Floppy Driver Copiers

[grayscot12]

Fifteen or so years ago every student lab had a 5.25 to 3.5 floppy standalone copy machine. Where have they gone? Can't find on Ebay or elsewhere. What's a good cheap workaround? My motherboard's BIOS limits me to only one floppy, either 5.25 or 3.5 but not both.

 

[Paperdoc]

I expect your BIOS shows you only one floppy because you have only one installed. As I recall, ALL floppy ports support two drive units, and the standard ribbon data cable had two connectors on it. The two types of drives use different power supply connectors, though. And of course, the 5¼" older units need the wider slot on the front. Normally if you install two floppies, the one on the END connector on the cable will be the "A:" drive in your system, and the other is "B:". (If you look closely, the ribbon cable entering the end connector had had some of its wires split out from the rest and twisted over.) Once you have two installed, your BIOS ought to show them both and offer configuration options for each separately.

 

[grayscot12]

Never could get it to work with two, though both would work alone. Anyway, I'll probably move up soon to a motherboard without any floppy connectors. So I will need one of those 3.5 to 5.25 standalone copiers for the many floppies in storage. I suppose I could get by buying a 3.5" with USB connector for my W2K and DOS 6.22 installations, but still need something for 5.25 transfer. I didn't see any USB 5.25s.

 

[Paperdoc]

I can't find any stand-alone copiers like those you mention, nor any floppy disk controller cards for PCI slots. That leads us to having an older computer / mobo that does have a 2-floppy controller and cabling included, and using it to build a computer whose main purpose is dealing with both old floppy formats. The computer would not have to be very modern or powerful for this. For example, I still have a couple older units with 500 MHz Pentium2-class or 1.2 GHz Pentium-3 class CPU's, and less than 1 GB of SDRAM. The older one even has both floppy drive sizes, just like you need, and it's running Win XP Pro.

If you do this, try to stock up on a few old floppy drives - they are getting real hard to find in working condition. ALSO make sure you get floppy disk drive cleaning kits for both sizes. I have found that, by far, the most damaging thing that destroys floppy diskettes and ruins their data is dirt on the heads of the drive that gouges marks into the diskette surface. So, since I use floppies infrequently, I am in the habit automatically of cleaning the floppy drive and letting it dry out before ever inserting the diskette and trying to read. If you can't get a 5.25" floppy cleaning kit (hard to find, I'm sure!), you may have to resort to periodically opening up the drive and cleaning manually with a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol.

Two ways to work, then, with such a machine:
1. Machine has both 3.5" and 5.25" floppy drives working as A: and B:, and you just copy between. You might even put this machine on a network and make its floppy drive resources shared and available on the network.
2. Machine has only one 5.25" floppy drive internally, plus USB ports to which you attach an external 3.5" floppy drive unit.

 

[ram1009]

Why can't you copy your 5.25" disks to your HDD and from there to anything else you like.

 

[grayscot12]

Paperdoc, I have two each of 5.25 and 3.5 drives. What I don't have is an old enough computer. I suppose I could find one on Ebay, but I have limited space for storing hard-to-recycle junk hardware. I live in a rural area where these things are not found easily and I might well have to get several from Ebay befofre I found a workable one. The following I found looks like a better solution, but at $55 or so, a costly one: http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html

Thanks for the suggestions on headcleaning. When the media get this old, everything helps.


ram: I could take out the 3.5 and put one of my 5.25s in and do as you say--if I had access to my floppies. Unfortunately they are stored on the East Coast and it will be a year before I can get to them, another reason I don't want to have to carry more than one machine around with me. Another year and I may not be able to find even 3.5 external USB floppy drives.

It would be so easy if all those labs with copiers would put them on ebay or did the firms offering outrageously expensive duplication services buy them all up?

 

[grayscot12]

Best answer selected by grayscot12.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Despite this thread being dead, +1 to Ram1009

 

[Paperdoc]

I think the issue is that OP finds it awkward to keep disconnecting one floppy drive to connect the other - he says his BIOS only allows a single floppy drive to be connected. I have not seen a BIOS that limited before, but that seems to be OP's dilemma. But you're right, Ram1009's solution would work.