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USB 5.25" Floppy Drive

M

Max IBM5150

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Joined
Oct 12, 2011
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33
Location
Louisiana, United States
Hello

I want to finally know the answer about this.

Were can I find an external 1.2MB Diskette drive that runs on USB?

It needs to be able to run on Windows 98SE.

Any help would be welcome.

Thank you,
Max
 
Short answer: you can't. They don't really exist. No offense meant at all, here: Google is your friend- use Google's site search tool to search the forum before polluting it with a question that's been rehashed over and over. On a Google search bar, type "site:vintage-computer.com <search terms>," i.e. <search terms>="usb floppy"

Long answer: A plug-n-chug 5.25" USB floppy doesn't exist. There are some floppy emulators that function via USB, but you won't be able to use actual disks (and I believe that they're all 3.5" emulators anyway). There is a tool - a rather expensive one - called Kyroflux. It will interface any floppy drive to a modern computer, but its software requires XP+ or Linux, IIRC. It's also aimed squarely at software preservation, not in writing/copying/using as a regular ol' disk drive.

If you're just looking to get a 5.25" 360kb or 1.2mb drive working on a more modern PC, then you need to seriously consider a "tweener" system used for copying. Pentium II/III/IV era machines almost all support these drives by default, and they're modern enough to run anything from Win98->XP without too much trouble - not to mention that you can often get them for free (try putting an ad on Craigslist of Freecycle). If you can't find them there, then keep checking our own Marketplace, or even put an ad in our Wanted forum - you could probably score a board or a whole computer for pretty near to cost of shipping.

Have fun!
 
If you want an *external* 5 1/4" diskette drive, you'd have to either get one that's parallel or SCSI. Of which, are getting quite uncommon and expensive.
Your best bet is to pick up a standard internal 5 1/4" drive and as Maverick said, hook it up to an older Pentium machine.

Windows 98SE is sometimes flaky with 5 1/4" drives, in my experience anyways (I was playing with 360K ones, that could have been the issue; I'll just use DOS next time).
 
I dunno about 98, but I've never had trouble with 5.25" drives in XP. It's more a function of whether your board has a real, full-function floppy controller, or just some small corner of a multi-function ASIC devoted to making 1.44MB floppies bootable for BIOS upgrades, in my experience.
 
commodorejohn said:
I dunno about 98, but I've never had trouble with 5.25" drives in XP. It's more a function of whether your board has a real, full-function floppy controller, or just some small corner of a multi-function ASIC devoted to making 1.44MB floppies bootable for BIOS upgrades, in my experience.
Click to expand...

XP doesn't work with 360K 5 1/4" FDDs.
 
I was wondering about that, I have tried t se a 5.25" with my IBM PC 300 GL, but it dosnt work, you can select it in the BIOS, but it brings up a diskette error upon startup.

I did find these 2 drives that interface with parallel :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Zen...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item2a164b1b78

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CA-360T-Ext...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item2c61055edb

I would like to put one on my PC 300GL, but I don't know weather these are 360K drives or 1.2MB, I have a spare parallel port, but I dont know if Windows 98SE would support this drive.

And where could I find the drivers for these 2 things anyway (I am leaning tword the 2nd one because it looks more like a 1.2MB drive.
 
Max IBM5150 said:
... I have tried to use a 5.25" with my IBM PC 300 GL, but it dosnt work, you can select it in the BIOS, but it brings up a diskette error upon startup.
Click to expand...
Here we go again.

To avoid any misunderstanding, what you mean is that you could not get it to work for some reason.

As Commodorejohn says, if the BIOS allows it (and I'm sure every model of the GL300 series does) then AFAIK every version of Windows, at least up to Vista, can use a HD 5.25" drive to read and write HD and DD diskettes (with the usual caution about mixing formats on the same diskette).
 
Max IBM5150 said:
I was wondering about that, I have tried t se a 5.25" with my IBM PC 300 GL, but it dosnt work, you can select it in the BIOS, but it brings up a diskette error upon startup.

I did find these 2 drives that interface with parallel :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Zen...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item2a164b1b78

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CA-360T-Ext...C_Drives_Storage_Internal&hash=item2c61055edb

I would like to put one on my PC 300GL, but I don't know weather these are 360K drives or 1.2MB, I have a spare parallel port, but I dont know if Windows 98SE would support this drive.

And where could I find the drivers for these 2 things anyway (I am leaning tword the 2nd one because it looks more like a 1.2MB drive.
Click to expand...
Because the Model No. is CA360T an uneducated guess would suggest it is a 360k item.
 
