Internal Floppy Drive
Narrer
Does anyone know a source of supply for reasonably priced internal floppy
drives. They seem to be coming an endangered species. I am used to paying
around a fiver or less per unit.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
--
"When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber".
Winston S. Churchill.
bcoombes
> Hello All
>
> Does anyone know a source of supply for reasonably priced internal floppy
> drives. They seem to be coming an endangered species. I am used to paying
> around a fiver or less per unit.
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
>
--
Bill Coombes
Conor
says...
>
> Hello All
>
> Does anyone know a source of supply for reasonably priced internal floppy
> drives. They seem to be coming an endangered species. I am used to paying
> around a fiver or less per unit.
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Thats because nobody in their right mind would use a media that is the
most expensive per item, has 1/500th the storage of anything else and
loses data if room temperature is wrong.
--
Conor
I'm not prejudiced. I hate everybody equally.
Jeff Gaines
<MPG.25ce3bfb9...@news.eternal-september.org> Conor wrote:
>Thats because nobody in their right mind would use a media that is the
>most expensive per item, has 1/500th the storage of anything else and
>loses data if room temperature is wrong.
Unless you're a hobbyist of some sort. For me it's a good way to transfer
files from a PC to a BBC Micro.
--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
There are 3 types of people in this world. Those who can count, and those
who can't.
Narrer
"Conor" <co...@gmx.co.uk> wrote in message
news:MPG.25ce3bfb9...@news.eternal-september.org...
No, I'm actually quite sane and mentally poised on an even keel, though I
have my doubts about you.
Why not keep your poisonous comments and negativity inside your skull,
there's obviously plenty of room.
Johannes Andersen
Jeff Gaines wrote:
>
> On 30/01/2010 in message
> <MPG.25ce3bfb9...@news.eternal-september.org> Conor wrote:
>
> >Thats because nobody in their right mind would use a media that is the
> >most expensive per item, has 1/500th the storage of anything else and
> >loses data if room temperature is wrong.
>
> Unless you're a hobbyist of some sort. For me it's a good way to transfer
> files from a PC to a BBC Micro.
Yeah, there were them days where all you had was the floppy drive, and
even then you were lucky. My WPC9512 had OS + Pascal compiler + sources
and document all run from a 180k floppy. After booting up the floppy,
I copied everything to the 'huge' 512k ram drive. Interestingly enough,
the cp/m system allowed me to control the WPC remotely from a PC over
the serial port. The subsequent DOS couldn't manage that.
Cicero
>
>
> Jeff Gaines wrote:
>>
>> On 30/01/2010 in message
>> <MPG.25ce3bfb9...@news.eternal-september.org> Conor wrote:
>>
<snipped>
>
> Yeah, there were them days where all you had was the floppy drive, and
> even then you were lucky. My WPC9512 had OS + Pascal compiler + sources
> and document all run from a 180k floppy. After booting up the floppy, I
> copied everything to the 'huge' 512k ram drive. Interestingly enough, the
> cp/m system allowed me to control the WPC remotely from a PC over the
> serial port. The subsequent DOS couldn't manage that.
=================================================
I hope that WPC was off duty when you were taking liberties with her.
>
Cic.
--
=================================================
Using Ubuntu Linux
Windows shown the door
=================================================
Raggy
> Hello All
>
> Does anyone know a source of supply for reasonably priced internal floppy
> drives. They seem to be coming an endangered species. I am used to paying
> around a fiver or less per unit.
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
>
I have 5 unused floppy drives if interested 2 black, 2 silver & 1 beige.
Cheers
Jim E
how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
Rob Morley
"Jim E" <jimmeeee> wrote:
> how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
>
By slipstreaming it?
Multithreaded
wrote:
>I have 5 unused floppy drives if interested 2 black, 2 silver & 1 beige.
I would be interested in the beige and black ones, as I'm one of the
insane according to Conor's classification. This is after the OP is
sorted, of course.
