I generally eschew using my blog to ask for help for stuff, especially since I have pretty good resources at work, but this one has got me stymied: I’ve got a bunch of old 5.25 floppy disks from the old days that I’d like to convert and get rid of. For a while, our test lab had a machine that had a drive but I was too slow in taking advantage of it and now it’s gone. I went down to RePC to look at picking up an old drive to stick in my machine temporarily, but looking at the connector on the back of the drive, I don’t believe I have any controller that would drive one. I suppose I could go through the trouble of buying a ratty old computer just for that purpose and junking it, but, really, isn’t there a better way?
So: anyone know of a reasonable way to get a small number of 5.25 disks converted in the Seattle area? You’d think Microsoft would have some place to do this as well, but I can’t seem to find it. Any MSFT people who know of internal resource, let me know.
And I promise I’ll get back to technical topics “real soon now”…
hi, if you don’t find anythink @Seattle send these disc to Poland – I still have one of these greats machines (Dell on 286 16Mhz , RAM 16MB this was SOME in these times) working with 5’25" floppy still giving some nice sounds…
While the connector on the back of the drive might look a little scary, it should work fine with a newer computer. The only hard part would be finding the cable. This one should work:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=066149
More info from Belkin at:
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?&Product_Id=17195
they are the same you know – electrically the "new" floppy 3.5" connector is the exact same as the card-edge "old" 5.25 connector.
You just need a small adapter to convert between the two, or you can try to drum up a floppy cable out of an old computer. Back in those days, they came with both types of connectors on them. In fact, just find an old 386 junker and steal the cable from it – it will work on your new motherboard just fine.
I have a ton of old cables. If you need one let me know and I’ll send you what you need.
BTW, I did the same a while back. Put my *entire* library of hundreds of old floppies, on one CD-ROM! LOL!
Thanks! Once people pointed out that I could plug an old FD cord into my computer, everything worked out — I’m copying stuff off like a madman!