I thnik the
'must haves' depend very much on which aspect of this
hobby you are interested in.
And that, I agree with.
I'm not sure whether I have a PC with a 5-1/4" drive installed, because
it's been an age since I cared about reading a 5-1/4" floppy. My own
focus is on machines a bit more recent; I focus on things like Suns,
NeXTen, and Alphas. Occasion to care about floppies - of any size - is
somewhere between "very rare" and "never" for me.
I am in much the same position. The machines that I am most interested in
either don't have floppies at all (e..g HP9830) or if they do, they're 8"
(PERQs, Unibus PDP11s, Philips P800s). So I while I do have a setup for
reading/writing 5.25" disks (I find a TRS80 Model 4 to be very useful for
this, at least it has a WD controller...) it's not essential for me.
-tony