Modern PC to 5.25 floppy- options?

[MikeS]

On the plus side, I easily found a DIN cable as you described. On the minus side it converts to 4 audio cables, so I'm hoping 2 of those are optional. Another minus is that apparently the 5160 and 5170 do not have cassette ports.

So I'm going to pursue the serial-card path first, and probably start another thread about this if I think this is a feasible project. IBM Basic does support PEEK and POKE, so in theory if I can access the serial card from BASIC using a short hand-typed program, I should be able to do absolutely anything. The challenge will be coming up with the machine code that will be capable of reading blocks of data from the port and writing those blocks to disk....without DOS in memory. It would need to be able to format a disk as well.

Well, most folks would probably just ask a kind soul to send them a boot disk, but if you're up for it this does sound like a useful addition to the PC boot options.

But as you say, only the 5150 has a cassette port, only IBM machines have BASIC in ROM and not every system has a serial port (and not every modern PC has sound I/O FWIW ;-) ) so it's still not a universal solution. Remote boot software does exist for other systems besides the Apple and I'm a little surprised that it doesn't seem to already exist for a PC; probably because only a relatively small percentage of generic PCs are genuine IBMs with ROM BASIC.

Good luck.

 

[MikeS]

Hi Andrew,

I just popped the lid of the system sitting in front of me (an aging P4) and the only card I saw was an AGP display card--the PCI slots were empty. What this tells me is that PCI buses aren't going to be with us much longer as the tendency to strip things down to save money continues--and think about the desktop boxes that won't take normal-sized PCI cards, but rather require low-profile ones.

May I suggest USB as an interface? That has the benefit of working with laptops as well.

Just a thought.

Indeed. I suspect that not only is the PCI bus not going to be with us much longer, but neither willl any desktop systems with cards; everyone I speak with says their next computer will be a laptop, netbook, or iPad.

 

[wrljet]

Well, most folks would probably just ask a kind soul to send them a boot disk, but if you're up for it this does sound like a useful addition to the PC boot options.

But as you say, only the 5150 has a cassette port, only IBM machines have BASIC in ROM and not every system has a serial port (and not every modern PC has sound I/O FWIW ;-) ) so it's still not a universal solution. Remote boot software does exist for other systems besides the Apple and I'm a little surprised that it doesn't seem to already exist for a PC; probably because only a relatively small percentage of generic PCs are genuine IBMs with ROM BASIC.

Good luck.

You can also send code into the keyboard port on an original PC. They used that during manufacturing test.

 

[NobodyIsHere]

Hi Andrew,

Maybe this should be brought off as another thread.

I've seen the Costronic web site for years and even dropped them an email or two, but never got anything from them. Do you know of anyone who actually has their setup?

I do some some issues with simply adding a SuperIO chip to a modern system with a modern (well, Windows XP+ anyway) operating system. This is one of drivers--almost all of the existing legacy (parallel, serial, floppy) device support involves some sort of BIOS code--usually ACPI to inform the system what's there. If you don't have that, then you have to provide your own drivers--and that to me is s non-trivial job. At least that's my understanding.

Hi Chuck! Well it is an interesting thought experiment but the more I think about it the less feasible it appears. I think I'll just stick to plain old S-100, ECB, and occasional forays into 8 bit ISA bus. PCI and/or USB bring a whole host of complicated protocol and driver issues that are generally not a problem on the simpler busses.

It quickly gets into the domain of corporations with professional engineering staff and deep pockets. Really, how many amateur/hobbyist PCI designs are there? Not many, I'd fathom. I've seen a PCI board template in KiCAD which is what triggered the thought to begin with but there is obviously much more to the story than appears at first glance.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

 

[MikeS]

You can also send code into the keyboard port on an original PC. They used that during manufacturing test.

Yeah, I was going to mention that as about the only truly universal method and I have used that method for transferring data, but it would require a special cable and the risk of damage would be greater than through the serial port; might as well just get a serial card and null-modem cable.

 

[Raven]

Hi Chuck! Well it is an interesting thought experiment but the more I think about it the less feasible it appears. I think I'll just stick to plain old S-100, ECB, and occasional forays into 8 bit ISA bus. PCI and/or USB bring a whole host of complicated protocol and driver issues that are generally not a problem on the simpler busses.

It quickly gets into the domain of corporations with professional engineering staff and deep pockets. Really, how many amateur/hobbyist PCI designs are there? Not many, I'd fathom. I've seen a PCI board template in KiCAD which is what triggered the thought to begin with but there is obviously much more to the story than appears at first glance.

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

Catweasel! :D

 

[MikeS]

Catweasel! :D

There's a Catweasel that plugs into a USB port and gives you legacy parallel, serial and FDC ports? Got a link?

 

[hard_fault]

Just to add my 3 cents if it helps... I took the 5.25" floppy drive out of a XT clone about 2 weeks ago and it worked just fine in a Pentium II win98 machine. Of course I had to set the option in the BIOS for the correct drive. I suppose it all boils down to your motherboard supporting those ancient things?

 

[Chuck(G)]

Just to add my 3 cents if it helps... I took the 5.25" floppy drive out of a XT clone about 2 weeks ago and it worked just fine in a Pentium II win98 machine. Of course I had to set the option in the BIOS for the correct drive. I suppose it all boils down to your motherboard supporting those ancient things?

As long as you don't need to format it, you can call the 5.25" a 720K or 1.44M drive. This sort of borks the disk-changed signal, but it sometimes works. Just format your floppies on the 5160.

The issue here may be that the "modern" system doesn't have a legacy floppy controller at all. Few new systems do.

 

[Dave Farquhar]

The issue here may be that the "modern" system doesn't have a legacy floppy controller at all. Few new systems do.

Many of the P4 and first-gen AMD64 systems that are being discarded by the corporate world right now do. I've been seeing a lot of dirt-cheap Compaq Evo desktops lately.

An easy but space-consuming option is to find something historically interesting enough to be willing to keep around, and old enough to support 5.25" floppies, but new enough to boot an OS with good USB support that can get online and download in a pinch. It doesn't have to run especially fast, since its main purpose would be to transfer files. A PCI 486 with a plug-in PCI USB card would be about the minimum system that could fit the bill.