5.25 floppy on USB.

[neutrino78x]

in case anyone hadn't seen it:

5.25 inch floppy interface to USB.

where you can order it.

So, basically, you would get a 5.25 inch drive, hook it up to this device, hook it up to power (120 VAC to 5 VDC adapter) and rock n roll.

I need to get one of these, because my 5150 PC is still in storage, and I have that public domain program Menu Maker, published with the book Fully Powered IBM PC (from the editors of PC World), that I want to post on the net.

Menu Maker was an awesome program that allowed you to make a color text display and save it in BASIC BSAVE format, to be later displayed by a BASIC program. The intended use was if you had macros and batch files set up in DOS, such that you could press, for example, Alt-L to bring up Lotus 1-2-3, and you wanted to display a menu for that setup.

The PC World editors figure that if you use a macro processor like ProKey, and then Menu Maker to make menus, you could have basic, DOS, prokey, and the menus stored in a RAM disk in a dual floppy PC, and you could display the menus instantly. BASIC BLOAD displays the file instantly because it writes it directly to display memory. Of course, you could always use ANSI.SYS instead of prokey for macos (at least at the DOS level) or you could make your batch files consist of 1.bat, 2.bat etc. ;-)

I wish somebody better at programming than me would take the source code to Menu Maker and make an enhanced version that can write the menu as a text file with ANSI color commands, since with a modern computer, typing "type file.txt" is pretty close to instant. I don't know if the UNIX console has the equivilent of ANSI.SYS color commands. I think it does because you can have color in the ls command. So such an enhanced MenuMaker would be useful for that too. But yeah the source code is available because the author put the program into the public domain.

--Brian

 

[Chuck(G)]

The FC5025 is read-only. It cannot write to floppies.

*nix (Unix, Linux, what-have you) has (at least) two ways to manage the console. The first (and very old) way is to use curses, which can be used to interface to almost any terminal. The second is with X.

There was a genuine USB floppy controller that could be hooked to 5.25 or 3.5" drives probably 10 years ago. USB 1.0, but who needs speed with floppies? It might be interesting to see the innards of that thing. I suspect it used the SMSC floppy-to-USB bridge chip (no longer available).

 

[twolazy]

Always could save a few bucks and find a member on the forum that copy the disk for you. If your close enough I can copy the contents off for you, provided I dont have to return the floppy, or pay return postage.

Alot of us still have functioning hardware. I love the idea of a usb 5.25, but currently it does not support 360kb drives! ;_;

On a side note, if your really hard up for an external floppy here's a great tip! Get yourself an older qic-80 based tape backup, like a Colorado systems drive (CMS), h45 or Backpack Drive. Open it up and you will find the tape drive itself is a shugart connection. Pull the floppy connection and molex off the drive, and hook it to a 5.25. The original tape drive drivers will work and detect the drive, you will just have to use "mode" in dos to set the correct drive type. =)

Haven't done that in years, but last time I did (round 1998 ) it worked great. I had to offload files from a xt clone, with no 3.5" diskette drive. =)

 

[DOS lives on!!]

I've been waiting for the day someone came up with one of these!! Could you still find one of the *genuine* ones that Chuck was talking about? My Wheel of Fortune disk broke and I would like to have one of these that would write and read to a disk.

 

[neutrino78x]

Alot of us still have functioning hardware.

As do I! My 5150 works just fine, but it is in a storage unit right now. Actually not really mine; my dad bought it when I was 7. ;-) When he lost the house recently, we put the 5150 in storage.

Didn't somebody on here say they have that disk also? The disk accompanying the book The Fully Powered IBM PC by the editors of PC World? If so, that person should post MenuMaker and the source code!

I love the idea of a usb 5.25, but currently it does not support 360kb drives! ;_;

Yeah but you can put a 360 KB floppy in a 1.2 MB drive and it will read it!

--Brian

 

[MikeS]

Didn't somebody on here say they have that disk also? The disk accompanying the book The Fully Powered IBM PC by the editors of PC World?
--Brian

Not me, but I do have the book beside me on the shelf; the whereabouts of the disk are another matter however...

 

[MikeS]

I've been waiting for the day someone came up with one of these!! ...I would like to have one of these that would write and read to a disk.

Read-only at this point AFAIK.

 

[neutrino78x]

Not me, but I do have the book beside me on the shelf; the whereabouts of the disk are another matter however...

You might be the guy I was thinking of lol. I have both the book and the disk. You can actually implement a lot of what they talk about in the book using ANSI.SYS for the keyboard macros, and since they wrote it, somebody has come up with a freeware equivalent of ProKey (see link).

I can't find it right now, but a while back I thought I had found a DOS program which will load BSAVE files without having to use a BASIC program. If I find it again I will show the link on here...

--Brian

 

[MikeS]

...You can actually implement a lot of what they talk about in the book using ANSI.SYS for the keyboard macros, and since they wrote it, somebody has come up with a freeware equivalent of ProKey (see link).

These days you could just use DOSKEY...