Conor
says...
> how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
Shove it on a USB stick, make sure said stick is plugged in when booting
and point the installer to the drive letter and directory.
Chris French
Conor <co...@gmx.co.uk> writes
>In article <V_adnWndcJVE7PrW...@brightview.co.uk>, "Jim E"
>says...
>
>> how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
>
>Shove it on a USB stick, make sure said stick is plugged in when booting
>and point the installer to the drive letter and directory.
>
How of of interest (I've never tried as any machine that I've need to do
that to either has a floppy in or I've just plugged in a spare one) ? -
when I install XP here on a machine which needs a driver the only option
it seems to offer me is to insert a floppy.
I can't remember ever seeing a place where I could input/select a path
--
Chris French
bcoombes
Hmm, interesting, I was thinking the same thing, the only way I could see it
working was if you could convince the machine's BIOS that the USB stick was an
'A' drive so that that's what the XP installation disk saw. Googling didn't help.
--
Bill Coombes
Mark
That's because you can't. The only way is slipstreaming or using a
floppy, unless you want to write your own BIOS.
A floppy can be useful. You can /always/ boot off one and some older
motherboards need the floppy to upgrade the BIOS.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
[Reply-to address valid until it is spammed.]
Adrian C
> In article<V_adnWndcJVE7PrW...@brightview.co.uk>, "Jim E"
> says...
>
>> how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
>
> Shove it on a USB stick, make sure said stick is plugged in when booting
> and point the installer to the drive letter and directory.
Never had much luck with that.
From what I've found it needs to be a USB stick that has the firmware
controller programming to be recognised as a USB Floppy drive, else
txtsetup.oem (or whatever) will not find it during the text setup phase
of installation.
HP make (an expensive) one.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12702_div/12702_div.PDF
I just bought a USB floppy drive instead. A fiver from a dell reseller.
Or, slipstreaming.
--
Adrian C
Johnny B Good
from Chris French <new...@familyfrench.co.uk> contains these words:
That's absolutely true! MS didn't think of "The Bleedin' Obvious" until
Vista. As far as NT4 / win2k /winXP is concerned, the _only_ option is a
real honest to goodness floppy drive (although an external USB unit will
also work IME) so there _is_ a good reason to fit one into a box that
isn't destined to have Vista inflicted on it.
--
Regards, John.
Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.
Chris Whelan
[...]
> That's absolutely true! MS didn't think of "The Bleedin' Obvious" until
> Vista. As far as NT4 / win2k /winXP is concerned, the _only_ option is a
> real honest to goodness floppy drive (although an external USB unit will
> also work IME) so there _is_ a good reason to fit one into a box that
> isn't destined to have Vista inflicted on it.
AIUI, the drivers are already in XP SP2.
Chris
--
Remove prejudice to reply.
bcoombes
> On 02/02/2010 15:52, Conor wrote:
>> In article<V_adnWndcJVE7PrW...@brightview.co.uk>, "Jim E"
>> says...
>>
>>> how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
>>
>> Shove it on a USB stick, make sure said stick is plugged in when booting
>> and point the installer to the drive letter and directory.
>
> Never had much luck with that.
>
> From what I've found it needs to be a USB stick that has the firmware
> controller programming to be recognised as a USB Floppy drive, else
> txtsetup.oem (or whatever) will not find it during the text setup phase
> of installation.
>
> HP make (an expensive) one.
> http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12702_div/12702_div.PDF
>
Trust HP to dream up that..do you know how much they cost, I couldn't see a
price on the page. I wouldn't mind getting hold of one as a 'project'.
--
Bill Coombes
Nick Le Lievre
> On 02/02/2010 15:52, Conor wrote:
>> In article<V_adnWndcJVE7PrW...@brightview.co.uk>, "Jim E"
>> says...
>>
>>> how do you load a raid or sata driver in xp without one?
