solutions to get 5.25" floppy drive into modern computer

[musicforlife]

Hopefully I'm not beating a dead horse here, but I really would want to be able to have 5.25" floppy drive in modern computer. I have got a modern motherboard with floppy connector ie. hardware support but however, I don't know why, but if I connect 5.25" drive into it, the computer boots normally but the windows is lagging like hell. Why is that? my computer is dualboot Win7 and WinXP so I suppose there should be way to have 5.25" at least in WinXP but with both I have the same issue that the entire windows gets lagged and making it unusable. How can floppy drive cause this?

I am using SCSI in my computer (Zip & Jaz drives), so does floppy to scsi adapter exist? How's kryoflux?

This is the only thing I could find but looks rather obscure controller https://www.ebay.com/itm/SCSI-Flopp...380-FLEX-SCSIFLEX-82188-8088-SBC/131721582493


I do have Win98 computer with 5.25" drive but it's annoying process that I need to copy files into another computer all the time.

 

[SomeGuy]

SCSI floppy drives did exist, but they were limited to one specific format, similar to USB floppy drives. They were not usually used on PCs. No idea if Windows supports those.

If your motherboard has a real floppy disk controller on it, then at least Windows XP should work with it, as long as it is a 1.2mb 5.25" drive. XP does not support 360k drives for some dumb reason.

Kryoflux and Supercard pro work a bit differently from a regular floppy drvie, you can't just drag and drop files. Instead you work with flux images. But the upshot is these can read and write ANY disk format, not just IBM PC stuff.

I actually recommend having a Win9x box handy, as this will let you run more DOS based disk tools such as ImageDisk, that won't run in the NT based Windows OSes. 9x enables you to use networking to easily move files between computers.

So it depends on how you plan to use it.

You might also see this writeup on current disk archival tools: https://forum.winworldpc.com/discussion/7877/a-comparison-of-current-disk-archival-tools

 

[Stone]

I do have Win98 computer with 5.25" drive but it's annoying process that I need to copy files into another computer all the time.

If the two computers were networked you wouldn't have that problem.

Not only that... if they were networked you should be able to access the 5¼" in the WIN98 machine from the modern computer directly. I've shared floppy drives across a network before.

 

[musicforlife]

If your motherboard has a real floppy disk controller on it, then at least Windows XP should work with it, as long as it is a 1.2mb 5.25" drive. XP does not support 360k drives for some dumb reason.

Normal 3.5" floppy drive works fine but as soon as 5.25" HD floppy drive is connected, it makes computer extremely slow and lagging. I have no idea how it could cause such. A pity.

If the two computers were networked you wouldn't have that problem.

Not only that... if they were networked you should be able to access the 5¼" in the WIN98 machine from the modern computer directly. I've shared floppy drives across a network before.

The entire point is that I would need to power up and wait win98 computer to boot. Networking doesn't take this waiting away since I don't keep win98 computer on all the time.

 

[SomeGuy]

Normal 3.5" floppy drive works fine but as soon as 5.25" HD floppy drive is connected, it makes computer extremely slow and lagging. I have no idea how it could cause such. A pity.

Well, that should not happen.

I would check a few things. First, make sure your BIOS is set for a 1.2mb drive. Are you using this as A: or B: ? If B:, then note if your BIOS actually supports two floppy drives. Also double check that you are using an appropriate twisted cable.

Most 1.2mb drives have lots of configurable jumpers for compatiblity with non-IBM systems. My guess would be that one of these is not configured right.

If you can't find a manual online or aren't sure of the jumper settings, post the drive model here and perhaps someone can help.

It is also possible you might need to mess with the XP device manager. Off hand, I'm not sure if it auto-detects adding a floppy drive, or changing a 1.4mb to 1.2m.

Yeish. These idiots at Microsoft can pay programmers to integrate a web browser, build a second web browser, build an entirely different user interface in each version, add all kinds of useless crap, maintain [insert very long list of technical Windows features here] and yet they can't maintain a freaking little floppy driver.

 

[retro-pc_user]

It really depends on the motherboard, provide if it has a floppy controller integrated, and supports more than 1 diskette drive (most only support 1 and that's all). My main desktop only has SATA and IDE ports, no floppy controller sadly. However, I have an LS-240 USB SuperDisk Drive that I use to image diskettes in case if one goes bad, or if I need to merge the image file onto a diskette (MS-DOS diskettes), and copy files onto a diskette to be used on my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus machine or equivalent, however, if any of my retro machines are undergoing maintenance (hard drive error checks, defragmentation, and so on) or upgrading peripherals on the inside, I also make a diskette with drivers that maybe required (if the CD drive isn't detected any longer due to replacing the motherboard).

I also have a dual floppy drive in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus (Epson SD-800) that I got for free 2 years ago, which works somewhat (could use a good cleaning as Diskette 2 for my dad's old game, Civilization I (1991) works half-way and gives a General Read error on Drive B), and/or Sector error on Drive A when attempting to run Mickey's Fun Print diskette, but every other 1.44MB diskette drive, including the LS-120 (Socket 7) and LS-240 (USB) works with the diskette easily.

 

[musicforlife]

In my motherboad bios there's only one setting which is "onboard floppy controller" ON/OFF so I presume it can handle only one floppy unit. I also have LS120 superdisk (IDE) so I would be entirely happy if I just could put one single 5.25" HD drive into WinXP.

EDIT: The jumper was in D1. I'm testing now D0 instead.

 

[FishFinger]

Are you using the 5.25" drive by itself or are you fitting it alongside a 3.5"?

