25 Sep
2024
25 Sep
'24
4:51 a.m.
On Tue, 24 Sep 2024, Steve Lewis via cctalk wrote:
For shipping/delivery purposes, I'm in north
Texas. When I got these
drives, I then realized I no longer have any 5.25 floppies anymore - and
even if I did, then I'm not quite sure how to get the images on there (did
anyone ever make a "USB-to-5.25" drive? I have a couple 3.5 versions of
those - maybe the power to motor the 5.25 is too much for USB? :D ).
From the software's point of view the drives are the same (with different
limits of course), e.g. once I successfully formatted 3.5" HD medium for
80 tracks of 15 sectors double-sided and imaged a 1.2MB 5.25" disk onto it
for use with IIRC DOS 3.2 that didn't support 3.5" drives and it booted
from that disk and worked just fine treating the 3.5" HD drive as a 5.25"
HD drive.
However whatever the circuitry the USB-to-FDD adapter has, it has to
provide a way to set track and sector count with the drive behind, but I
guess it has to anyway to support 720kB (and maybe 2.88MB) 3.5" medium if
nothing else.
As someone else pointed out power can be supplied externally and data can
be wired using an original flat ribbon cable, by using corresponding .1"
pitch PCB pin header and PCB edge IDC connectors originally intended for
the drive at the same address (or an equivalent purpose-made cable).
NB this is based on my past experience with original floppy disk drives
and not any USB-to-FDD adapters, in a hope that it will help. Good luck!
Maciej