5-1/4' drive on modern PC

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Sat Dec 11 08:34:47 2004

At 04:58 PM 12/10/2004, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
>There are 3-1/2 inch drives for the USB. It might be that
>the software would see a 5-1/4 drive as it is through
>one of these interfaces. Remove the 3-1/2 and wire it
>to the 5-1/4.

And power would come from where? I doubt USB can power
an old 5 1/4".

> One of the catalogs that I've seen recently had
>a USB experimenters kit. One could most likely use
>one of these with a PIC and a controller chip to
>interface to just about any drive.

And these kits let you set all the magic parameters that
are sent to the OS? And one of those tells what type
of floppy it is? I wonder how that's done. Maybe 8" is
possible, too.

At 05:30 PM 12/10/2004, Fred Cisin wrote:
>It may be possible to convert some USB drives from 3.5 to 5.25.
>But many of the MODERN ones have combined the USB interface with
>the circuitry of the drive.

I thought the same thing... along with thinking that these USB
3 1/2" externals must be very low-power, laptop-y sorts of drives.

- John
Received on Sat Dec 11 2004 - 08:34:47 GMT