My recently aquired TEAC 5.25 inch floppy is now mounted in a Storage box ..with hopefully enough space for cables ..psu..and the KryoFlux interface I ordered.
Anyhoo ...here is a photo of the drive I will be using ...now mounted in the box.
I will add to this thread when the interface arrives and I have more to post.
In the meantime...if anyone has gone down this route already .
Please Share you experiences ..as this is all new to me.
..and I suspect many other members.
rgds
VS
So ..scrapped the idea of fiting the 5.25" floppy drive in a plastic box ..but the butchered box came in useful cut up as the mount plane for the Kryo pcb ..which arrived 3 days ago..
I mounted instead inside an old scsi external CD enclosure ...and cut a front space to allow a 3.5" floppy to be mounted as well ..
The Kryoflux board will support a dual drive system ..
So far it appears to work ok with a Panasonic 5.25" floppy drive ..rather well .
In fact dumped my first Comodore 64 game floppy already ..as a test.
I've dedicated an old Optiplex PC running Win7 to the specific task.
It really IS impressive tech ..
I also had to move IDC edge connectors and make a custom ribbon for this build ..
and have yet to mount a suitable 12v/5v smpsu ..
Anyway here are some pics
rgds
VS
I would prefer to utilize a SCSI optical drive enclosure though. They came with their own PSU and generally enough space for anything that you want to put behind the drive. Two examples are shown below:
If you are ok with an external power brick, USB optical drive enclosures are still available new:
I puchsed this recently for my own future external FDD Project (an external gotek box with both USB and floppy connectors 😊)
Instead of Kryoflux, maybe this one also works but I'm not sure if the circuitry supports 5.25 formats. (I have one and it works with 1.44 MB drives as expected). Converting the data connector should not be hard job using an old style floppy cable (with 5.25 type connectors) and some soldering.
I would prefer to utilize a SCSI optical drive enclosure though. They came with their own PSU and generally enough space for anything that you want to put behind the drive. Two examples are shown below:
DSC_028_zpsf8b8de8d.jpg
If you are ok with an external power brick, USB optical drive enclosures are still available new:
I puchsed this recently for my own future external FDD Project (an external gotek box with both USB and floppy connectors 😊)
Instead of Kryoflux, maybe this one also works but I'm not sure if the circuitry supports 5.25 formats. (I have one and it works with 1.44 MB drives as expected). Converting the data connector should not be hard job using an old style floppy cable (with 5.25 type connectors) and some soldering.
The psu I intend to use is small enough to mount internally ..
My scsi CD had its own internal psu pcb ..but this was removed to make space for a 3.5 inch floppy drive ..
more pics to follow which will explain better..
One anvantage the Kyro has over other similar interfaces ..
is that it can also write back to the drives ..at Flux level..
thus cloning and transfer is also possible.
rgds
VS
Coming together nicely ..
I dont know yet how to use both A and B drives ..Drives 0 & 1
so temporarily disconnected the 5.25" floppy so as to use just the 3.5" ALPS drive ..
Attached is an original Win 95 boot floppy image made with the Kryoflux dual drive ..
and it looks like it will just write to floppy ..though I've not tried that yet..
rgds
VS
Managed to repair my third 5.25" floppy drive today ..
A close call indeed ..and certainly didnt expect what happened when I connected power to it..
The red 5 volt wire / suppy from my test ATX psu started to melt ..or at least the insulation did ..as the wire inside got hot.
Turned out there was a dead short on the drive board ..and yes it was component failure.
2 x 10uf 50 volt electrolytic capacitors were changed ..
one was leaky ..and the other ..dead short internally.
I feared the worst ..but after replacing the caps and running up just the drive board on a current regulated bench psu ..
Problem solved ..
So ..I re-fitted the drive pcb in the FDD ..and tested it ..
Perfik ..
or at least as far as reading floppies ..
not tested a write yet ...but I suspect it will be just fine.
Now I only have to repair the ATX psu..
Impressive that it didn't go bang and die ..with a dead short on it.. 😉
Another completed project ..
This unit is soooo coool ..
It can read write dump image just about any format providing the floppy will physically fit in one of the 2 drives..
rgds
VS