Got an LS-120 drive today \ VOGONS

Got an LS-120 drive today

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First post, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2014-07-18, 23:55

Kahenraz Offline

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A retro laptop I'm refurbishing came with a CD-ROM drive instead of a floppy but I was able to find a replacement on eBay. To my surprise, the drive was an LS-120! I always wanted one of these but now that I have one, I have no idea what to do with it. 😵

Supposedly it reads regular floppies faster than a floppy drive, which is sweet. I'd definitely use it for some kind of amazingly super boot disk but not being able to hook it up to my main machine to set it up isn't much fun.

Now I'm on the hunt for an LS-120 USB drive for this purpose. They're pretty uncommon and expensive though.. not to mention the cost of disks!

Reply 1 of 8, by luckybob

Posted on 2014-07-19, 04:39

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honestly, don't bother with the 120mb disks. Unless you don't have any other way to transfer files. They do read floppy disks about 2x as fast as normal drives and do a GREAT job of reading disks that would otherwise be bad. I have two drives. one I have hooked up to a cheap usb>ide converter. works great in win7!

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 2 of 8, by AlphaDangerDen

Posted on 2014-07-19, 05:04

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Kahenraz wrote:
I always wanted one of these but now that I have one, I have no idea what to do with it. 😵

I've always wanted one just to mess around with. An example would be to copy all of my MS-DOS 6.22 disks onto one LS-120 disk and compare the install times, or see how slow an LS-120 is compared to a optical drive when installing Windows 95 😎

Reply 3 of 8, by smeezekitty

Posted on 2014-07-19, 05:09

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I have a parallel version. I couldn't get it to work under XP so I never tried it
But now I have my 486s up and running I should dig it out again. In box too

Reply 4 of 8, by JaNoZ

Posted on 2014-07-19, 08:06

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So you can format normal HD floppy's to 32MB with this drive? did you try this out?

Reply 5 of 8, by luckybob

Posted on 2014-07-19, 10:03

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JaNoZ wrote:
So you can format normal HD floppy's to 32MB with this drive? did you try this out?

that is the 240mb version if memory serves me correctly.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 6 of 8, by archsan

Posted on 2014-07-19, 10:28

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luckybob wrote:
They do read floppy disks about 2x as fast as normal drives and do a GREAT job of reading disks that would otherwise be bad. I have two drives. one I have hooked up to a cheap usb>ide converter. works great in win7!

Nice tip! Sounds like a better option than an (expensive) IBM USB FDD.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke
"No way. Installing the drivers on these things always gives me a headache."—Guybrush Threepwood (on cutting-edge voodoo technology)

Reply 7 of 8, by Kahenraz

Posted on 2014-07-19, 18:39

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JaNoZ wrote:
So you can format normal HD floppy's to 32MB with this drive? did you try this out?

Oh. My. Gosh! I'd never even HEARD of this before! I must try it! 😲

Reply 8 of 8, by Mau1wurf1977

Posted on 2014-07-20, 01:52

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AlphaDangerDen wrote:

I've always wanted one just to mess around with. An example would be to copy all of my MS-DOS 6.22 disks onto one LS-120 disk and compare the install times, or see how slow an LS-120 is compared to a optical drive when installing Windows 95 😎

DOS might be tricky as it looks for disc labels.

But Windows 95 or 98 should work fine! In the past I used a parallel port Iomega ZIP 100 to install Windows 95. Worked quite well 😀

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