Wanted: Working 5.25 Inch Floppy Drive

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#2126688 14-Nov-2018 15:56

Dynamic:

The ZIP drive is kinda off to one side, but close enough to a 'floppy disk' for most people. I had clients using them for backup until the Click Of Death became a thing.

I used to live in dread of hearing the Click of Death.

robjg63

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#2126732 14-Nov-2018 17:20

MurrayM:
SpartanVXL:

I don't think I've seen a 5 & 1/4 in person let alone a drive for it.

What a youngin you are. Back in the day I used to use 8 inch floppies; about the size of a dinner plate!

Yep. The 8" was where the term "floppy" came from.
The others were just a little "flexible" by comparison.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

Spirax

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#2126771 14-Nov-2018 19:23

I have one in my "might come in handy one day" cupboard. I'll see if I can find the cable. You can have it for the cost of postage or pick up if you live in the vicinity.

Barry

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KiwiME

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#2128837 18-Nov-2018 12:46

You might be better off posting a photo of the diskette first. Many of us have vintage computers that might be able to read it.

Lias:

Anyone have one of these lurking somewhere? Just got asked if I can help with recovering something off a 5.25 disk...

Rikkitic

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#2128841 18-Nov-2018 13:06

It is not a diskette. It is a floppy disk. These were standard at one time, being widely used in CP/M machines and early IBM clones that ran MS-DOS. I think anyone who had a machine capable of reading these would recognise them without a photo. In any case, @MurrayM posted a photo above.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

yumcimil

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#2129104 19-Nov-2018 07:09

Apparently Victoria University have functional machines able to read very old media - might be worth getting in touch with them.

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Goosey

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#2129105 19-Nov-2018 07:36

I think I will stlll using these in 1994 on an old XT. The floppys and the XT itself still worked in the eary 2000s when I booted it up to remind myself about norton commander as well as boot up a few games like Police Quest, Kings Quest, Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry.

Fun times changing floppys....

I think my HDD was 20mb. Sound was 'beeps' (unless software has scratchy audio), and monitor was monochrome green.

I had a 9 pin dot matrix printer and a 3 button mouse.

oooh a couple joysticks.... sold those on trademe for good money a few years back.

Lias

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#2129176 19-Nov-2018 10:02

I now have one courtesy of @Spirax, so thanks very much for that.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

wellygary

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#2129190 19-Nov-2018 10:08

Lias:

I now have one courtesy of @Spirax, so thanks very much for that.

Can you keep us updated us on whether you can actually get to work with a modern PC....

langi27

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#2129281 19-Nov-2018 10:50

5.25' floppy's were good for Frisbee's and not much else, tried to double space one once. think it went from 1.2MB to 2MB. Back in the days of X-Tree Gold and Dos 6.2 or 6.22 if you were fancy.

Behodar

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#2129334 19-Nov-2018 11:32

langi27: tried to double space one once. think it went from 1.2MB to 2MB.

What is this magic? We had the good old 360k drive...

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yumcimil

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#2129395 19-Nov-2018 12:51

They were so much faster than the C64 tape drive though...

xpd

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#2129397 19-Nov-2018 13:00

I started off with Atari 2600 carts.... :D

Then progressed to a massive 880k, go the Miggy ;)

XPD / Gavin

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MadEngineer

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#2129403 19-Nov-2018 13:12

Behodar:
langi27: tried to double space one once. think it went from 1.2MB to 2MB.

What is this magic? We had the good old 360k drive...

probable “doublespace” or “drivespace” tool, part of msdos tools. Guaranteed to destroy data - double the space double the risk.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

MurrayM

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#2129413 19-Nov-2018 13:38

langi27:

5.25' floppy's were good for Frisbee's and not much else, tried to double space one once. think it went from 1.2MB to 2MB. Back in the days of X-Tree Gold and Dos 6.2 or 6.22 if you were fancy.

Ah X-Tree Gold, an awesome piece of software.

For a while, after moving to Windows, I used to use ZTreeWin which was an X-Tree clone but built for Windows. I see that it's still available, even for Windows 10!

ZTreeWin

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