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5-1/4 floppy adapter

C

caltroon

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Mar 30, 2012
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This may not be the correct forum and if not, I apologize. I have an internal 5-1/4 floppy drive I'd like to temporarily connect to my computer to transfer alot of very old floppies. I have an AMD Athlon 64x2 2.11ghz which was custom built for me and one of my DVD drives is still an IDE as my motherboard is both SATA and has an IDE plug. I'd like to unplug the DVD drive and use some kind of adapter to temporarily plug in the floppy drive. It's a different kind of connector on the floppy - it isn't pins, it's like one long metal rectangle and one small one.

Any help would be appreciated. Please don't suggest that I just throw away the drive and the floppies. I'd like to try some kind of solution.
 
The IDE interface is quite different from a floppy interface and you can't use a FDD on that cable. I assume you are asking because you don't have an onboard floppy interface on your mother board, so you will need a controller card. However, perhaps a USB interface will be just the ticket in this case. I think there was some talk here of using one of those for 5-1/4 drives here a little while ago.
 
What you probably are in need of is a floppy cable that supports that connector. http://www.nullmodem.com/Floppy.htm has some good information on describing the cable for you. Does your motherboard have a floppy connector on it? (34-pin connector, probably labelled floppy in white lettering). I do imagine your system is of the era that still supports them, but a lot of newer systems haven't included that.

But as you're seeing a floppy is different than IDE and doesn't go into that cable. And no, we'd never suggest tossing things around here ;-)
 
I don't have the box anymore. I think it's Biostar MCP6P M2+

I have two DVD drives, SATA and IDE; I have three hard drives, two SATA and one IDE. What I thought I could do is just unplug the IDE cable and power from the back of the IDE DVD drive (leaving the drive in there and leaving the back of the computer open), plug some kind of adapter into that cable that would then plug into the 5-1/4 floppy and I guess something for power and just leave the back of the computer open while I make these copies and just sit the floppy drive next to the computer while I'm doing it. There is no way there is anything on this motherboard to support a 5-1/4 floppy drive.

Thank you for all the responses. I hope I've provided the information you all needed.
Carol
 
caltroon said:
There is no way there is anything on this motherboard to support a 5-1/4 floppy drive.
Click to expand...

The size of the floppy drive is not the issue. The interface looks the same as for a 3-1/2" drive. What you need is the little row of pins on the motherboard which is a floppy interface. It is a slightly shorter row and usually next to the row where the IDE cable plugs on. If indeed you don't have that, then you will have USB which is another possibility, but is more complicated than just plugging in a floppy cable. Note that a floppy cable is narrower (less wires), and has a twist in it. It is not the same as a HDD/CD cable although they are both flat.

Sorry to repeat all that if you already got it, but it sounded a bit like you might not realize that you were looking for a row of pins. :)

Some more suggestions. There are lots of suitable machines being thrown out these days. Find a free one with a 3-1/2" floppy drive and plug in your 5-1/4 instead. It is also not a big deal for someone to read the floppies and send you the files or put them on a CD and mail it.

Edit: I just looked up the motherboard you mentioned, and it does have a floppy connector. So all you need is a cable.
 
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caltroon said:
plug in the floppy drive. It's a different kind of connector on the floppy - it isn't pins, it's like one long metal rectangle and one small one.
Click to expand...

If you are saying that the connector on the floppy does not look like the IDE connectors ( 2 rows of pins in a rectangular box) then you may have the older style of 5.25 drive that used what is called an "edge connector" - a set of conductors along the edge of the card, which joins to a socket that looks like a card socket.

If that is the case, you will need an old enough floppy drive connector cable - they used to come with both sorts of connectors on them and they crop up in online auctions often enough.

OJ's solution is best - get an old machine to make the transfers. Check the BIOS on your modern machine to see if it allows you to configure the floppy drive port for 5.25" drives. Some of the later ones only accept 3.5" configurations. I you don't see any 5.25 option, an old machine is the only option.

