I don't get it. That solution looks like it'll cost >$300 by the time you're done; why not just take an old (free or next to) small form factor PC box and network it?
Because I'm obsessed. My main box must read 5.25" floppies - on it's own.
I can get it to do this now, via a cannibalized hackjob of a Backpack 3.5" converted into a 5.25" but there are two problems:
- If I want to mount it internally (why not, neater than a hackjob anywho) I'd want to power it from the PSU somehow, and I don't know enough electronics to do that.
- It requires a VM with parallel port passthrough (Parallels, ironically, is the only one with this functionality that actually works) to access the drive.
This is not really good enough, but it's the best I can do under my own power. The only real issue here is a lack of driver support. I can't locate someone to write up an NT-compatible driver for the damn thing though, even though we have the source code for the driver readily available. If someone could modify the Backpack driver source we have and compile it into a working NT-compatible driver for parallel Backpack drives, I would pay them to do it. Unfortunately none of the languages I'm versed in can be used for this except maybe assembler, but using ASM to write an NT driver doesn't sound reasonable, plus I'd have to start from scratch because the original drivers (I believe) are in C.
If someone can come up with a proper USB 5.25" 1.2MB floppy drive that just gets plugged in via USB and recognized (possibly with driver installation from a disk) as a 5.25" FDD with no issues, I am willing to pay quite a bit for such a unit.
I was planning on upgrading my motherboard almost solely for the purpose of gaining a floppy header (and maybe some more SATA ports, a PCI or two) from a mATX to ATX board, however, I only want Intel boards and I can't locate one that uses DDR2, 1333mhz FSB, Core 2 Quad, at least 1 x16 PCIe and a floppy header.
This is such a maddening thing. If I had the knowledge Id've created this three hundred times over but I don't even know where to begin - I constructed part of the housing for my external 5.25" Backpack out of cardboard ripped from a box - I have no physical construction capability...
I have considered a Catweasel on and off for about two years now. They cost enough so that it's been prohibitive, but I might be able to afford one soon. The side benefit of being able to read exotic formats (like C64) is quite nice, but I primarily just plan to use it as a damned PCI floppy controller (which should really exist in it's own right!). I have concerns, though, as to whether or not this will work for such a simple task, or if it will relegate me to using odd third party software just to read and write a file to the drive, or if it will provide them with drive letters, which would be fantastic. Either way that's better than what I have now, as at least it wouldn't have to involve a virtual machine.
I've probably spent a good 20 hours total over the past few months thinking this situation over in my head and this is the sum of that---^
Edit: Ah yes, then there's the other solution.. dualbooting. I have been considering a dualboot for DOS compatibility for some time now, to a 32-bit Win7, but perhaps I should look further back to 98SE or the like, where there's direct hardware access and Backpack drives will work. There's a patch to allow 98SE to work with any amount of RAM (and actually use much of it.. it refuses to install or run with 1.5GB as it stands) but it costs money.. Perhaps it's about time I dropped money on that, it's less expensive than most of the alternatives I've come up with.. Do Backpack drives work under Linux? That's another consideration...