Yes, I could not get the internal 5.25" drive to work in my 300GL, I don't know why. I have used these drives in windows 98SE computers before and they worked. But it allways comes up with the 601 Diskette error upon bootup and it won't recognize either of the 2 drives that I am tring to use( 1 5.25" and 1 3.5"). I know the drive and cable work, because I have used them both before.
 
If they worked on another system it could well be a controller problem on your current system. That or cables are connected wrong. I've just read there was an issue with some Intel chipset mobos in that they only support one FDD dispite what you'll see in the bios.
 
Last edited:
MikeS said:
Here we go again.

To avoid any misunderstanding, what you mean is that you could not get it to work for some reason.

As Commodorejohn says, if the BIOS allows it (and I'm sure every model of the GL300 series does) then AFAIK every version of Windows, at least up to Vista, can use a HD 5.25" drive to read and write HD and DD diskettes (with the usual caution about mixing formats on the same diskette).
Click to expand...

You can't use 5 1/4" 360K drives in XP or win7. They simply won't work.
I know because in DOS mine worked fine, but soon as I go into windows, it'll try to seek and then come up with nothing. And it was the only FDD I had hooked up at the time.

PC 300GL does support 360K drives (although I couldn't get mine to work with some of the cables I had). Mind you, there's many models in the PC 300 series.
 
Many posts on this site for deviceside and PLR Electronics devices.

Complex and not for all, but all we have now.

Big "gap" in backward compatibility with 5.25" disk drives and floppies for many reasons.

Just do a Google search.

Frank
 
EverythingIBM said:
You can't use 5 1/4" 360K drives in XP or win7. They simply won't work.
Click to expand...
I believe you'd already said that, and no one's arguing ;-)

The OP said "I have tried to use a 5.25" with my IBM PC 300 GL, but it doesn't work,"; he doesn't want to tell us which of the half-dozen or so types of 5.25" FDD he tried (SS,DS,SD,DD,HD,48TPI,96TPI,100TPI etc.) but if he's talking about a DS/DD 360K drive, or almost anything other than an HD drive, then he's probably correct.

On the other hand what Commodorejohn and I are trying to point out in case someone reads that to mean that no 5.25" drives work in XP etc. is that
AFAIK every version of Windows, at least up to Vista, can use a HD 5.25" drive to read and write HD and DD diskettes
Click to expand...
so you rarely really need a 360K drive in the first place.

PC 300GL does support 360K drives ...Mind you, there's many models in the PC 300 series.
Click to expand...
There are indeed; another variable ;-)
 
Reading is fine, but it's generally a bad idea to write to 5.25" DD disks in a HD drive, especially if the disk was previously written to in a DD drive. The HD drive uses a narrower track width and will not completely overwrite the DD track. The disk will then read ok in a HD drive, but not in a DD drive.
 
Plasma said:
Reading is fine, but it's generally a bad idea to write to 5.25" DD disks in a HD drive, especially if the disk was previously written to in a DD drive.
Click to expand...
Writing to a DD disk in an HD drive is not the bad idea; the drives are designed to do that by varying the write current.

The bad idea in general is writing to a given diskette with different drives, especially in the case of DD/HD disks for the reason you mention but also a potential problem with identical (but slightly misaligned) drives. Keep your working diskettes (that you write to) separated by drive and you shouldn't have any problems.

Like I said,
AFAIK every version of Windows, at least up to Vista, can use a HD 5.25" drive to read and write HD and DD diskettes (with the usual caution about mixing formats on the same diskette).
Click to expand...
 
EverythingIBM said:
You can't use 5 1/4" 360K drives in XP or win7. They simply won't work.
Click to expand...

You can, however, use a 5.25" HD/1.2MB drive in XP. I've done it. I've also had great success with the Epson dual-drive units (5.25" and 3.5" in a single form factor, with a single ribbon cable coming off of it). And you can certainly read 360K disks with that setup.
 
If you're looking for a parallel-port drive, you want the Backpack 3.5" drive. Why? Because, as Chuck(G) has pointed out in the past, the electronics and drivers will work just fine with any old' 5.25" drive. Mount the drive and the electronics into an external 5.25" case, and you're golden. (Although I do forget if it works in Win9x+)

That said... another option would be if your 300GL has an open 16-bit ISA port. If so, you could always pick up a cheap multi-I/O card and use it to drive your existing 5.25" drives, bearing in mind what has already been said about the support capabilities of various Windows versions.
 
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