OT: Can modern PCs run 5-1/4" floppy drives?

[krw]

**** off, KeithStain.

If you'll go look up the lyrics, you'll see that they fit better than
you might imagine.

You are owned.

BTW, Dimbulb, how is mom? Still have that headache?

 

[Eeyore]

Well, for me the first avenue is always to contact the comapny that sold
me the merchandise. Give them a chance. That would be Dell, and so far
they were pretty responsive. Foxconn will be next but I won't get my
hopes up.

Didn't you say the Dell Mobo you have is a stripped down version of another one
they make ? It's entirely possible that the 'full fat' BIOS will work on the
Dell mobo. It's likely to be alot easier to get a copy of that (probably as a
BIOS update).

Graham

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

I see you finally found one of mommy's socks that fit.

It's a good thing she wears size 17 construction boots, or his fat
hand would never fit.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

It's not THE phoenix Award BIOS v1.0.3, It is the:

<insert MOBO make and model name here> BIOS v 1.0.3, provided by the
Award Bios vendor. The versions are MOBO specific, and IF Dell comes out
with another, it will increment. Phoenix is merely the provider. Dell
authors the code.

So Dell wrote the BIOS? Interesting. I thought they were migrating
farther away from the design process. At least they seem to be doing
that with hardware.

Actually, the entire MOBO is likely made FOR Dell by a popular MOBO
maker.

Yes, by Foxconn.

There's your solution. Examine the form factor of the MOBO, and BUY a
cheap MOBO that fits it, that carries the floppy utilization capacity you
need! :-] Bet you could find one for less than $50.

Either that or get a BIOS for a similar G33 Foxconn mobo that includes
the drive support I need. If the HW is on the mobo it can't be rocket
science to access it. Someone said that Linux bypasses the BIOS and see
all the stuff that's on the mobo but was blocked out by the BIOS that
came with it. Maybe there is a kludge for Windows that does that.

My curiosity tells me that I want to figure this out some day and not
take the easy road of swapping the mobo. But not right now, no time.

Download and run: http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

It will give you a lot of information about any computer running
Windows 95 and up OS. Save the HTML page for future reference.

Here is the information on the motherboard in this computer:


Board: First International Computer, Inc. K8MC51G PCB 1.x
Serial Number: C3S6397xxx
Bus Clock: 201 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 01/13/2006







OK, dimbulb, who assembled the computer, and who wrote the BIOS?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[Philipp Klaus Krause]

The only question would then be whether or not they had specs there for
there older no longer sold or supported cards.

Since SCSI and floppy are not the same bus, it doesn't make much sense
that they would carry it on their generally component packed cards.

They still have specs for their ancient ISA cards there.

Philipp

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Well, for me the first avenue is always to contact the comapny that sold
me the merchandise. Give them a chance. That would be Dell, and so far
they were pretty responsive. Foxconn will be next but I won't get my
hopes up. IME the responsiveness of Chinese companies is, ahem, sub-par.
Unless you happen to be the cousin twice-removed of the brother-in-law
of the chief engineer there. Taiwanese companies were usually very
different in that respect. I remember a long time ago when I contacted
Tseng Labs (remember them?) because I needed to address their graphics
chip directly out of an ultrasound scan converter. Then next day the
phone rang and a woman asked whether she could help. Turns out she was
one of the designers of that chip, knew it inside out and answered every
single question about it and actually gave me some valuable info that
wasn't in the datasheet.

The reason for this exercise is not to save a buck but to learn and also
to see whether a system like this could be used in some client
applications. They often require XP as the OS just like I do and legacy
support is also important. Piecing together a system isn't an option and
usually it has to come from places like HP or Dell.

I wonder if the chip for the external USB floppy drive will support
either 5.25" drive? It would be a niche market, but I'm sure that there
would be some sales. Either that, or start a reasonably priced data
conversion service.

New 5.25" drives are becoming scarce, but I have about 100 good, used
360 KB and 1.2 MB drives, along with computers that support them. If I
put a clean install of Windows 98 SE, or ME on one I could burn a CDROM
or copy their files to a USB stick, one floppy per folder. That way
they could make as many 1.44 floppies as they want, or just keep it on
the media. A few bucks per disk, plus the media and shipping costs.

BTW, I have about 1000 new Maxell 1.44 MB floppies on hand that I
could use.