Rick
 
And I've given away or recycled all my old computers! I've looked on ebay but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place because under vintage computers people are selling them for 2 or $300. Any source for a very cheap one you might recommend? I also have an internal 3-1/2 drive I could put in an old machine and I would assume I could just hook it up to my monitor. My monitor is a couple years old so I'm still using a VGA connection instead of firewire or DVI. It's not a CRT though but it's not a widescreen which is why I want to keep it! Also my keyboard is an Omnipkey Ultra keyboard, the big heavy one like a typewriter from 20 years ago, so it has the old fashioned kind of connection, not USB. So I could certainly plug into an older computer. I even have a PC type connection mouse around somewhere, if something doesn't have USB. So an old PC would definitely work. Then I could resell or recycle it.

You are all so helpful and I appreciate it.
 
caltroon said:
I've looked on ebay but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place because under vintage computers people are selling them for 2 or $300. Any source for a very cheap one you might recommend?
Click to expand...

That's definitely the wrong price! A pentium I or II is worth somewhere between free and twice that. hehe I've found that some people throw stuff out less often than others and have machines like that which they would like to get rid of. Ask friends, neighbours, and co-workers. In Canadian cities, going for a walk in the evening and checking what people have discarded in the lane will often net you a computer or two - at this point in time, just about the right generation too. That said, for practical purposes there is of course nothing wrong with paying the $10-20 that someone might ask at a thrift store.
 
You can advertise on the local Craigslist that you're looking for a free, working Pentium 1-4 computer. But like Ole Juul said, you just need a floppy cable with an edge connector (and Windows XP if you plan on writing floppies readable by DOS). You can either find one on eBay, or someone here can undoubtedly provide you with one.
 
For the sake of making a long thread short, get one of these:
cable.jpg

And attach it so:
attached.jpg
 
Tiberian Fiend said:
For the sake of making a long thread short, get one of these:
Click to expand...

Thanks TF, I was going to post about that, but your picture makes it all very clear.

From what I understand the mother board has the correct header on it for floppy drives. It is red and situated right beside the HDD connector in the picture that I saw. Connect the power and then there's only one more little thing. In the BIOS locate "enable on-board floppy" and set it to the 5-1/4 1.2 meg setting. This could be the deal breaker, but others here can perhaps chime in with a workaround if there is no 5-1/4 option.

PS: I'm assuming your drive and disks are 1.2 meg. If not then it'll be 360K. It sounds like your drive will match the disks, but if there's a problem there, then we're going to need another discussion about that. :)

PPS: In case someone else is reading this thread in the future and finds that the USB option is the only one that's going to work for them, then there is a review of a commercial product here: Review of the FC5025 5.25″ Floppy to USB Adapter
 
Thank you all. I'm just going to print out the picture of the cable and take it over to Computer Renaissance at a nearby strip mall and I would be dollars to doughnuts they have tons of them in the back room as they never throw any parts away.

Thank you for the solutions.
 
Tiberian Fiend said:
But like Ole Juul said, you just need a floppy cable with an edge connector (and Windows XP if you plan on writing floppies readable by DOS).
Click to expand...

The original poster said "I have an internal 5-1/4 floppy drive I'd like to temporarily connect to my computer to transfer alot of very old floppies". If very old floppies means 360KB 5.25" floppies, then I think Windows XP is not going to cut it. For in my experience, even if the BIOS does support 360KB 5.25" floppies, Windows 2000 and Windows XP do not, instead only 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drives are supported on those operating systems.

I might be wrong on that, but that is my experience.
 
caltroon said:
Thank you all. I'm just going to print out the picture of the cable and take it over to Computer Renaissance at a nearby strip mall and I would be dollars to doughnuts they have tons of them in the back room as they never throw any parts away.

Thank you for the solutions.
Click to expand...

You don't even need to do that. Just ask for a floppy cable with an edge connector for a 5¼" drive.
 
angel_grig said:
And also can write 360K floppies in a 1.2M drive (tested on mine)
Click to expand...

Yes, you can "write" to a 360KB 5.25" floppy disk in a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive, but the resulting floppy disk will only read well in 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drives from then on. If then you try to read that disk on any 360KB 5.25" floppy drive, you'll get random and weird errors. So be careful when writing to 360KB 5.25" floppy disks on 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drives. (It all has to do with the size of the "groove", which is smaller in 1.2MB 5.25" drives, there is more info in the intertubes about it).
 
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