• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Internal USB floppy drive on Desktop

Shadow Lord said:
I am late to the discussion but how about PCIe PATA card? I am sure cheaper ones can be found and going forward it may be the only solution.

As for slimline to HH - I searched high and low for these a few years back (to use slim line ls-240 drives) w/out any luck. Not a very common item, even though it seems like a no brainer...
Click to expand...

If that PCIe card is anything like the very similar PCI card that I have, there can be some real problems. I tried the VIA PCI SATA+PATA card on one of my machines and it refused to boot, complaining about SATA controller failure. As nearly as I could figure out, the BIOS got confused over the motherboard VIA SATA controller and the one on the PCI card.

I'll keep the form posted on what does work.
 
I would only really trust one of those if it had a BIOS on it like the old Promise IDE controllers (UltraTX 133 and such) did, so it can run along side the internal IDE.
 
Here's one data point. I dug out a couple of old LS-120 drives I have and tried then with a USB adapter I happened to have on hand, a KINGWIN USI-2535 IDE/SATA to USB adapter.

The model MF357G-111MA drive, March 1997, was not recognized as a floppy drive when I plugged it into my Windows 7 machine through the USI-2535 adapter and was not functional.

The model LKM-F934-1 drive, March 1999, was recognized as a floppy drive when I plugged it into my Windows 7 machine through the USI-2535 adapter and was functional. I was able to format a floppy in the USB attached LS-120 drive as a 1.44MB floppy, and I was able to DISKCOPY A: B: (A: being a standard floppy drive and B: being the USB attached LS-120 drive) and DISKCOMP A: B:

I believe back in Windows 2000 there would have been more format options other than 1.44MB. I haven't tried plugging the LKM-F934-1 drive and USB adapter into a Windows 2000 system yet to check that.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Curious, because I've seen Microsoft literature that refers to it that way. That isn't to say that Microsoft knows/knew the right terminology. But why there should be a special term for an OS with a VGA driver is puzzling.
Click to expand...
IBM created DOS/V and invented the name to distinguish it from traditional PS/55 Japanese DOS that required special video cards.
 
Last edited:
gslick said:
Here's one data point. I dug out a couple of old LS-120 drives I have and tried then with a USB adapter I happened to have on hand, a KINGWIN USI-2535 IDE/SATA to USB adapter.
Click to expand...

This fits in with something I observed some time ago--that some LS120 drives don't work on XP and others do. I've got one that works fine on 2000 and 9x but causes XP to hang. I'd assumed it was a firmware issue, but never got a solid answer. I have a later LS120 that works fine.
 
I just put together my first solution--the card reader+legacy floppy, replacing the legacy floppy with a Teac FD05U USB floppy. The original setup contains a 26-pin flex to 34-pin header adapter board, which can be removed. The FD05U fits like a glove and the USB cable is soldered on to the connector pins that hook to the USB socket on the front of the unit (the adapter takes two USB ports--the first goes to the card reader, the second to the front-panel USB connector). No problems whatever, even though the unit is a Chinese plastic box with a metal cover.
 
Thought I'd tie this up by reporting what happens if you use a Caleb drive with a IDE/SATA-to-USB adapter.

Nothing. The drive's not recognized. The adapter does poll the drive (drive access LED periodically flashes) but obviously doesn't get what it wants back.
 
I personally just use a Toshiba PA3214U-2FDD external USB floppy drive with my desktop, although my motherboard still has an FDD connector my case is a bit to small to actually install one as I'd have to remove something else.
an added benefit I find this USB drive has is that its a slimline drive so easily fits into a laptop bag and I can take it along, it also works on USB 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0.
and it uses a generic driver, so far I've been using it with Windows 98SE, Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Windows 8 Pro + MCP* 64-bit and Linux 2.4.x, 2.6.x and 3.0.x.
as its a generic USB floppy drive it works with pretty much an OS that supports USB floppy drives.


*Media Center Pack, although that shouldn't matter for compatibility.
 
That's nice and I've used external floppies with my desktops, but I wanted an internal one (I despise little boxes cluttering my desktop). My ides of using a FD05U in a SD/CF card reader chassis worked perfectly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top