Drive for old 5.25" Flexible Floppies?

I've been doing an extensive cleaning, and came across some old Mini Floppy Disks I have, both 3.5" and 5.25" flexible floppies.


I've ordered an external USB drive to read the 3.5" disks, and that's on its way.


I can't seemingly find any adapters/drives to read old school 5.25" Mini-Floppy Disks, and so I'm posting here.


Any suggestions?


Any ideas on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.


Posted on Sep 1, 2019 4:15 PM

Reply
21 replies

Sep 1, 2019 7:29 PM in response to TheLittles

David Lyell Said:

"I can't seemingly find any adapters/drives to read old school 5.25" Mini-Floppy Disks, and so I'm posting here."

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To Clarify...


  • eBay.com Search for these drives on eBay. There are plenty depicted on the site.


  • images.google.com Search for images of these drives and adapters, using Google Image Search


  • Virtual Machines: Look into using a virtual machine to run this hardware. You would need to install an Operating System compatible with this. It is the only workaround to using drivers of sorts. Virtual Machine Programs are VMWare Fusion and Parallels.


  • Vintage Mac: You would most likely need to use a Vintage Mac for these; eBay most certain has them. Perhaps, you can buy all needed items together? If there are issues with a purchase, contact eBay.

Sep 1, 2019 5:17 PM in response to y_p_w

y_p_w wrote:

I don’t believe there was ever a Mac format compatible with 5-1/4 floppies. I had a Macally
3-1/2 that worked.

What format?


There was one. But it is really OLD. It may not have been Apple brand, possibly used for PC compatibility.


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If you have survived for these many years without the stuff on those 5.25 floppies, it could not have been that important.



Sep 1, 2019 6:09 PM in response to y_p_w

No.


The drive for the Mac was for reading and writing PC-formatted floppies. it is called the Apple PC floppy drive, and has a genuine 37-pin floppy drive connector. there was separate card for a Mac-II, or you could hook it up to the floppy connector on your Mac286 two-card PC for the Mac-II.


And the reason I know that is ... I went to the place where mine would be if I still had it, and I still do.


The Apple II was doing its own thing. Its floppies were not compatible with anything but the Apple II..

Sep 4, 2019 2:28 PM in response to David Lyell

Thanks for the Picture!


BTW! A friend of mine had their first computer: a VT180 DEC System. It had four 5.25 inch floppy drives, and ran the CPM Operating System. The notch on the side is for write-protection. So, if you made the disc double-sided, you had to cut a notch on the other side as well.


Sounds like a lot of work to me☹️, but also a lot of fun🙂, with the electronic archaeology!

Sep 4, 2019 2:43 PM in response to TheLittles

There were a variety of ways to deal with write protection. A lot of commercial software used bulk duplicators that ignored the notch, and there were disks that had no notch. My blank disks would come with a sheet of stickers to cover the notch. And I believe the PC standard was for two heads so the only way they were supposed to be used was label side up.

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Drive for old 5.25" Flexible Floppies?

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