I give up: Help Wanted

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”…

6 thoughts on “I give up: Help Wanted

  1. stic

    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…

    Reply
  2. russ

    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.

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  3. paulvick

    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!

    Reply

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