Modern PC to 5.25 floppy- options?

Chuck(G) · May 24, 2010

MikeS said:
I assumed he had two floppy drives; they only had one? But yes, a simple NVRAM/flash card would solve a few problems; it'd be convenient, but you wouldn't even necessarily need a BIOS if you put the driver(s) on the floppy, would you?

No, but someone's going to want to boot form it, I have a feeling.

NobodyIsHere · May 24, 2010

Hi! One of these days I think we are going to need a "Multi-IO with BIOS ROM on a PCI card" project. Recent PCs are shipping with fewer and fewer legacy ports. Some don't even have provisions for floppy drives at all and are dropping legacy serial ports, parallel ports, PS/2 keyboard and mouse, etc.

I am thinking one of those winbond or via MultiIO or SuperIO chips with a BIOS ROM on a PCI card would be doable. Unfortunately all SMT but in this case probably worth it. There is a template for a PCI card in KiCAD.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

Chuck(G) · May 24, 2010

Andrew, the problem with a lot of the mutli-I/O chips (in addition to being SMT) is the very volatile production schedule--here today, gone tomorrow. Anyone who's tried to buy a new southbridge chip for an older system has found out this issue the hard way.

I wonder if it might not be more expeditous to come up with a CPLD-implemented PCI-ti-ISA bridge, then use legacy peripherals on that?

Minerva10210 · May 24, 2010

Chuck(G) said:
Andrew, the problem with a lot of the mutli-I/O chips (in addition to being SMT) is the very volatile production schedule--here today, gone tomorrow. Anyone who's tried to buy a new southbridge chip for an older system has found out this issue the hard way.

I wonder if it might not be more expeditous to come up with a CPLD-implemented PCI-ti-ISA bridge, then use legacy peripherals on that?

As much as I don't really understand the pysical electonics and chip/board design side of is, that does sound like a better idea. It would seem that getting hold of the older less integrated components is a bit easier - especially looking at it from my side of the pond. Here in SA the availablity of electronics components is quite patchy, but it seems the less intricate parts do actually make it here.

@ hargle - SMT is a bit of an issue to solder yes, but one does get "sockets" for a lot of SMT chips don't you?

MikeS · May 24, 2010

Chuck(G) said:
Mike, I think retrobits problem is that he has nowhere to put the image file on his hard-disk-less 5155.

How about a RAMdisk (assuming he's got 640K), if there's only one floppy?

Raven · May 24, 2010

For those of us who own MicroATX boards, it would be nice if there were a PCI-to-ISA-bridge PCI card that hooked via cable to a daughterboard that was mounted below the motherboard so that the slots line up with the case slots that the motherboard isn't long enough to provide.

If you make any sort of legacy I/O for a modern PC I'll jump all over that and order at least two.

NobodyIsHere · May 25, 2010

Hi Chuck! Thanks! Yes, I've noticed there are a lot of MultiIO/SuperIO style ICs but most are DMS. Highly volatile parts to be sure.

I've considered the PCI to ISA bus bridge since those chips are also available. The main complication with the approach is where to put the ISA bus? Run an enormous ribbon cable to one of those expansion units? That seems like massive overkill and expensive to boot although it would be a good use of a surplus/junk AT case & power supply. Still, that's a lot of room needed and then we would need two PCBs; one for the PCI bus and another for the ISA backplane. It just makes the project so much larger and complicated.

The good news is others have pursued the idea before so we can study their results

http://www.costronic.com/Ev71p.htm

Wikipedia has an entry on SuperIO chips and includes an out of date list of various kinds. I can't speak to which ones are still available if any although a quick filter of which manufacturers are still around and a bit of research would probably give a good idea. I am guessing Winbond would be a good pick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_I/O

Both P112 and Howard Harte's SuperIO S-100 board use these highly integrated SuperIO/MultiIO chips. I've often wondered about the parts availability and how it affects those projects if at all. I'm curious to see if there are any successful strategies to pick a component that won't disappear as an obsolete part.

It is an interesting problem to be sure. Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

trulore · May 26, 2010

Hi! I'm new to this board, and what led me here was my search for a way to get IBM software for an old IBM 5150 that I just bought.

Is there any way to get software onto a 360k floppy that doesn't involve me buying an entire other Windows 98 computer that has a floppy drive? My modern PC is new and has no floppy support whatsoever, and I imagine this will become an increasingly common thing as years go by.

Thanks for any information! :D

Oh....and also does anyone know where I can get IBM disk images of early Word Processors for the 5150?

MikeS · May 26, 2010

trulore said:
Hi! I'm new to this board, and what led me here was my search for a way to get IBM software for an old IBM 5150 that I just bought.

Is there any way to get software onto a 360k floppy that doesn't involve me buying an entire other Windows 98 computer that has a floppy drive? My modern PC is new and has no floppy support whatsoever, and I imagine this will become an increasingly common thing as years go by.

