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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Anyone in Sydney able and willing to pull files off a DOS 5.25 floppy?
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RetroJoe Senior Member  Joined: 06/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 289 |
It's been a long time since I posted on TBS, but lurk every week or so to check in on developments. I even have have a few Picos in my parts drawer, and am hoping to build a Picomite VGA in the not-too-distant future. Regarding the CMM2 and William's recent post, I guess I am one of the "guilty as charged" retro PC guys who discovered the CMM2 in the height of the lockdown, and have slowly wandered away. But, I am not too far away, spiritually or "BASICally"- my current project is an "Altair Arduino" using the Arduino Due and a bunch of FOSS. In fact, the creator of the project, David Hansel, name-checks Geoff and his ASCII video terminal, having originally used it to front-end his Altair emulator then using it for design inspiration to build a clone of the Cromemco Dazzler, arguably the first "GPU card" for personal computers, as the Altair was defacto the first mass-market PC. I've found a cute-as-a-button case to put my own clone in, so I'll post photos once I'm done with wiring up all the blinking lights and front-panel switches. The first "tabula rasa" one is below :) OK, now for the retro "ask". As luck would have it, I work in North America for an Australian company, and my colleague in Sydney (Jason) recently asked me if I could pull files off a 5.25 floppy for him. The answer is "yes", but rather than snail mail, I thought I would ask the (Oz-centric) TBS community if anyone living near Sydney would be willing and able to spend an hour or so with Jason and transfer the files to a USB drive. I can do the rest - Jason's goal is to resurrect the 40 year old application in DOS BOX or equivalent. Please let me know ASAP, and I'll take it from there. Happy Shedding !!  Edited 2022-09-20 07:56 by RetroJoe Enjoy Every Sandwich / Joe P. |
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Quazee137 Guru  Joined: 07/08/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 371 |
have them check out this USB 5.25 Floppy and reading floppies hope this helps Quazee137 |
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| tgerbic Newbie  Joined: 25/07/2019 Location: United StatesPosts: 31 |
Unfortunately that link is for a 3.5" USB drive. I spent some time early last year looking for a 5.25" USB drive to attach to a laptop and could not find one anywhere. I ended up buying a FC5025 USB 5.25 Floppy Controller from Device Side Data. With this, I can read a variety of different format 5.25 floppies. The restriction is it cannot write to a floppy, but for what I needed at the time, it got the job done. I still had an XP with 3.5 and 5.25 drives in it, and have a USB 3.5" external drive, so I am covered for most needs. Really comes in handy for reading/writing HP LIF formatted disks. Since this was a bit of a wake-up call to do something serious about now and future floppy disk reading and writing problems I built up two older PCs for floppy work, one with multiboot DOS and one with Fedora 28 32-bit. As time passes, reading old floppy disks is becoming quite a problem, especially since modern mother boards no longer have floppy support hardware and BIOS support for floppy disks. I have also heard people having trouble finding 5.25 drives that still work. Good luck and I think the FC5025 is going to be the best bet, outside of building up an old PC, or having a friend with a working old PC. |
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| Quazee137 Guru Joined: 07/08/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 371 |
well that link wasn't the one I meant to use try this one. USB to 5.25 floppy I copied the wrong link in the my list. Now I hope this helps.  Quazee137 |
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