• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

is it sacrilege to replace the internal 5 1/4" drive on an 1000 ex with a 3 1/2" one?

waltermixxx

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2015
Messages
132
Location
Canada
is it sacrilege to replace the internal 5 1/4" drive on an 1000 ex with a 3 1/2" one?

I managed to install one, and get it working (in a nice 5-1/4" mounting adapter and faceplate so it looks nice) ... which is cool because now I can share disks with my SL2. ( which also has a 5 1/4" drive that I cannot access yet because of a possible blown eeprom chip (got one from ebay, waiting for deliver).... ). :) I kept all the parts, and I know the 5 1/4" drive that was in it is working as I manged to find find a 5 1/5" dos 3.3 boot disk, but it was not complete so I could not sys or format any other disks... :)

so for now I will keep it in, and it's kinda cool :)
 
If the 3.5 drive encourages you to use the system more then I say you are good to go! Especially if you can switch it back to original parts if desired.
 
I have no problem doing hardware hacks like this since this is what was done in the day, but touching a case with RetroBright just seems unnatural. Guess I'm just strange.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I love my retro computers, and much to my wife's chagrin, i never thin out the herd.

:)
 
On some of my older gear, it's obscure enough that there's no new software being produced. I've thought about replacing all the drives with emulators. A USB flash stick has more than enough storage for all of the software ever produced for these.
 
For most enthusiasts, emulators are a good option. My hobby involves trying to rescue diskettes that have not yet shown up in archives, so I continue to maintain my drives.
 
A sacrilege? Well if you treat it as a collectors piece - yes. If you treat it as your toy - no. But since ya can always go back to the 5.25" drive then i guess it's just a good practical approach. better then letting it catch dust, eh?


Well emulator... I guess it can be practical to use a drive emulator. Then again it's practical to just use a modern windows 10 laptop and throw all old computers on the friggin garbage if ya ask my wife. Personally i don't like them much. But if they keep ya busy then i guess it makes them a good toy as well.

And can't sys a 5.25 disk? Man, hook that drive up to ANY dos machine, we always used to say "a home without a bootable floppy is a bad home". :p
 
I only use my floppy-emulator if I can hook it up externally... Not only because of the æsthetics, but also because I only got one HxC that I use with several different machines.

For archiving I would think a Kryoflux would be very nice, but I haven't gotten around to getting one yet.
 
Nope, I've been working with reprogramming the $20 Gotek jobbies. I don't have write worked out yet, so they're read-only--but that's good enough for most stuff. Cheap and effective and pretty well permanent.
 
Is it bad that I still enjoy using floppy drives for authenticity's sake? I mean, they can be a PITA sometimes, but it adds to my nostalgia factor. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.
 
Is it bad that I still enjoy using floppy drives for authenticity's sake?
Everyone should have a floppy drive :D Buy one, better yet, buy a dozen! :D:D

In the IBM PC world, floppies aren't always needed since hard drives were a big thing early on. But on an Apple II or similar, I just couldn't imagine it any other way (and neither could all the vendors of copy protected software). What would be the point of using, for example, a TRS-80 model II if you couldn't store your data on big honking 8" disks? :cool:
 
Is it bad that I still enjoy using floppy drives for authenticity's sake? I mean, they can be a PITA sometimes, but it adds to my nostalgia factor. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment.


Nope, if you look up "authentic" in a dictionary you'll prolly find a picture of a floppy drive. The slow speed, the sound of the heads scrubbing over the floppy disc, the flickering LED, the feeling and sound when you push the floppy in the drive or when you eject them... Even the smell of that cheap plastic... There's simply nothing more authentic then that.

I'll never understand people who "enjoy" using a floppy emulator. I mean they are practical if you gotta do some programming, testing or just wanna throw a dozen of discs for an old MS-office installation on a machine because you're in a hurry, but for "enjoyment"? What's the point? I could also fire up old games and appz just in dosbox on my windows 7 laptop and save so much space, time and money... Why emulate the drive if you can emulate the whole machine? But authenticity is something else...

If you're feeling nostalgic then take the whole cake, not just one slice. It's like a 1968 Ford Mustang. Hell my 2013 Ford Focus has more HP, better acceleration, better top speed and is more comfortable and safer. But if you like classic cars you won't think a second and pick the 1968 Mustang. Kinda the same with computers i think. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
 
I like using real floppy drives because I have a mountain of real original floppy media. There are Tandy external 3.5" drives for the EX/HX series. I have a 5.25" external for my HX with dual 3.5" installed.
 
I mean they are practical if you gotta do some programming

I would say solid state storage emulation is almost required when developing vintage software these days due to the reduced speed and reliability of the older mechanical drive mechanisms. I just don't know how programmers back in the day developed some of their more complex software on floppy drives. It must have taken forever and they must have gone through a lot of disks. And they certainly had a lot more patience than today's programmers...including myself. :)
 
I developed quite a bit using floppy-only systems--I still have some of my work on 8" floppy. Heck, if you had an Intel MDS-800, that's what you used unless your employer wanted to spring about $15K for a hard drive.
 
I would say solid state storage emulation is almost required when developing vintage software these days due to the reduced speed and reliability of the older mechanical drive mechanisms. I just don't know how programmers back in the day developed some of their more complex software on floppy drives. It must have taken forever and they must have gone through a lot of disks. And they certainly had a lot more patience than today's programmers...including myself. :)

It depends on the system. For example, you only need diskette I/O when you want to save your work, or compile. Most of my time programming directly on vintage hardware is spent typing.

Sometimes programmers "cheated". For example, I was very surprised to learn recently that many Atari 8-bit Ozarkscape software (M.U.L.E., Seven cities of Gold, etc.) was developed on an Apple II because it was faster and easier to work with the tools and copy binaries over for testing than it was to code directly on the Atari hardware.
 
Very common back in the day. For example, Sorcim developed a lot of their software on a mixture of systems from Bill Godbout's boxes to a VAX 11/730 using cross-compilation. Putting together SuperCalc was really interesting...

On my early days with the 8080, I cross-assembled on a CDC 6600.
 
Very common back in the day. For example, Sorcim developed a lot of their software on a mixture of systems from Bill Godbout's boxes to a VAX 11/730 using cross-compilation. Putting together SuperCalc was really interesting...

As someone who used SuperWriter a ton in the 1980s, and has recently looked at the binary code, I believe you :)

On my early days with the 8080, I cross-assembled on a CDC 6600.

Gotta bootstrap somewhere!
 
Well, if you think that not having a hard disk makes things tough, try it without floppies or tapes. I recall using FORTRAN on a 1620 using nothing but cards. Not fast at all.
 
Back
Top