Modern motherboards (by which I mean from the last 10 years or so) normally only support a single floppy drive and sometimes do strange things if you connect two at once.

 

[musicforlife]

F*ck this shït. So close but failed.

I managed to get floppy drive finally recognized and then installed Omniflop. With Omniflop, formatting both 1,2Mb and 360kb disks is no problem. I could write 1,2mb image but it takes 4 minutes (more than half of the writing time is always head seeking). Funnily enough, when restarting my computer it even booted from the 1,2mb disk because I wrote msdos installation disk1 into it. However it seems that writing 360kb images are simply impossible. Everytime I try that it always fails because the omniflop can't even start it.

EDIT: woah. after writing 1,2mb image, you can actually browse the drive in window and even delete/copy files like normally! That's neat! Sadly my biggest usage would be DD 360kb floppies so that doesn't help me.

 

[Stone]

FWIW, 1.2M drives are widely considered unreliable for writing 360K floppies that are to be used in 360K drives so don't even waste your time trying to do this as you will likely find that using 360K drives to read 360K floppies written in 1.2M drives is hit and miss at best.

If you want to write reliable 360K disks you must use a 360K drive, period.

 

[musicforlife]

FWIW, 1.2M drives are widely considered unreliable for writing 360K floppies that are to be used in 360K drives so don't even waste your time trying to do this as you will likely find that using 360K drives to read 360K floppies written in 1.2M drives is hit and miss at best.

If you want to write reliable 360K disks you must use a 360K drive, period.

Oh? And I have been previously writing 360kb images in HD drive before with diskimg program in win98 and I never had issue with it.

EDIT: WOAAHH!!!!! You were right it seems! I used DD drive from my IBM 5150 and it worked!!! I formatted 360kb image!!! Seems like Omniflop

So I guess you can't have both DD and HD drive at the same time?


EDIT: Okay, I was too happy too fast. After the first time, now with my DD drive it still does the same bug that I can't write image.

 

[Stone]

Oh? And I have been previously writing 360kb images in HD drive before with diskimg program in win98 and I never had issue with it.

You were lucky.

Or you were reading the disk in the same drive that wrote it.

Or reading the disk in another 1.2M drive.

FWIW, unreliable doesn't mean 100%.

So I guess you can't have both DD and HD drive at the same time?

Of course you can! You can have whatever you want if you configure them correctly.

 

[musicforlife]

Of course you can! You can have whatever you want if you configure them correctly.

No I was referring to that I can't use more than a single drive in this computer so I can't write both HD and DD because they would require separated drive.

 

[musicforlife]

HEUREKA!!!!

My second motherboard which contains also floppy connector, while there's no possibility of two floppy drives but however, in the bios I can change A: drive between 1.44Mb and 720Kb. When the setting is in 720Kb, although booting says "floppy disk(s) fail" presuming it can't find 720kb drive, my WinXP even shows the A: drive as 5,25" floppy drive and even though the drive is HD, with both Omniflop and EVEN diskimg tool it can format and write 360kb disks no problem! diskimg is usually very exact that it can write only same format as your drive but it does recognize my A: drive as 360kb drive!!!

Finally!!! After so much of blood and sweat (literally!!!), I have got success!

 

[Caluser2000]

Good to see.

 

[mR_Slug]

Finally!!! After so much of blood and sweat (literally!!!), I have got success!

If you're literally loosing blood over installing a floppy drive, a grave error has occurred somewhere. Anyway glad you've got it working.

 

[modem7]

... drive as 5,25" floppy drive and even though the drive is HD, with both Omniflop and EVEN diskimg tool it can format and write 360kb disks no problem!

Well, I would not say, "without problem". Irrespective of the software that is used, when a 1.2M drive writes to a 360K floppy, it is writing tracks that are thinner than what is on a 'proper' 360K floppy. See [here], particularly the web page that is linked to there.

 

[Stone]

Well, I would not say, "without problem". Irrespective of the software that is used, when a 1.2M drive writes to a 360K floppy, it is writing tracks that are thinner than what is on a 'proper' 360K floppy...

He missed the point completely.

Of course a 1.2M drive can write a perfect 360K floppy. And this floppy can be reliably read in the drive that wrote it. There's no problem there. Hell, even a misaligned floppy drive can read its own disks! The problem arises when this floppy is read on a 360K drive.

 

[musicforlife]

He missed the point completely.

Of course a 1.2M drive can write a perfect 360K floppy. And this floppy can be reliably read in the drive that wrote it. There's no problem there. Hell, even a misaligned floppy drive can read its own disks! The problem arises when this floppy is read on a 360K drive.

Well, if that is the case, I could also get DD floppy drive too instead. You see, in previous motherboard with only 1.44mb option, I had problems even with DD drive writing DD floppies. My Tandon drive only got some issues althought it was able to format and write.

If you're literally loosing blood over installing a floppy drive, a grave error has occurred somewhere. Anyway glad you've got it working.

I simply had been installing two different computers and exchanging cards several times brought me sore fingertips and got bloody scratches from installing tight spaces.

 

[Stone]

You see, in previous motherboard with only 1.44mb option, I had problems even with DD drive writing DD floppies.

That's a totally different issue -- like apples and oranges. Sounds like that motherboard/BIOS didn't support DD.

HD and DD 3½" drives both have the same head width and therefore write the same size track. There is no inherent hardware incompatibility there.

HD and DD 5¼" drives do not have the same head width and the tracks they write are not necessarily interchangeable/compatible with each other. That presents a problem all it's own.