Ok, so we've been discussing various ideas for a universal floppy disk controller. I bought (E-Bay) a used Microsolutions "Backpack" external parallel port floppy disk drive, it's a 3.5" 1.44MB drive. Internally, it is a standard drive (with a 34-pin standard interface) and a floppy to parallel port interface card. The question is -- and it's really a software question -- If I connect a 5.25" drive to the interface (using the standard 34-pin interface) will the device (or, perhaps more to the point, will it's drivers) work? I believe that they actually made a 5.25" model (with a 1.2 meg drive), but I have not been able to find one. The Format program that comes in the software packet has documentation suggesting that it can format a 1.2 meg and even a 360k drive, and I'm guessing that the interface card is the same for the 5.25" and 3.5" models. This might be the answer to being able to access 5.25" drives on a "modern" PC. It would be really cool if 22Disk would work with a drive connected to this thing. I plan to do some testing in the next week or so. It still doesn't solve the eight-inch problem, however. [I know, there's a chance that the controller could be made to work with 8" drives using a funky cable -- but first things first, 5.25" drives.]