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CD ROM to 5.25 FLOPPY adapter

Yzzerdd

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 20, 2006
Messages
1,292
Location
Boston, MA
hey guys, yet another request, i'm looking to put an internal floppy drive into my computer w/ a CD drive, got any adapter kits for me?
 
You want to put a floppy on the IDE (or SCSI) chain, or you simply want a 5.25" bracket that you can put the 3.5" drive into? The latter should be possible to find in almost any computer store, and only cost $5 or less.
 
Seems to me like he might be looking for rails, which are often specific to the type of machine.
 
Probably in need of rails as ahm wrote, or the bracket doesn't have holes drilled to align with the screws in the 5.25" floppy drive. I think the screws are spaced differently between floppy and CD drives, even if both have the 5.25" form factor.
 
You want to put a floppy on the IDE (or SCSI) chain, or you simply want a 5.25" bracket that you can put the 3.5" drive into? The latter should be possible to find in almost any computer store, and only cost $5 or less.
Can I find a 5.25 floppy drive at a computer store and attach it to my Dell? I just need to get info off these old discs. Suggestions, please?

Thanks,

Tom Edwards
 
It would help if Tom would stop attaching his question onto unrelated threads and start a new thread ..
 
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I have a standard CD drive bay and cables. I need an adapter, so I can change those cables to 5.25 floppy cables. so my cd bay uses a cord with a billion holes, which attaches to a billion pins. I need to chancge that, so I can have a cable that attches to a 5.25 drive, which uses a long data "card thingy" with alot of copper data receivers/senders.
 
I'm assuming you have a fairly modern PC. If not, since you're giving us no specifications, then you can ignore this.

Do you have a 3.5" floppy in your computer? If so, it MAY work. If not, it probably won't. CD's typically use IDE (40 pins) or SCSI (50, 80 or 68 pins typically) interfaces. Floppy drives do not. They use a shugart interface with 34 pins.

Open your case. See if there is a floppy drive installed in your machine already. If not, check on the motherboard for a connector with 34 pins (2 rows of 17). If you do not have one on your motherboard, close up the case and forget it. There is no easy way to install a 5.25" floppy drive on newer computers without a built in floppy interface.

If you have an existing drive or the interface on your motherboard, then you now need a cable. Look at this auction on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/10-Floppy-cable...1QQihZ011QQcategoryZ41994QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem You need ONE of these cables. The end with a single connector will go to your motherboard's floppy cable. Align the red stripe with pin 1 of the floppy interface. Plug your exisiting 3.5" floppy into the connector on the end of the cable (again aligning the red stripe). Plug the 5.25" into the card edge style connector 3 before the twist.

Start your computer and go into the bios setup. Set drive A as 3.5, drive B as 5.25.

This SHOULD work.
 
Perhaps there would be a small market for PCI/PCIe based floppy controllers, now that more and more motherboard manufacturers leave out those from the chipset. In particular if those 3rd party controllers would support a multitude of disk formats. I recognize the CatWeasel Mk III/IV PCI exists, but does it have any competitor what so ever?
 
Perhaps there would be a small market for PCI/PCIe based floppy controllers, now that more and more motherboard manufacturers leave out those from the chipset. In particular if those 3rd party controllers would support a multitude of disk formats. I recognize the CatWeasel Mk III/IV PCI exists, but does it have any competitor what so ever?
My latest trip to the4 computer stores say No, no competetion. I haven't seen any kind of fdd controller card. Closest thing was a USB drive.

Nathan
 
I suppose the integration of floppy and IDE interfaces on the motherboard - in the 486 era if I'm not mistaken - ended the market share for 3rd party floppy interfaces. 3rd party IDE interfaces lived on and gained in later years for users who want to add more hard disks or get a hardware RAID system.
 
I would try a second-hand computer store. These are becoming kind of scarce (at least here in Kansas City), but they sometimes have older parts. If you get into a pickle, there is a store here in North Kansas City called Vaughn's Computer Central (http://www.vaughns.com) and they will ship the part if they have it. His site is notoriously bad, so just email him using the link on the site and tell him you are looking for an old Floppy controller interface.

The other thing is to find an older machine to use for just the purpose of converting old files (like my Dell P75 that I bought last week for just $3 USD). It has one of the combo drives that Dell's of the early ninetys had with both the 3.5" and 5.25" drive in one 5.25" bay. Add a cheap IDE CD-R and you have a perfect machine for getting files onto a CD-ROM for your modern machine. Of note, my box was purchased just to play older DOS based games and do some work for my BBS which I plan to relaunch, but we do have a local recycler here that normally is more than happy to provide you with an older machine, you just have to dig a lot ;-)

Anyhow, hope that perhaps one of these suggestions helps solve your issue! :)

Happy Holidays all!!!
 
I am new to this forum so don't beat me up too hard...you mean no one saved those 5.25 cables? I have a drawer full....but adapting an IDE interface to accept a floppy device is impossible because of the protocol used not to mention the DMA channel. If you need a floppy controller-ISA 8 or 16 bit- I have those too...just make sure your BIOS can be set to read the 5.25 format!

DaveC
 
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