5.25" floppy drive needed

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titanium

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1990 called, and wanted me to copy a whole bunch of data from a stack of floppies. That's pretty much the reason why I need a 5.25" floppy drive, which I sadly gave away back in 1995 when stiffy drives became all the rage.

If you have one that you're willing to part with, or at least lend to me for a couple of weeks, I would very much appreciate it :)

Please PM me. I'm in the Western Cape.

Thanks
 
You'll also need an old PC with the controllers/connectors that the 5.25" floppy drives require, because it's different from the IDE cables IIRC.

My dad definitely have a floppy drive or 2 somewhere that he's keeping for his "museum" :)
 
Pada said:
You'll also need an old PC with the controllers/connectors that the 5.25" floppy drives require, because it's different from the IDE cables IIRC.

My dad definitely have a floppy drive or 2 somewhere that he's keeping for his "museum" :)
Click to expand...

Most motherboards still have a stiffy/floppy drive connector.
 
So funny. As soon as I saw "looking for 5.25" floppy drive" I was gonna ask "so what old games u gonna play :)"
What games u got? maybe u can share and we can DosBox them. I think after 20 years sharing such things is not very illegal. Some consider it 'abandonware'.

The 5.25" connector is actually a PCB connector (looks like the bottom of an ISA card, but less pins of course).
So the 5.25" floppy cable has a female PCB connector. not sure the proper name... (connector on left)
universal-floppy-cable-3-5-5-25-at-both-ends-new_230335683084.jpg


With the DosBox Emulator you won't need old hardware. A modern OS might be able to read a 5.25" floppy.
 
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Yeah, most motherboards (up to Core 2 Duo) should still have the floppy/stiffy connector, but like my Socket 1156 (Asus P7H55D-M Evo) doesn't have one.

Titanium, I also assume that you need the 1.2MB floppy drive reader and not just a 340KB one...

Could you perhaps tell is where in the WC you are, because the WC is quite big :)
 
I think you're about 10 years out, in 1995, CD's and Zip-drives were "all the rage", 3.5 inch floppy or "stiffy" disks were already pretty outdated. I know, I still have my Windows 95 CD. Anywho, even if you can get on of the ancient drives and the controller, The disks themselves may not work, floppy disks were quite unreliable by today's standards, not like like the fancy solid-state or optical media we use today.
 
floppies will be full of errors.only designed to last 10 years max. now we are 20 years on? if you do get your hands on a drive, you'll have to somehow image them raw and try figure out what to do with the broken dump files.
 
Thats one storage medium I'm happy to see gone. Geez, I remember I couldn't wait for it to go away.
I remember the 21MB floppy disk drives came out, I saw them at a computer show.
They wanted about R700 for them back then, which was a crapload of money, and also they didn't seem to be gaining adoption, and other standards were popping up all the time.
I remember trying to copy Doom 2 with floppies. A very unhappy experience.

After having a fair amount of experience with floppy disks, if I wanted to copy a file, and travel to another location, and be able to access the file, I would put like 5 copies of the file on the disk, and then I'd make 2 disks like that.
And if the file was too large to duplicate on one disk, I'd take 3 or 4 disks :) That worked pretty well. Damn they were pieces of crap.
 
Lope said:
So funny. As soon as I saw "looking for 5.25" floppy drive" I was gonna ask "so what old games u gonna play :)"
What games u got? maybe u can share and we can DosBox them. I think after 20 years sharing such things is not very illegal. Some consider it 'abandonware'.
Click to expand...

Some old documents and a science project that I created using Autodesk Animations 3D Studio - would love to revisit it :) But now that you mention it, I do have the original Sierra game Codename: ICEMAN and LucasArts Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, amongst others. Those would definitely have replay value!

Pada said:
Titanium, I also assume that you need the 1.2MB floppy drive reader and not just a 340KB one...
Could you perhaps tell is where in the WC you are, because the WC is quite big :)
Click to expand...

Correct, the 1.2MB one :) I'm in the Southern Suburbs.

TJ99 said:
I think you're about 10 years out, in 1995, CD's and Zip-drives were "all the rage", 3.5 inch floppy or "stiffy" disks were already pretty outdated. I know, I still have my Windows 95 CD.
Click to expand...

You're absolutely correct, I meant the zip drives and CD drives. Good catch :)

stricken said:
floppies will be full of errors.only designed to last 10 years max. now we are 20 years on? if you do get your hands on a drive, you'll have to somehow image them raw and try figure out what to do with the broken dump files.
Click to expand...

The floppies have been stored in a container in the dark, and under conditions optimal for long term storage, so I'm fairly optimistic that I'll be able to recover some data. Can only try, anyway!
 
I think I've got one and the ribbon cables, etc. I'll scratch in my store and if I find one I'll PM you and get an address to send it to. Parcel post shouldn't be too pricey. I'm in Northern Natal, so if you want it quick and money's no object you can send a courier to pick it up. Anyway, I'll let you know if I find one.



http://www.infoguru.co.za
 
hmm, i wonder if anybody still has floppy disks or even a floppy drive for me?
My 1996 days asked me to please turn on the flip switch to the XT computer and please blow my case out and have a look at my health.
Very sad as the hard drive does not boot up , i dont understand why and dont recall formatting or wiping it.
It sounds fine and i dont hear funny sounds.
I would love to make peace and bring it up but i need floppy disks to format the hdd.

Hoping somebody here still has floppy disks and even stiffy disks and maybe.
I do have a stiffy drive and a floppy drive the only problem is that i do not know what floppy drive i have whether it is 360kb or 1.2mb.
I hope i can tel by looking at the drive somewhere....

Please let me know if you have any of them floppy disks.

to think i had so so many of them man, and now i have none, lol
 
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