10 Dec
2003
10 Dec
'03
4:26 a.m.
I'm sure one can be built, but I've seen drives
like these before (but for
the Macintosh).
I just saw a 3.5" USB drive this morning connected to a Dell. From the
looks of it, that is they way Dell was delivering the drive for that
computer (it was a tiny little tower like unit and had no floppy built
in).
So they are available for more than just the Mac. I think the one I
bought for my father's iMac (so he can transfer pics from his Mavica
camera) was not Mac specific and was supported by Windows and Linux
according to the box (but the drive sucks, its PAINFULLY slow to copy
data, far slower than the USB bus so the speed isn't killed by that...
IIRC, its a "SanDisk" brand drive, but I could be wrong).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
10 Dec
10 Dec
4:33 a.m.
And thusly chris spake:
So they are available for more than just the Mac. I think the one I
bought for my father's iMac (so he can transfer pics from his Mavica
camera) was not Mac specific and was supported by Windows and Linux
according to the box (but the drive sucks, its PAINFULLY slow to copy
data, far slower than the USB bus so the speed isn't killed by that...
IIRC, its a "SanDisk" brand drive, but I could be wrong).
Maybe they are competing with the 1541 for "slowest transfer rate ever".
Cheers,
Bryan Pope
6:19 a.m.
> So they are available for more than just the Mac.
I think the one I
> bought for my father's iMac (so he can transfer pics from his Mavica
> camera) was not Mac specific and was supported by Windows and Linux
> according to the box (but the drive sucks, its PAINFULLY slow to copy
> data, far slower than the USB bus so the speed isn't killed by that...
> IIRC, its a "SanDisk" brand drive, but I could be wrong).
Maybe they are competing with the 1541 for
"slowest transfer rate ever".
My dual G4 Power Mac's USB floppy drive wins. Even without Epyx FastLoad, the
1541 is faster at reading and writing, and on top of all of that, there's no
interminable delay waiting for the disk to mount in the Finder. *sigh*
The reason I'm stuck using it is my Star Commander workstation is a little
486 laptop with no (working) Ethernet card, so disk images have to get
sneaker-netted to and from the dual G4.
--
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- When you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly. -----------------------
4:45 a.m.
I wonder where the smarts are? If the controller is in the drive, you may be
limited to the formats you can read. I.e., you may be stuck with whatever
sectors per track and track counts that are supposed on "normal" PC drives.
Perhaps someone should buy one of these and take it apart...
--jc
On Wednesday 10 December 2003 13:26 pm, chris wrote:
I'm sure
one can be built, but I've seen drives like these before (but for
the Macintosh).
I just saw a 3.5" USB drive this morning connected to a Dell. From the
looks of it, that is they way Dell was delivering the drive for that
computer (it was a tiny little tower like unit and had no floppy built
in).
So they are available for more than just the Mac. I think the one I
bought for my father's iMac (so he can transfer pics from his Mavica
camera) was not Mac specific and was supported by Windows and Linux
according to the box (but the drive sucks, its PAINFULLY slow to copy
data, far slower than the USB bus so the speed isn't killed by that...
IIRC, its a "SanDisk" brand drive, but I could be wrong).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net> 
5:01 a.m.
Those USB floppy drives generally use a "SCSI protocol over USB transport"
scheme (this is in fact the way the USB mass-storage standard works AFAIK, so
floppy drives aren't the only things that do this), so I would be VERY
suprised if there's any "standard" floppy drive in there that you could
just
swap out for a different type.
J.C. Wren said:
I wonder where the smarts are? If the controller is
in the drive, you may be
limited to the formats you can read. I.e., you may be stuck with whatever
sectors per track and track counts that are supposed on "normal" PC drives.
Perhaps someone should buy one of these and take it apart...
--jc
On Wednesday 10 December 2003 13:26 pm, chris wrote:
- Dan Wright
(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu)
(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright)
-] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [-
``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.''
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
I'm
sure one can be built, but I've seen drives like these before (but for
the Macintosh).
I just saw a 3.5" USB drive this morning connected to a Dell. From the
looks of it, that is they way Dell was delivering the drive for that
computer (it was a tiny little tower like unit and had no floppy built
in).
So they are available for more than just the Mac. I think the one I
bought for my father's iMac (so he can transfer pics from his Mavica
camera) was not Mac specific and was supported by Windows and Linux
according to the box (but the drive sucks, its PAINFULLY slow to copy
data, far slower than the USB bus so the speed isn't killed by that...
IIRC, its a "SanDisk" brand drive, but I could be wrong).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net> 
3:18 p.m.
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Dan Wright wrote:
Those USB floppy drives generally use a "SCSI
protocol over USB transport"
scheme (this is in fact the way the USB mass-storage standard works AFAIK, so
floppy drives aren't the only things that do this), so I would be VERY
suprised if there's any "standard" floppy drive in there that you could
just
swap out for a different type.
Actually, I would imagine it's very likely that there's a standard disk
drive in there since it would be much easier (and cheaper) to design a
simple and cheap floppy interface-to-SCSI converter. But that doesn't
necessarily mean that any drive can be run on the converter.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
5:59 a.m.
So they are available for more than just the Mac. I
think the one I
bought for my father's iMac (so he can transfer pics from his Mavica
camera) was not Mac specific and was supported by Windows and Linux
according to the box (but the drive sucks, its PAINFULLY slow to copy
data, far slower than the USB bus so the speed isn't killed by that...
IIRC, its a "SanDisk" brand drive, but I could be wrong).
Using *ANY* floppy on a PowerMac is painfully slow. When I was getting ready to move from
my 8500/180 to my G4/450 AGP I wanted to image a large number of floppies that I had. I
ended up doing the imaging on my PowerBook 540c, transfering them via ethernet to the 8500
and burning them to CD. That was a *LOT* faster than doing the reading directly on the
8500.
Worse, some of these USB floppies need to be connected directly to the system, rather than
hooking them into a Hub. Both my Mom and a friend of mine have drives like this.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
7683
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7 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
bpope＠wordstock.com -
cb＠mythtech.net -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dtwright＠uiuc.edu -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jcwren＠jcwren.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
vcf＠siconic.com