5-1/4' drive on modern PC

From: Tom Peters <tpeters_at_mixcom.com>
Date: Fri Dec 10 14:29:46 2004

There was an attempt to "simplify" connection of multiple floppy drives
(meaning TWO) at one time by adding a "twist" to the cable-- some
conductors in the ribbon are cut out and reversed, which is a sort of
"cable select" for floppy drives.

I seem to recall in this case that one would jumper both drives as drive A
in such a case, or as DS0.

Stupid idea. Use a straight thru floppy cable and jumper one for DS0 and
one for DS1. We get it.

If you intermingle the two drive select ideas you may have problems where
both or niether drives light up and niether can read.

> >Pete Turnbull wrote:
>> >--On Friday, December 10, 2004 07:40:53 -0500 Gene Ehrich
>> <gehrich_at_tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Is there any way to attach and access a 5-1/4" diskette drive on a
>>> modern day PC under either WIN98SE or XP PRO?
>>
>> Yes, just plug it in like a 3.5" drive. Assuming the drive has the
>> appropriate jumper settings for a PC, it will work fine. XP Pro will
>> even change the drive icon accordingly. I have 2 machines set up like
>> that. If this is the machine's second drive, the only gotcha I can
>> think of is that a small number of motherboards seem to only have one
>> drive select, and hence can only support one drive (my Asus is like
>> that -- I just disabled the on-board controller and used an old one).
>
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> Under Windows 98 SE on a 750 MHz Pentium III, I installed
> BOTH a 3.5" drive (A:) and a 5 1/4" drive (B:)
>
> The ONLY real problem (aside from setting the jumpers and
> using the correct cables, etc. was that at one point I
> removed the 5 1/4" drive. When I attempted to add the
> 5 1/4" drive back to the configuration, I seem to remember
> that it would NOT accept the second drive. Finally in
> desperation, I removed the 3.5" drive as well, then added
> back BOTH the 3.5" and 5 1/4" drives at the same time.
> That seemed to solve the problem.
>
> I use the 5 1/4" HD 1.2 MByte drive as an RX50 (sometimes
> even as an RX33 with a change in the media - ask if there
> are any questions) under E11 on the Pentium III so that
> I can transfer small files (up to 400 KBytes) from/to a
> PDP-11 with the real DEC RX50 drive. On the PC, PUTR from
> John Wilson is also able to FORMAT (LLF) the RX50 media.
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Jerome Fine
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Received on Fri Dec 10 2004 - 14:29:46 GMT