Looking for computer and individual to read old floppy disks

[Warner Losh]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 7:25 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:

> >> I got more details from the guy with the disks.  They are apparently
> >> "360K" PC floppies with XYWRITE files, and he wants to load the file
> >> contents into a "modern"? word processor.  So hopefully, somebody can
> help
> >> him, with a simple COPY *.*, and I think that he now understands that
> he
> >> might also need to get back a copy of XYWRITE to turn the file content
> into
> >> something usable.
>
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2022, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote:
> > It was mentioned that he would pay someone to do this.  Why not just
> > tell him to buy a $20 USB Floppy from Amazon and copy them himself?
>
> 5.25" USB floppies seem to be scarce now!
> I didn't do any serious searching, but neither Amazon nor eBay showed any
> obvious (on first page) hits.
>
> Some of the early USB drives, even if 3.5", MIGHT separate controller and
> drive enough to be modifiable, . . .
> I would GUESS that the "modern" ones are too "integrated".
>

There are no 5.25" USB floppies. Well, not 100% true (there are values in
the
identifier strings that tell you it's a 1.2MB floppy vs a 1.44MB floppy),
but as
a practical matter, you can't find them. I've looked and gave up... That's
how
I wound up with my kyroflux + TEAC drive (though a greaseweasel is a
better choice these days)...

If these are the old 360k diskettes, then you'd be out of luck the USB
route..
But an imager would be on the order of $30 for the greaseweasel, or
similar, and
another $40 for a working 5.25" drive and a few hours of your time to set
it up and
figure it all out... So anybody copying the disks for < ~$100 or $150 would
be cost
effective for this person...

The harder part is converting XYWRITE files into something more mordern...

Warner