Can iMac work with a USB floppy?

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Level 2

389 points

Can iMac work with a USB floppy?

I've purchased an old "*Newer technology USB Floppy Drive*" to use with a *Lime Green iMac* running *OS 9.2*
I have a picture of the box (I don't actually have the box)and it specifically shows the MacOS logo as well as the iMac logo. When I plugged it into the iMac I get a message that says it "can't find a driver for the USB device"that I attached. I have searched on-line though and can't even find any mention of USB drivers for the iMac.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
Gary

BTW - I also tried hooking this drive to my *PowerPC G4* running 10.2, My Macbook in both OS10.4 and in Windows mode. Neither Mac recognized the drive. Windows (via Parallels) could see the drive but didn't recognize that I had inserted any disks.
😟

933mhz PowerPC G4, Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Posted on Dec 8, 2009 10:48 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kenichi Watanabe

Level 8

41,572 points

Dec 8, 2009 1:27 PM in response to Gary Griner

Since it does not work on multiple computers, it may be defective. I have a generic USB floppy drive, and it works on Mac OS X without any custom driver (although I have not used it recently).

If you look at this product listing

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Lacie/706018/

it says it works as far back as Mac OS 8.6.

Note: USB floppy drives will not work with the older 800k floppy disks.

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Answer 2

Gary Griner Author

Level 2

389 points

Dec 8, 2009 1:47 PM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Thanks!

I guess that is good news and bad news. Good that my goal is achievable. Bad that I may have purchased a defective unit.

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Answer 3

Dec 8, 2009 2:01 PM in response to Gary Griner

One thing I just thought of... One of your Macs that you tried with has USB 2.0, but it is possible that some of the currently produced USB floppy drives will require USB 2.0. A CRT iMac has the slower USB 1.1.

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Answer 4

Jeff

Level 6

12,058 points

Dec 8, 2009 10:35 PM in response to Gary Griner

Speed shouldn't be an issue, as the data transfer rates of those drives is usually slower than USB 1.1 speeds (1.5 MegaBytes/sec). You may need the pre-OS X drivers (which aren't iMac-specific) for the floppy disk drive to be recognized, although the database of Apple's USB Support drivers in OS 9.x -> should provide support for it. Many USB floppy drives are rebranded Teac drives, so if you can get it to work in any computer (including a PC), you should be able to verify the manufacturer. There were several (pre-OS X) USB drivers (USB Floppy Driver, USB Floppy Enabler, and the USB StorageClassShim) that I installed, when I used a Teac USB floppy drive.

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Answer 5

Gary Griner Author

Level 2

389 points

Dec 11, 2009 3:58 PM in response to Jeff

I was finally able to find a driver that got the floppy drive to work on the OS9 iMac.
If anyone else is looking to make this work, search the web for "uDrive_Installer".

As for drivers to make it work with OSX ... no luck so far and I suspect it's not possible. I hope someone can prove me wrong and post a link here. 🙂

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