>>
>> Shove it on a USB stick, make sure said stick is plugged in when booting
>> and point the installer to the drive letter and directory.
>
> Never had much luck with that.
Got to make sure that the files are in the root directory of the usb
stick or CD/DVD otherwise setup cannot find them and you cannot browse
directories.
Nick Le Lievre
What gets my goat is that the word insane gets thrown around these days
and applied to all sorts of things which really takes away from the true
meaning of the word.
Of course you are not insane to wish to purchase a floppy disc drive
just a bit old fashioned and eccentric.
Adrian C
> Adrian C wrote:
>>
>> HP make (an expensive) one.
>> http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12702_div/12702_div.PDF
>>
>
> Trust HP to dream up that..do you know how much they cost, I couldn't
> see a price on the page. I wouldn't mind getting hold of one as a
> 'project'.
>
�35 for 256MB
http://www.morecomputers.co.uk/extra.asp?pn=442084-B21
�60 for 1GB
http://www.morecomputers.co.uk/extra.asp?pn=442085-B21
--
Adrian C
bcoombes
--
Bill Coombes
Rob Morley
Nick Le Lievre <nickle...@jerseymail.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
> Of course you are not insane to wish to purchase a floppy disc drive
> just a bit old fashioned and eccentric.
Or using it for legacy equipment like CAM, a sequencer etc. that might
be expensive or impossible to replace.
Johnny B Good
from Chris Whelan <cawh...@prejudicentlworld.com> contains these words:
> [...]
The HDD driver interface database is larger but not absolutely
everything is included. Installing with an SP2 version (I don't know
whether the SP3 version is any better in this regard) is always a good
idea, regardless of the driver support issue, and will _probably_ avoid
the need for the F6 option.
If the box is intended for "Greatness", i.e. win2k instead of that
festering PoS known as WinXP, you'll have to have a floppy (either built
in or an external USB one) when dealing with SATA drives. However,
there's probably a way of incorporating the drivers from a winXP SP2 (or
SP3) install CD to get around this issue.
Whilst a win2kSP4 install CD with _all_ HDD interface driver software
incorporated is a nice idea, I don't do enough such scratch installs to
warrant creating such a disk and the USB floppy I keep handy provides a
neat solution that avoids having to open the case to hang a standard
floppy disk off of the FDD interface on those even rarer occasions when
the box is so 'modern' as to be sans floppy disk.
Multithreaded
<nickle...@jerseymail.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>What gets my goat is that the word insane gets thrown around these days
>and applied to all sorts of things which really takes away from the true
>meaning of the word.
I take mental health issues extremely seriously, Nick, and certainly
didn't mean to offend your sensibilities in this area. I was trying to
be gently ironic in response to Conor's post.
>Of course you are not insane to wish to purchase a floppy disc drive
>just a bit old fashioned and eccentric.
My sister calls me eccentric, and I certainly like some old fashioned
things, but also believe that floppy disk drives have their uses, the
running of up to the minute memory diagnostic programs being among
them. It seems "crazy" to me to burn a whole CD just to run a 176KB
standalone program like Memtest86+. I also can't be bothered fiddling
around with booting off a thumb drive - that tends to confuse just
about every Asus BIOS I have in my PC collection, mucking up the boot
order of the bootable devices. (Yes, I know about pressing F12, but
still find the floppy more convenient.)
/ Sits back and awaits the inevitable flamefest ...
BigH2K
"Multithreaded" <g4...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:op4km55vgrll4v7ob...@4ax.com...
Don't see why there would be one.
Floppy disc is old but proven tech. Admittedly I never fit one to a new
build these days but at least one of my pcs always has a floppy and I
wouldn't be without my USB floppy drive.
I agree that there is no common sense to going through all the motions of
making a bootable cd just to run one program that you use once in a blue
moon, it's just not worth the time investment and anyone who says otherwise
must have very expensive limited time, so there ;p
nobody >
And some of us just happen to have "tons" (or at least hundreds) of old
floppies laying around that DO have something we want.