I am working to recover the bookkeeping data for a local non profit,
after their Windows 95 computer died. They made the mistake of not
replacing the computer, because it was only used a few hours a month.
When the power supply started acting up, they just kept using it, even
when it took them a half hour to get it to power up.


I would recommend that you tell your customers that any old media be
converted while it's still readable. Some 5.25" floppies become
unreadable with age. Programs like the original Norton Disk Doctor can
recover a lot of files, but it takes hours, or days. If they are too
far gone, you have to go the expensive route of commercial data recovery
services. I wonder how much it would help, if I added another gain
stage to the head preamp circuit, for those failing disks?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[YD]

Late at night, by candle light, Joerg

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:33:35 -0700, Joerg

It's the
Phoenix AwardBIOS 1.0.3. I am very surprised that such legacy
features were chopped off.

It's not THE phoenix Award BIOS v1.0.3, It is the:

<insert MOBO make and model name here> BIOS v 1.0.3, provided by the
Award Bios vendor. The versions are MOBO specific, and IF Dell comes
out
with another, it will increment. Phoenix is merely the provider.
Dell authors the code.

So Dell wrote the BIOS? Interesting. I thought they were migrating
farther away from the design process. At least they seem to be doing
that with hardware.


Actually, the entire MOBO is likely made FOR Dell by a popular MOBO
maker.

Yes, by Foxconn.


There's your solution. Examine the form factor of the MOBO, and
BUY a
cheap MOBO that fits it, that carries the floppy utilization capacity
you
need! :-] Bet you could find one for less than $50.

Either that or get a BIOS for a similar G33 Foxconn mobo that includes
the drive support I need. If the HW is on the mobo it can't be rocket
science to access it. Someone said that Linux bypasses the BIOS and
see all the stuff that's on the mobo but was blocked out by the BIOS
that came with it. Maybe there is a kludge for Windows that does that.

My curiosity tells me that I want to figure this out some day and not
take the easy road of swapping the mobo. But not right now, no time.

Joerg, Don't mess about! Try a Linux Live CD. You could be pleasantly
surprised.

Much of my stuff doesn't work under Linux and some supposedly not even
in a VM.

If it lets you mount both the 5 1/4" drive and the NTFS partition you
can copy off the files. Then just boot back into Windows.

- YD.

 

[Joerg]

Late at night, by candle light, Joerg

Joerg wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:33:35 -0700, Joerg

It's the
Phoenix AwardBIOS 1.0.3. I am very surprised that such legacy
features were chopped off.
It's not THE phoenix Award BIOS v1.0.3, It is the:

<insert MOBO make and model name here> BIOS v 1.0.3, provided by the
Award Bios vendor. The versions are MOBO specific, and IF Dell comes
out
with another, it will increment. Phoenix is merely the provider.
Dell authors the code.

So Dell wrote the BIOS? Interesting. I thought they were migrating
farther away from the design process. At least they seem to be doing
that with hardware.


Actually, the entire MOBO is likely made FOR Dell by a popular MOBO
maker.

Yes, by Foxconn.


There's your solution. Examine the form factor of the MOBO, and
BUY a
cheap MOBO that fits it, that carries the floppy utilization capacity
you
need! :-] Bet you could find one for less than $50.
Either that or get a BIOS for a similar G33 Foxconn mobo that includes
the drive support I need. If the HW is on the mobo it can't be rocket
science to access it. Someone said that Linux bypasses the BIOS and
see all the stuff that's on the mobo but was blocked out by the BIOS
that came with it. Maybe there is a kludge for Windows that does that.

My curiosity tells me that I want to figure this out some day and not
take the easy road of swapping the mobo. But not right now, no time.
Joerg, Don't mess about! Try a Linux Live CD. You could be pleasantly
surprised.

Much of my stuff doesn't work under Linux and some supposedly not even
in a VM.

If it lets you mount both the 5 1/4" drive and the NTFS partition you
can copy off the files. Then just boot back into Windows.

Thanks! That is a good idea. Would that be the Knoppix CD people are
always talking about?

 

[Joerg]

I wonder if the chip for the external USB floppy drive will support
either 5.25" drive? It would be a niche market, but I'm sure that there
would be some sales. Either that, or start a reasonably priced data
conversion service.

