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IBM USB Floppy Drive - Issues With Non-IBM PC / Laptop

E

exs1s

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
Messages
53
Location
UK
Hi Guys,

I bought an IBM external USB floppy drive on eBay. Plugged it into an IBM T30 and it works flawlessly. Then plugged it into my HP laptop. Nothing. Dead. Then tried plugging it into my Lenovo P320 desktop. Nothing. And by the way, I have another USB floppy drive which does work on all machines including the old T30.

I'm starting to think that the IBM USB floppy can detect when it's plugged into an IBM machine. But that just doesn't ring true. Why would IBM have created a USB floppy that only works on their old laptops. Anyway, the drive inside is made by Sony and the controller is what looks like a generic USB to floppy board.

Anyone have any experience with this?

21PQ8-C0JOL.jpg
 
Did you try it with the IBM again to make sure the drive is still working? Maybe it just picked a coincidental time to stop working.
 
When was the USB floppy drive made? What OSes are being used? It could be that the USB floppy needs a special driver which would be likely if the T30 was using Win9x. Also, try other ports on the other systems just in case the floppy needs more power than some ports provide. Or it could be that the T30 uses USB 1.x and the floppy uses USB 1.x but the newer systems don't support the full range of USB 1.x implementations. (Rare with USB 2 ports, pretty common for USB 3 ports to not work with USB 1 devices)
 
I've had similar before with usb drives etc, Especially more so with older gear, More often than not it was a power issue at the USB port, Sometimes it worked sometimes not, Have you tried a powered usb hub.
 
At the moment it's plugged directly into the USB2.0 port on my Lenovo P320 desktop and that's not working. I thought USB was supposed to be 100% backwards compatible.
 
exs1s said:
At the moment it's plugged directly into the USB2.0 port on my Lenovo P320 desktop and that's not working. I thought USB was supposed to be 100% backwards compatible.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it isn't. There are 4 different USB interface designs including two competing USB 1 designs plus a slew of buggy implementations. Modern Intel chipsets don't seem to support OHCI (the Compaq form of USB 1).

I even have an early card reader that crashes systems when plugged into a USB 3 port which should be impossible according to the specification.
 
Tell me about it. I've got a carton (40 count) of early USB control modules that were trotted out for a Win95 host but won't work with anything but a single motherboard and appropriate software. As they're all NOS, and shrinkwrapped, I have trouble junking them, but I suppose that I'll have to. They have a nice LCD display board in them.
 
Vendors often were changed for the internals. The best way, short of opening the thing, is to use a USB enumeration utility to show the grisly details.
 
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