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Author Topic: Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?  (Read 1687 times)

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Offline fohat.digs

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Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?
« on: Mon, 02 February 2015, 14:53:22 »
I have some old 5-1/4" discs and I would like to have a drive to read them.

There are internal drives available and I think I could make one work if I built out an old motherboard, but I would like to have an external drive.

Apple made their external floppy drives and they were around for years. Is there any reasonable way to adapt one of them, preferably via USB?
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Offline SpAmRaY

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Re: Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?
« Reply #1 on: Mon, 02 February 2015, 14:54:59 »
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Offline rowdy

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Re: Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?
« Reply #2 on: Mon, 02 February 2015, 14:56:48 »
Is this like the ones on the Apple II?

AFAICR they had very limited electronics in them and relied on Apple II cunning programming and careful timing to use them.

That, plus a very specific interface card with the ribbon cable connector.

Ninjad by SpAmMy - I guess if there are two electronic things out there, someone will find a way of connecting them!
« Last Edit: Mon, 02 February 2015, 15:01:22 by rowdy »
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Offline fohat.digs

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Re: Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?
« Reply #3 on: Mon, 02 February 2015, 15:25:00 »
Quote from: SpAmRaY on Mon, 02 February 2015, 14:54:59
http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html

Thanks, that is something.

I was hoping for a device that would actually allow me to read and write, but if this can read them all then it is pretty amazing.

Would running a daisy chain of connectors off a Molex from a modern power supply inside the case work?
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Offline kishy

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Re: Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?
« Reply #4 on: Mon, 02 February 2015, 17:44:03 »
I'm wondering how far you might get by just picking up an old box off Craigslist - surely there is someone local with a 486 or Pentium that you could get networked, read the floppes with, and transport those files to another storage means. This would also give write access. Presumably utilities exist to get around that whole Windows vs Mac thing.

Just a thought. $20 computer might do what you need.
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Offline TacticalCoder

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Re: Can an old Apple 5.25" floppy drive be made to work?
« Reply #5 on: Mon, 02 February 2015, 21:52:17 »
Quote from: fohat.digs on Mon, 02 February 2015, 14:53:22
I have some old 5-1/4" discs and I would like to have a drive to read them.

By the way any idea how many decades 5-1/4" floppy disks will keep their content?  Back in the days people kept saying "In ten years your floppy disk's content will be unreadable" but everytime I tried, they'd still read fine.  I have hundreds of floppy disks from my C64 and Commodore Amiga days (my Amiga had a 5-1/4" disk in addition to the 3-1/2" one because 5-1/4" disks were way, way, way cheaper) in my garage and they're 25 years old+ by now and there are some stuff I'd like to archive one of these days.

So a quarter of a century is quite something: I'm beginning to worry a bit that the disks one day will be unreadable.

Nothing of big value there but for example I've got beta version of a few games (developers were friend), unfinished and never shipped demos and intros, (incomplete) graphics for a game that never saw the light, etc.  Good memories :)
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