it's even possible. Seems like it is.

A SuperFloppy drive is definitely a good idea! Since it's IDE and compatible with regular floppies it could probably entirely circumvent the need for dual floppy support. Then again, there is also the HIFD, and having both would kinda feel redundant, especially since the media are practically non-existent and functionally overlapping with the ZIP (which in its final incarnation is superior to both), so I'll probably be sticking to a traditional 3,5'' 1,44MB drive after all. I don't think I need a JAZ drive or all those other super-obscure drives either - was just thinking to get as far as the returns aren't diminishing. With SuperFloppy, DVD-RW, ZIP, MO and perhaps a streamer, I would be able to read like 99,9% of all media existing on the market at the time anyway.

Heh, I ended up doing that with my 2.88MB floppy disks as I literally met only 1 person who had such a drive (and it was in a laptop and he didn't have any of the disks).
Most people wouldn't even notice something was off with those disks.
But tbh I'd reckon that a ZIP 750 would be more practical (and perhaps also more reliable?) since those are also not common and at least hold a much more practical amount of storage room.

BUT I would definitely make sure that you got one or two spare drives in case some unfortunate hardware failure might lock you out of your own data. Then the joke would be on you 😜
LS-120 looks nice, I really like the design of those disks. I never had the HiFD and I definitely never had a Caleb drive.

But hey, why not go Seaquest or IBM MO disk while you're at it? 😜
Or Floptical! 😁 And I mean the somewhat original one holding around 21MB of data 😜

By all means, make it as elusively exquisite as you'd like! 😜
But how practical it would be? And how costly? Well, I can say that I definitely like using my USB 250MB ZIP drives to transfer files across my retro rigs, even though it may not be the fastest or most efficient way to do it.

But really, just try it! And go from there! If you really end up getting serious about it, you will probably end up preferring several rigs for this purpose anyway 😜

Dhigan wrote on 2020-10-18, 20:02:

As the wise Tetrium wrote : […]
Show full quote

As the wise Tetrium wrote :

Tetrium wrote on 2020-10-18, 12:24:

I'd first make a list of what exact formats you will want to support.
In the end it will come down to saving as many internal connections as possible by using as many external ones as you can
Ow man, there's so many different roads that you can walk to try and get what you want 🤣, but it may end up being a build made of compromises 😜

I could not resist posting my version (P3 + W2k)

Now that looks neat! 😁

I think I had 3*3¼in 'FDD's at the most (one 1.44MB, one 2.88MB or 740KB and one internal LS-120 drive, my friends thought it was pretty nuts already xD 😜 ).

What are the practical differences between LS-120 and LS-240? If 240 is backwards compatible, maybe I could get that?

Spiffles wrote on 2020-10-19, 21:25:

What are the practical differences between LS-120 and LS-240? If 240 is backwards compatible, maybe I could get that?

The little bit of LS-240 that I know about is from reading from the net, but I reckon it was never common at all.