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Any chances for a 5 1/4 inch floppy to work ?

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BogdanV

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Jan 18, 2010
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I know that there are lots of external factors involved, but I'm not worried about those.
What I'd like to know is, considering the age of such a floppy, isn't there a risk that the floppy might lose its magnetic properties and become useless ?
I'm asking because the only way for me to run a OS on my Tulip is from the floppy drive and I've got only one 5 1/4 inch disk.
If it hasn't demagnetized itself after so much time, I should be able to copy DOS on it using a 486 machine (last ones to support 5 1/4 inch floppies ?) and boot off of it, right ?

Thanks in advance !
 
Generally yes. I have floppies written more than 25 years ago and which still are readable. Others probably can tell you about 30 or even 35 year old floppy disks that still are chugging along. Of course a single floppy disk can go bad, so I'd recommend you to get a few spare ones, either new old stock or used ones that you can reformat. I think several of us could make you a nice offer.

As for your other question, much more PC's support 5.25" floppy than you think. Last month I assembled an almost brand new AM2 based motherboard, and found in its BIOS there was a setting for 1.2MB floppy drive, perhaps even 360K but I can't recall. Most of the new computers completely lacks a floppy drive controller, as well as some operating systems also are dropping support for those. However you should be able to get a working setup using quite modern stuff. I am mostly successfully writing 5.25" floppy disks on my AthlonXP 2100+ in DOS and Linux.
 
The problem I've seen with newer machines, is that even if they do have a 1.2MB 5.25" drive option in the BIOS, they will generally not do single sided and/or double density.

I have a Pentium IV HP laptop with a 3.5" drive in it. It will read and write DD disks, but it won't format them. Go figure. :)
 
geoffm3 said:
The problem I've seen with newer machines, is that even if they do have a 1.2MB 5.25" drive option in the BIOS, they will generally not do single sided and/or double density.

I have a Pentium IV HP laptop with a 3.5" drive in it. It will read and write DD disks, but it won't format them. Go figure. :)
Click to expand...
Really? Are you sure it's the hardware and not the operating system, or more specifically the format program and its options? Have you tried booting and formatting in DOS?

You do have to explicitly specify tracks and sectors in late versions of Windows.
 
geoffm3 said:
The problem I've seen with newer machines, is that even if they do have a 1.2MB 5.25" drive option in the BIOS, they will generally not do single sided and/or double density.
Click to expand...
I have an AMD Athlon system with plenty of empty drive bays, but to my dismay, its BIOS only supports one floppy drive! So if I installed a 5-1/4" drive (which I do believe it has the option for), I would have to dedicate it to the A: drive and then I would be without a 3-1/2" drive (except if I used an external USB one).

I have a Pentium IV HP laptop with a 3.5" drive in it. It will read and write DD disks, but it won't format them. Go figure. :)
Click to expand...
That may not be a hardware limitation. For some reason, Windows XP removed the option to format double-density (720K) 3-1/2" floppy disks. But you can still format a 720K disk if you 'hack' it by manually specifying the number of tracks and sectors which equals 720K, such as:

FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9

And that brings to mind... does XP even support 5-1/4" floppy drives anymore? What about Vista or 7?
 
MikeS said:
Really? Are you sure it's the hardware and not the operating system, or more specifically the format program and its options? Have you tried booting and formatting in DOS?

You do have to explicitly specify tracks and sectors in late versions of Windows.
Click to expand...

It could be with the 3.5" support since it can read/write. Or could be a BIOS limitation maybe. My Athlon machine won't do 5.25" disks at all. No support in the BIOS for them.
 
vwestlife said:
I have an AMD Athlon system with plenty of empty drive bays, but to my dismay, its BIOS only supports one floppy drive! So if I installed a 5-1/4" drive (which I do believe it has the option for), I would have to dedicate it to the A: drive and then I would be without a 3-1/2" drive (except if I used an external USB one).


That may not be a hardware limitation. For some reason, Windows XP removed the option to format double-density (720K) 3-1/2" floppy disks. But you can still format a 720K disk if you 'hack' it by manually specifying the number of tracks and sectors which equals 720K, such as:

FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9

And that brings to mind... does XP even support 5-1/4" floppy drives anymore? What about Vista or 7?
Click to expand...

I tried formatting from the command line, but I think I might have tried the /f:720 flag instead. I'll have to double check, but it seems like format from the CLI wouldn't work either.
 
Well, XP may support 360K floppy disks but it definitely does not support 360K floppy drives. Or in other words, you might be able to read/write DD disks in a HD drive, but it won't touch a DD drive. It has been discussed to death and back. DOS and of course various Linux distributions happily accepts a 360K floppy drive which is why I can use one on my AthlonXP system.
 
carlsson said:
Well, XP may support 360K floppy disks but it definitely does not support 360K floppy drives. Or in other words, you might be able to read/write DD disks in a HD drive, but it won't touch a DD drive. It has been discussed to death and back. DOS and of course various Linux distributions happily accepts a 360K floppy drive which is why I can use one on my AthlonXP system.
Click to expand...
True enough; I should probably have made it clear that I was talking about disks, not drives; not many XP systems have 5 1/4 DD drives. As you say, it's been discussed to death and back, and will no doubt be a topic for years to come...
 
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