Uncreative Labs

Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 3:39 am

Microsolutions 1.44mb parallel port floppy drive, new old stock. All Mine. Perfect bridge between my XT and my Vista PC.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

hmm, i know backpack made some parallel port floppy drives in 3.5 and 5.25

be intresting to find one and hook it to a modern pc

Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:31 am

vista won't see anything parallel, in my experience, not my zip-100, not my direct cable connection, nuttin.

Joined: 21 Dec 2005 Posts: 66

Not rare at all. On eBay for 99 cents and some shipping.

Works well on a PCjr.

Mike

Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 4:57 am

thought i'd ask, never seen one, now if i could get the 5.25" version of it, i'd be set

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Ran out of internal 5.25" slot for a drive?

The only useful external 5.25" drive would be a USB one these days (oh and the external 5.25" I have for my PS/2 Model 30-286).

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 12:36 am

you just proved my point, it'd be nice to have the external version of the backpack 5.25 floppy for my model-30-V30

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

hmmm, ive been thinkin realy hard, will it be possible to use the controller out of a 3.5usb floppy drive on an 5.25 floppy, mabey someone should design some ribbon to 34pin floppy connector, teacs 3.5 are common in laptop/small desktops/usb drives

Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 5:31 am

i don't see why not, i've done some digging into the disk format specs, and the 5.25 could dump 1.44 on a floppy safely, and a standard 1.2 should read it with no mods, i haven't done this through hardware though, but i'd think it to be possible

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

you mean like setting drive A: to 3.5 1.44mb and physicly hook up a 5.25 1.2 mb drive. i did that once, just for test, and i read the 5.25 1.2mb floppies, but the computer acts as its a 3.5 drive, not sure what would happen if i tried to format, but doubt it be compatible on a regular 5.25 with the bios configured as 5.25

Posted: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:34 am

the only real difference between the formats is the sector count, it can be done with a program like 2M or FreeForm and they will be read and write in a 1.2mb drive

Joined: 10 May 2008 Posts: 62

k2x4b524p wrote:

Microsolutions 1.44mb parallel port floppy drive, new old stock. All Mine. Perfect bridge between my XT and my Vista PC.

I'm beginning to think anything old school is rare nowadays. If it is for an XT it is definitely rare. Old computers and peripherals like that are becoming hard to find. Companies have given them to recyclers who have either destroyed the systems for metals and stuff or those recyclers place the stuff on eBay because they know the stuff is becoming rare and want a fortune for it. Gone are the days I could go buy old computers for cheap at the thrifts and swap meets. Nowadays I'm lucky to find anything below a Pentium at such places.