I can't find it right now, but a while back I thought I had found a DOS program which will load BSAVE files without having to use a BASIC program. If I find it again I will show the link on here...
--Brian

Sounds familiar; might be useful, hope you find it.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've been waiting for the day someone came up with one of these!! Could you still find one of the *genuine* ones that Chuck was talking about? My Wheel of Fortune disk broke and I would like to have one of these that would write and read to a disk.

I saw one last year on eBay, but none since.

If the SMSC USB97CFDC2-01 is still available, it might be an option.

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Hi,
Area 51 ESG shows the parts are available but would require an RFQ and probably a minimum order size.

http://www.area51esg.com/search-semiconductorss-capacitors-resistors.htm?part=USB97CFDC2

It may not be gone completely but pretty close.

Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

 

[Chuck(G)]

You'd be better off with a legacy floppy controller and a µC to drive it and provide the USB interface. Or, better yet, toss the legacy floppy and get a fast enough µC to do the controller's work. If you can't do it with, say a 80MHz 32-bit PIC, you're not trying.

 

[brimars]

@Chuck: I'm in the same situation as others mention - lots and lots of floppies that are not already available elsewhere. Also, as I'm in the process of building an older XT clone homebrew, I'd like to be able to write from my regular machine, etc. I'm thinking about the same option you mentioned in simply (or probably difficultly) using a microcontroller of some sort with built-in USB to do all the work. I've got to learn something about floppy interfaces though before I'll be much use. A nice cheap solution that's already built would be nice, though...

 

[MikeS]

A nice cheap solution that's already built would be nice, though...

... a nice old 386/486 under your desk?

 

[brimars]

@Mike: yeah, I thought about that, too. Kind of a pain to have that many computers but that might have to be the route I take. The place already looks like a Google data center...

 

[Chuck(G)]

@Chuck: I'm in the same situation as others mention - lots and lots of floppies that are not already available elsewhere. Also, as I'm in the process of building an older XT clone homebrew, I'd like to be able to write from my regular machine, etc. I'm thinking about the same option you mentioned in simply (or probably difficultly) using a microcontroller of some sort with built-in USB to do all the work. I've got to learn something about floppy interfaces though before I'll be much use. A nice cheap solution that's already built would be nice, though...

But I don't get it. This device on this thread is for reading old floppies--it doesn't get you to the point where you can take the stuff and run it on your 5150. I kind of like the approach of a floppy drive emulator with an SDHC that will hold some tens of thousands of images. Then anyone with the emulator can simply pick up a standard card full of said tens of thousands of images and run whatever they want without having to bother with creating them to begin with.

How many retail products were there in 5.25' format (that still exist and are useful), after all?

 

[MikeS]

But I don't get it. This device on this thread is for reading old floppies--it doesn't get you to the point where you can take the stuff and run it on your 5150.

I think it's mainly intended for folks using laptops or modern systems without floppy drives who want to archive their floppies (and don't have room under the desk for a 'floppy server').

 

[brimars]

I originally looked at the device but the limitation of read only was the limiting thing for me. I understand the question about why anyone wants that anyway. For me, and I think for quite a few other people, we enjoy the older machines and like to have the floppies available. Most of the older machines are actually starting to have emulation devices like you mention where you can install all the disk images you want and just select the one you need from a menu or through other means.

Another point that's probably less common is that I support industrial machinery that is anywhere from 25 to 40 years old and actually sometimes need to re-create a floppy that has been destroyed. Although most larger companies replace their antique machinery, smaller companies cannot afford to or end up with the cast-offs of the bigger ones. They're not as common, but the company I work for still has several machines that use the 3-1/2" 720k disks and 1 machine that has only a 5-1/4" drive with no firmware to support any other type of drive.

I think there are probably other reasons; I just enjoy having the option of booting and working from floppy for reasons of nostalgia if nothing else. Also, my kids were amazed the first time they saw a real floppy disk. Then I showed them an old 8" disk. They hadn't heard of either one.

 

[MikeS]

...Another point that's probably less common is that I support industrial machinery that is anywhere from 25 to 40 years old and actually sometimes need to re-create a floppy that has been destroyed. Although most larger companies replace their antique machinery, smaller companies cannot afford to or end up with the cast-offs of the bigger ones. They're not as common, but the company I work for still has several machines that use the 3-1/2" 720k disks and 1 machine that has only a 5-1/4" drive with no firmware to support any other type of drive...

Well, then you should definitely have a multi-floppy machine under your desk so you can make those disks for them! ;-)

(Or sell them one of those floppy emulators at a good markup ;-) )

 

[brimars]

Sounds like a good plan! I'd actually like to find a way to hook up an 8" drive in a similar way. I'm thinking that with a microcontroller and a better understanding of how the floppies work, though, it should be very possible to create a usb-interfaced floppy controller that would work. All of the things that Andrew and others are doing with the S-100s, Amiga, and Ataris (and many others) prove that the possibility exists. I'm hoping I might have some time to work on the interface later in the year, though, and maybe make it available in the form of a bare board if I can figure out the technical details. I've been searching for options but they do seem limited.