Thanks for any information! :D

Oh....and also does anyone know where I can get IBM disk images of early Word Processors for the 5150?

Sigh...

There must be at least a dozen other threads on this forum about this topic by now...

The usual tedious twenty (OK, only nine for now) questions:

1 - Where are you?
2 - Do you now have a boot disk and is the PC up and running?
3 - If so, what version of DOS?
4 - Does it have at least one each serial and parallel port?
5 - Does the modern PC have at least one each serial and parallel port?
6 - Does either or both have a modem?
7 - What kind is the modern PC? (laptop or bus-oriented)?
8 - What OS is the modern system running?
9 - Are you prepared to spend a little money and if so, how much?

Meanwhile, try to find and read some of the other threads about this much-discussed topic.

trulore · May 26, 2010

MikeS said:
Sigh...

There must be at least a dozen other threads on this forum about this topic by now...

The usual tedious twenty (OK, only nine for now) questions:

1 - Where are you?
2 - Do you now have a boot disk and is the PC up and running?
3 - If so, what version of DOS?
4 - Does it have at least one each serial and parallel port?
5 - Does the modern PC have at least one each serial and parallel port?
6 - Does either or both have a modem?
7 - What kind is the modern PC? (laptop or bus-oriented)?
8 - What OS is the modern system running?
9 - Are you prepared to spend a little money and if so, how much?

Meanwhile, try to find and read some of the other threads about this much-discussed topic.

Awww give me a little credit.

I did search. Forum search engines are notoriously weak. Then I read backwards for 2 months worth of threads, and again no luck. Maybe I suck at thinking of the right search terms.

And actually, all of your questions already outline the possible solutions, so you've answered my question by asking yours.

Your questions tell me that there is no magic solution like ADTPro for the Apple II, and that I'll have to just McGyver something together and be prepared to buy anything parts I need.

Thank you for your helpful questions.

tezza · May 26, 2010

Yes. As Mike says. It depends... There are lots of ways depending on what you've got already, what (and how much) software you want, how much you want to spend (and maybe even where you are and who you know).

If you have no boot disk and know your IBM drives work (hard to do without any disks actually)....I'd get some blank (sealed and unused) floppies, see if you can track down a vintage computer enthusaist who lives locally (say within an hour or two's drive) and make contact with them. Ask nicely if you can come over one day and copy some of their floppies, perhaps in exchange for some spare disks or something which might be useful to them. I think most vintage enthusiasts would react well to such as request, providing the person making the request handled it properly.

It can be a positive experience getting to know vintage computer hobbiests who live locally and who you can hook up with now and again.

Tez

MikeS · May 26, 2010

trulore said:
Awww give me a little credit. I did search. Forum search engines are notoriously weak. Then I read backwards for 2 months worth of threads, and again no luck. Maybe I suck at thinking of the right search terms.

And actually, all of your questions already outline the possible solutions, so you've answered my question by asking yours.

Your questions tell me that there is no magic solution like ADTPro for the Apple II, and that I'll have to just McGyver something together and be prepared to buy anything parts I need.

Thank you for your helpful questions.

Chuck(G) · May 26, 2010

lynchaj said:
Hi Chuck! Thanks! Yes, I've noticed there are a lot of MultiIO/SuperIO style ICs but most are DMS. Highly volatile parts to be sure.

Hi Andrew,

I just popped the lid of the system sitting in front of me (an aging P4) and the only card I saw was an AGP display card--the PCI slots were empty. What this tells me is that PCI buses aren't going to be with us much longer as the tendency to strip things down to save money continues--and think about the desktop boxes that won't take normal-sized PCI cards, but rather require low-profile ones.

May I suggest USB as an interface? That has the benefit of working with laptops as well.

Just a thought.

Chuck(G) · May 26, 2010

trulore said:
Hi! I'm new to this board, and what led me here was my search for a way to get IBM software for an old IBM 5150 that I just bought.

Is there any way to get software onto a 360k floppy that doesn't involve me buying an entire other Windows 98 computer that has a floppy drive? My modern PC is new and has no floppy support whatsoever, and I imagine this will become an increasingly common thing as years go by.

You don't have a 5150 and boot disk that boots? Hey, if you couldn't boot your Apple, you couldn't run that package either--and how do you put an Apple II 5.25" drive on a Mac? Time marches on.

But here's a suggestion if you have no way to boot the 5150.

Attach a 1.44M drive as drive A: to your 5150. You'll be using it as a 720K drive using the standard 5150 controller. If you can't find any 720K 3.5" diskettes, make your own by taping over the density indicator aperture in the disk jacket. 1.44MB diskettes will work just fine that way.

You next get a USB floppy drive for your modern box. Format the disks to 720K using "FORMAT <drive letter> /n:9 /t:80" Stick whatever you need on the 720K disks. They'll read just fine in the 5150.

