How can I use a 5.25 floppy on a modern computer? I need urgent help.

[Agent Orange]

You all realize that this thread is about 10 years old. Time to open a new one with better and/or current material and updates.

 

[mrwebber35]

I appreciate the video but I can clearly see the drives age from the initial shot is much more modern than the mid- to early '80's Tandon I have. I too have a Toshiba 5.25 drive that is much faster and can can handle disks up to 1.6 MB but really just a 1.2mb with the disks I go out with. The Tandon is maxed out at 500kb but really just a 360kb with Data Transfer Rate 250,000 bits per second, double density. The Toshiba is Data Transfer Rate 500,000 bits per second, double density. The Tandon was kinda the caveman in the family but with double density, better than it's early brother, the Tandon 100T or the TM65 1L. I'll now watch this inciteful video. I really believe I found out something nobody has really looked at before. I'll apologize if wrong but I'm really wondering. Newer drives have that covered look, by the way, over the workings.
I should point out I was messing with the speed the day before but the disk kept working fine at the time and booted again. ...maybe???

 

[VeryVon]

If you feel you need additional assistance, I tend to agree with @Agent Orange at this point. Please open a new thread in the Technical Support, Vintage Computer Hardware section.

In the new post please include the following information:

1. floppy drive make & model
2. computer host make & model
3. any other pertinent background information (steps you've already taken, any other relevant details etc.)
4. the exact problem you're having / trying to solve

If you can include photos of the hardware setup that is very helpful as well.

 

[JohnElliott]

Thanks for the heads up. After reading this I am still not feeling very good about it. I have an Amstrad PC1512 that used a Tandon TM65 2L drive. This is a very old system that came out at the same time as MSDOS 1.0 did. Everyone was designing computers differently. Amstrad made theirs with a MCGA monitor that was similar to CGA but different in some ways. That is a different discussion.
Here is the problem that I think killed my XT drive:

Tandon 525 drive doesn’t like the ATA twist
Here is likely the reason:

1st off it's a XT 360kb ATA 8 bit drive that is slower than the regular 1.2 newer 16 bit drives. The Amstrad can not accept the faster 5.25 drives.

I think you're going to confuse people by using terms like "ATA". That refers to a type of hard drive connection with 40 or 80 wires in the cable, not a floppy connection with 34.

(Also, the PC1512 dates from 1986 and ran MSDOS 3.2, and its display is not anything like MCGA, but that's by the by).

The PC1512 does not use a twisted cable, and requires the 'drive select' jumpers to be set to 0 for the first drive and 1 for the second. If you're using a drive from a PC1512 in a PC with a twisted cable, you need to make sure the selection jumper is set to drive 1.

If the drive supports it, you should also configure pin 34 as Disk Change rather than Ready. Under Linux it's possible to boot with the 'floppy=broken_dcl' option to ignore the lack of a Disk Change signal, but Windows or your PC's BIOS may expect it to be there.