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External 5.25" Floppy Drives?

Posted by Cliff on from the nostalgic-for-old-media dept.

R2.0 writes "Are there any external 5.25" FD's out there? My wife and I have a number of old 5.25" floppies with all sorts of interesting stuff from school - she had a Kaypro, and Lehigh had just gotten hundreds of Zenith PC's. In the interest of archival record keeping (Ok, I'm a packrat), I'd like to get this stuff off the old floppies and onto my HD, and then maybe onto CD-R. Problem: I'm out of 5.25" bays in my Dell, so I can't just put in one of those handy combo 3.5"/5.25" drives. And I can't just pop the CD player out, pop in an old drive, and do everything in one batch - I need to be able to do this a couple of disks at a time, between changing diapers, etc. Can anyone suggest an external solution to my problem? Parallel, serial, or USB; homebrewed or purchased." Ah, the endless problem of preserving data from old media. Due to the lack of use that 5.25" drives have had in the past 10 years, this might be a very hard-to-find item. Is anyone making 5.25" drives anymore?

4 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Where to buy 5.25 floppy by erpbridge · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Got to Pricewatch, and do a search for Floppy Drives 5.25. I see about 5 places offering drives for about $5-10 US.

  2. "External" drive by psergiu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    - Get an internal 5" drive
    - get a really long floppy cable (up to 0.75m is ok) (ar extend/build one yourself - 34 wires)
    - get 2 molex power connectors (one male on female) and 4 wires and build an "power extender"
    - remove an ISA/PCI cover plate
    - pull the floppy and power cable trough there
    - connect to the drive outside the case
    - use duct dape as you see fit.
    - do not use near strong EM fields.

    --
    1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
  3. There's this thing called a search engine. by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For God's sake, USE IT!

    Google is your friend.

    - A.P.

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  4. Commentary. by saintlupus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    FLAME BAIT
    I have to say this, has the viewing audience of Slashdot gone so mainstream that it is to this level where "Ask Slashdot" posts are about very very basic hardware and software questions? Whats next? "Where is the Any key" Or "I don't have any memory left in my computer"? "How do I delete files"? "Why does my Windows keep crashing?". FLAME BAIT

    No, though I suppose it has gotten so "mainstream" that you can't be bothered to read the fucking question. To wit, he writes:

    Problem: I'm out of 5.25" bays in my Dell, so I can't just put in one of those handy combo 3.5"/5.25" drives.

    To which you respond:

    Get a dual 3.5/5.25 unit

    Amazing. Not even an article to link to, the whole thing is right here, and yet you _still_ manage to both not read it properly and then bitch about how stupid people are becoming here on Slashdot.

    Hey, have you met my good friend the kettle? Y'all the same color, you see.

    --saint