That's one solution. There are many others.

trulore · May 26, 2010

Actually, on the Apple II, you can run ADTPro even if you don't have a boot disk. You turn on the Apple II and drop into BASIC (just like an IBM with no disk), and then you type one command to put your Apple II serial card into remote execution mode, and then your pc sends all the commands to the Apple II to stream data right into a given memory location and load all the machine code for the Operating system just as if it had been booted from a disk. Then it sends the entire image for the ADT client, and from there you can start writing disk images.

If you don't have a serial card on the Apple II, or you don't have a serial port on your PC, you can just use 2 audio cables to hook the cassette in/out ports on the Apple II to the in/out audio ports on your PC (which every PC has), and ADTPro will send data over the Audio cable. Again, it's only a 1-line command on the Apple II to have it receive executable code over the audio port.

So, it is pretty much magic, and it doesn't require any software or special hardware.

Now, I see the 5150 doesn't have any cassette ports as such (unless I've missed them), but it does have a serial card. So, if the 5150's serial card has any kind of remote-execution mode, the something like ADTPro would be possible.

Even if the serial card doesn't have remote execution mode, you could have the user type in a 10 line BASIC program that would receive data from the serial card and write it to memory. At least I hope that's possible with IBM BASIC?

I love old computers, but I'm pretty new to the old IBM's, so I don't have a feel yet for what's possible. But if what I've said above with the BASIC program is possible, then heck I might write something like this myself!

trulore · May 26, 2010

trulore said:
Now, I see the 5150 doesn't have any cassette ports as such (unless I've missed them), but it does have a serial card. So, if the 5150's serial card has any kind of remote-execution mode, the something like ADTPro would be possible.

OOP! I stand corrected...there IS a cassette port on this 5150....it's just not a standard audio connection but rather some kind of proprietary plug. But that's fine. If there is some kind of adapter cable that can turn that cassette port into 2 audio cables, then everything I said above should be possible for the IBM PC. I should be able to load IBM PC DOS into memory over the cassette port just as if I've booted from a floppy disk. This does require that your modern PC have software (like ADTPro) that emulates the frequencies and bit rates of the 5150 cassette port....but this is all quite possible to accomplish....I assume. It would still be easier to use the serial port...but that requires a remote-execution mode or some way to write that basic program that will read from the serial port and write to raw memory. I'm still searching for that.

NsMn · May 26, 2010

The "proprietary" plug is a kind of standard audio DIN plug. You can use a TRS-80 cassette cable for example.

NobodyIsHere · May 26, 2010

Chuck(G) said:
Hi Andrew,

I just popped the lid of the system sitting in front of me (an aging P4) and the only card I saw was an AGP display card--the PCI slots were empty. What this tells me is that PCI buses aren't going to be with us much longer as the tendency to strip things down to save money continues--and think about the desktop boxes that won't take normal-sized PCI cards, but rather require low-profile ones.

May I suggest USB as an interface? That has the benefit of working with laptops as well.

Just a thought.

Hi Chuck! The main problem I see with such a device is it is beyond my skill set. A USB to SuperIO/MultiIO device would be quite sophisticated.

My plan was to take a chip already designed for the PCI on the motherboard and put it on a PCI card. In theory, it should be possible without too much redesign but even doing that I'd need some major help.

However, transplanting a SuperIO/MultiIO chip into a new environment likely with a complex uC controlling it and USB interface is way beyond my concept.

I think it is an interesting but not feasible.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

trulore · May 26, 2010

NsMn said:
The "proprietary" plug is a kind of standard audio DIN plug. You can use a TRS-80 cassette cable for example.

On the plus side, I easily found a DIN cable as you described. On the minus side it converts to 4 audio cables, so I'm hoping 2 of those are optional. Another minus is that apparently the 5160 and 5170 do not have cassette ports.

So I'm going to pursue the serial-card path first, and probably start another thread about this if I think this is a feasible project. IBM Basic does support PEEK and POKE, so in theory if I can access the serial card from BASIC using a short hand-typed program, I should be able to do absolutely anything. The challenge will be coming up with the machine code that will be capable of reading blocks of data from the port and writing those blocks to disk....without DOS in memory. It would need to be able to format a disk as well.

Chuck(G) · May 26, 2010

Hi Andrew,

Maybe this should be brought off as another thread.

I've seen the Costronic web site for years and even dropped them an email or two, but never got anything from them. Do you know of anyone who actually has their setup?

I do some some issues with simply adding a SuperIO chip to a modern system with a modern (well, Windows XP+ anyway) operating system. This is one of drivers--almost all of the existing legacy (parallel, serial, floppy) device support involves some sort of BIOS code--usually ACPI to inform the system what's there. If you don't have that, then you have to provide your own drivers--and that to me is s non-trivial job. At least that's my understanding.

Modern PC to 5.25 floppy- options?

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