I picked up a 150+ pile of 3.5's at an estate sale with old programming
libraries, plus a "transfer of copyright" from the estate manager. I'm
barely literate in C (+,++), but I know there's gems in there.
I have a "NIB" Canon "Combo Floppy" (both 3.5" and 5.25" in a single
5'25" bay) that's going into my new build machine.
Multithreaded
<useneth...@aol.com> wrote:
>I picked up a 150+ pile of 3.5's at an estate sale with old programming
>libraries, plus a "transfer of copyright" from the estate manager. I'm
>barely literate in C (+,++), but I know there's gems in there.
I haven't bought an actual floppy disk in many years, having collected
many over the ages since 1994. Does any firm out there still sell new
ones? Are they still being manufactured? I never thought to ask these
questions before, so it's off to Google with me now, to find out.
>I have a "NIB" Canon "Combo Floppy" (both 3.5" and 5.25" in a single
>5'25" bay) that's going into my new build machine.
Do you have any pics and details of this device? I didn't know such a
beast existed. If you have a pic on a webpage, please post the link
under here.
nobody >
First hit on Gugle..
http://www.computerpartsgalore.com/drives-floppy.htm
Canon MD5511-V6 1.44 and 1.2 Combo Floppy Drive 3.5" & 5.25" $68.00
Canon MD7511-C6 1.44 and 1.2 Combo Floppy Drive - IBM 1619721 3.5"
and 5.25" $68.00
http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS272US273&q=combo+3.5%22+and+5.25%22+floppy+drive&oq=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=ENtsS4vsII7QsgPx2NSyDQ&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CCgQrQQwAg
http://preview.tinyurl.com/yjbpn9h
On eBay
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3984.m38.l1313&_nkw=%22Combo+floppy%22&_sacat=See-All-Categories
http://preview.tinyurl.com/y96l8q2
I got my in a "boxocrap" for $5, so I was lucky.
I've seen and used these in the past. There are some issues.
Some BIOSes will not recognize them properly, either as drives, or as
"proper type" per drive letter. (IOW, there's confusion between the true
3.5 or 5.25 type)
It may be worth your while to peruse your local computer "junk shops"
and "recycling centers".
If you find a "dead one", don't despair if you can get it for $5 or less.
So-called "dead floppy drives" usually aren't. About 80%+ of the time,
they just need cleaning. I'm not talking about those "cleaning
floppies", I mean pulling the covers and physically scrubbing the heads
(top and bottom) with swabs and isopropyl alcohol or similar agent.
HTH..
Mike Tomlinson
<g4...@hotmail.com> writes
>Do you have any pics and details of this device? I didn't know such a
>beast existed. If you have a pic on a webpage, please post the link
>under here.
I had one for many years, a good drive. It was usually my last resort
if I had an iffy disk.
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:Rj6MS1o3au0J:www.recycledgoods.com/
item/8876.aspx+canon+dual+floppy+drive&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
--
(\__/)
(='.'=) Bunny says Windows 7 is Vi$ta reloaded.
(")_(") http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png
Daniel James
> >I have a "NIB" Canon "Combo Floppy" (both 3.5" and 5.25" in a single
> >5'25" bay) that's going into my new build machine.
>
> Do you have any pics and details of this device? I didn't know such a
> beast existed.
Years ago I had a Dell 486 machine with a combo floppy drive (actually,
I probably still have it, languishing in the attic). It was the shape
and size of a normal 5.25" half-height drive but had two slots in the
front. IIRC the 3.5" drive had to be A: and the 5.25" had to be B:, but
there may have been a jumper or something.
I don't know whether it was made by Canon ... I rather think not
(because I would probably have noticed and remembered if it had been)
but it's possible.
It worked quite well.
Cheers,
Daniel.