25 Sep
2024
25 Sep
'24
12:01 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Maciej W. Rozycki via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: 25 September 2024 12:51
To: Steve Lewis via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: Steve Lewis <lewissa78(a)gmail.com>om>; Maciej W. Rozycki
<macro(a)orcam.me.uk>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: request for 5.25 floppies
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
).
There are several USB to floppy tools that interface to floppies at a low
level and which can be used to read/write images. This is one:-
https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki
Dave
G4UGM
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
Dave