There used to exist floppy cables long enough to travel the whole chassis, but they became rarer and rarer.
I made a cable for a different application recently and it's really easy. The crimp tools costed 10 euros and both the ribbon cable and the idc connectors were easily available from a local electronics/robotics shop. I'd say go for it!

$10 here, $10 there, cable, terminator, case, tool and now it costs the same amount of money it costed then 😀

You can get a floppy male-to-female extension cable for the 3 1/2 drive.

AirIntake wrote on 2022-02-23, 00:12:

You can get a floppy male-to-female extension cable for the 3 1/2 drive.

I suspect that something like this exist(ed) but have never seen it.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-02-23, 00:52:

AirIntake wrote on 2022-02-23, 00:12:

You can get a floppy male-to-female extension cable for the 3 1/2 drive.

I suspect that something like this exist(ed) but have never seen it.

There looks to be lots on ebay

Yes, long floppy cables used to be a thing, default was about 24" in the day, with 36" or so for full towers. I'd just grab the cheap dupont cables with male and female ends off amazon to extend it, if they're all spendy now.

Oh, the 5.25 connectors in particular are somewhat easy to carefully pull apart and crimp further up or down the cable...t he 3.5 ones can be too, but usually require messing about with a vice, or closing in a door hinge real carefully or something. Probably need jewellers screwdrivers and three hands to pry the tabs up.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-02-22, 17:16:

$10 here, $10 there, cable, terminator, case, tool and now it costs the same amount of money it costed then 😀

Exactly, current retro pricing isn't inflated. It's just RRP!

😁

Crimpers for floppy or IDE cables for that matter?

I always just did it using the connector cover as the crimper.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-02-22, 13:30:

What do you usually do in such cases (lol)? Floppy cables with 5.25 connectors are pretty expensive. I started to think it would be better to build a custom cable myself - I can make it rainbow 😀 IDC edge connectors are still available.

I just ordered stuff for building MFM drive cables myself. Not that expensive.

Locally I can find stuff for floppy cable very cheap:
FC34 IDC female connector 0,45€ * 2
EC34 card edge connector 0,50€
34pin flat cable 2,60€/m

I find local rate to be much lower than eBay/Aliexpress.

Connectors are easy to press using almost any size of bench vise.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-02-22, 13:30:

I started assembling my 486 in a desktop case and want to have both 5.25 and 3.5 floppies in it.

The problem is the cable length. 5.25 floppy is horizontal and the cable connector is on the opposite side. The 3.5 floppy is vertical. Seems like I simply can't connect both devices at the same time - either the distance between drives is too long or the end near to the controller is too short.

What do you usually do in such cases (lol)? Floppy cables with 5.25 connectors are pretty expensive. I started to think it would be better to build a custom cable myself - I can make it rainbow 😀 IDC edge connectors are still available.

I think there is such a thing as a extension cable with a male and female connector.

But yeah, take apart your cable and make a bew one using new ribbon

How about a 5.25" to 3.5" floppy drive mount? Then you can mount both horizontally and no new cable is needed. Unless your case is low profile, of course.

@JidaiGeki, that's an interesting idea, thank you. But it also costs something and is hard to find. And I can use all three 5.25 bays - floppy, CD, tape.
The same with 34 pin extender cable. It costs something with delivery.

Seems like the best option for me is to make the custom cable that will be the absolute match for my case. Both in terms of costs and view.

@fool, it's hard to find that type of stuff in Ukraine - even if we have it, it comes from Ali and more expansive. We just don't have use for it.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-23, 03:12:

Oh, the 5.25 connectors in particular are somewhat easy to carefully pull apart and crimp further up or down the cable...t he 3.5 ones can be too, but usually require messing about with a vice, or closing in a door hinge real carefully or something. Probably need jewellers screwdrivers and three hands to pry the tabs up.

^- This !

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-02-23, 17:21:

Seems like the best option for me is to make the custom cable that will be the absolute match for my case. Both in terms of costs and view.

I hope you're safe and that when all this shit ends you'll make all the cables you want

The worst cables are the cheapest they are ugly yellow colour. This is truely a thread of dedicated retro enthusiasts I wanted to build a pc with the floppy drive types mentioned to archive drivers and software but I cannot for the life of me find a black 1.2mb 5.24 floppy drive! they are all white where I live! saw couple of 360k ones but no 1.2mb.

I think black went out of fashion just as half height drives came in, then didn't come back again until long after 5.25s were done and 3.5s were looking superfluous to modern computing.

Have you considered a gotek? It could replace both drives and no more read errors

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-02-24, 20:20:

Have you considered a gotek? It could replace both drives and no more read errors

I cannot live without my grindy floppy disk noises.