External 5.25" floppy diskette drive

[SniperTB]

Hey Escapists,

I want to read/write my old 5 1/4 inch diskettes on my actual PC.
Sure, I got also my old ATARI PC3 8088 machine with floppy drive but - screw it - I wanna get this work on the new stuff

My ideas so far:
- Build a fancy external 5.25 drive - 3.5 is availible, right? (Not found any)
- Get a cool PCIe-Card with floppy sockets (Neither that)

Any ideas, suggestions?

Thanks in advance

- Sniper

 

[SnowyGamester]

There are IDE to USB adapters but they only support HDD, not floppy. If you need the data there are services that do that or you could get an old computer that can support 5.25" in the BIOS and a CD burner or flash drive. If you want to connect it to a modern computer you'll need something like this [http://shop.deviceside.com/prod/FC5025] but it is not supported natively instead only allowing you to read images through specialized software. Native support is not possible with currently available hardware.

 

[SniperTB]

Too bad
I thought there is some possibility to do something like that.
Anyways, thanks for your help!

But if anyone has a clue, please let me know!

 

[Freyr]

I did pull a bunch of stuff off of a 5.25" drive on an XP box years ago. It was disturbingly simple, Windows still had the 5.25" drivers so it was simply a matter of connecting the cables and turning the box on. I suspect that given how minutely tiny the drivers are for 5.25" & 3.5" floppies they are going to remain supported.

It might be worth checking if your motherboard still has an FDD slot next to the PATA interface, if so then it's simply plug and play.

 

[SniperTB]

Yeah, I think that's my last option.
Soon I going to create the UBER 486 pc and attach my 5.25 inch floppy to it as well as 3.5 and CD writer

 

[SniperTB]

I built a P III machine with 5.25" Floppy, 750 MB ZIP, LS-120 Drive (120 MB / 1.44 MB 3.5") and DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. Now I can translate between all usual formats