It does, I checked the datasheet of the chip that's on there.

New 5.25" drives are becoming scarce, but I have about 100 good, used
360 KB and 1.2 MB drives, along with computers that support them. If I
put a clean install of Windows 98 SE, or ME on one I could burn a CDROM
or copy their files to a USB stick, one floppy per folder. That way
they could make as many 1.44 floppies as they want, or just keep it on
the media. A few bucks per disk, plus the media and shipping costs.

BTW, I have about 1000 new Maxell 1.44 MB floppies on hand that I
could use.


I am working to recover the bookkeeping data for a local non profit,
after their Windows 95 computer died. They made the mistake of not
replacing the computer, because it was only used a few hours a month.
When the power supply started acting up, they just kept using it, even
when it took them a half hour to get it to power up.


I would recommend that you tell your customers that any old media be
converted while it's still readable. Some 5.25" floppies become
unreadable with age. Programs like the original Norton Disk Doctor can
recover a lot of files, but it takes hours, or days. If they are too
far gone, you have to go the expensive route of commercial data recovery
services. I wonder how much it would help, if I added another gain
stage to the head preamp circuit, for those failing disks?

Thing is, many don't realize that they need to get back to the original
disks until something has happened. Once we even had to locate an
employee who had worked at the company a long, long time ago. Luckily he
had survived a serious case of cancer.

I doubt a premap would help much. The circuits in there are pretty close
to optimum.

 

[Joerg]

Didn't you say the Dell Mobo you have is a stripped down version of another one
they make ? It's entirely possible that the 'full fat' BIOS will work on the
Dell mobo. It's likely to be alot easier to get a copy of that (probably as a
BIOS update).

Won't help much because while the other mobos do have legacy ports they
still don't list 5-1/4" availability.

 

[JosephKK]

ChairmanOfTheBored [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

No, dumbass. A cast case is used in many, but NOT the seagate
drives.
And the casting is MINIMALLY machined on the boss for the spindle
motor, and the locations for mounting it into the machining center,
and aligning the PCB so the rear connectors are all correctly
located, you stupid ****.

The seagate case is FULLY machined, and it is done so from a
billet,
not a casting.

Maybe one day, you will know the difference, you goddamned retard.

My newest drive is a Seagate, bought a couple of months ago. The
frame is cast then machined, just like all my others. I told you
that i actually looked. You need to pry your head from where the sun
doesn't shine.

 

[JosephKK]

ChairmanOfTheBored [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Joerg wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:33:35 -0700, Joerg

It's the
Phoenix AwardBIOS 1.0.3. I am very surprised that such legacy
features were chopped off.

It's not THE phoenix Award BIOS v1.0.3, It is the:

<insert MOBO make and model name here> BIOS v 1.0.3, provided
by the
Award Bios vendor. The versions are MOBO specific, and IF Dell
comes out
with another, it will increment. Phoenix is merely the
provider. Dell authors the code.

So Dell wrote the BIOS? Interesting. I thought they were
migrating farther away from the design process. At least they
seem to be doing that with hardware.


Actually, the entire MOBO is likely made FOR Dell by a popular
MOBO
maker.

Yes, by Foxconn.


There's your solution. Examine the form factor of the MOBO,
and BUY a
cheap MOBO that fits it, that carries the floppy utilization
capacity you
need! :-] Bet you could find one for less than $50.

Either that or get a BIOS for a similar G33 Foxconn mobo that
includes the drive support I need. If the HW is on the mobo it
can't be rocket science to access it. Someone said that Linux
bypasses the BIOS and see all the stuff that's on the mobo but
was blocked out by the BIOS that came with it. Maybe there is a
kludge for Windows that does that.

My curiosity tells me that I want to figure this out some day and
not take the easy road of swapping the mobo. But not right now,
no time.

Joerg, Don't mess about! Try a Linux Live CD. You could be
pleasantly surprised.

Much of my stuff doesn't work under Linux and some supposedly not
even in a VM.

Bullshit. I'll bet that it works under DOSBox, or QEMU either one,
whether from within DOS, Windows, Linux, or even on a MAC, as the
app has no way of knowing what it is running under.

Utter retarded horseshit. Every one of those OSs has documented calls
to ask just what OS and version is installed.

 

[Eeyore]

Won't help much because while the other mobos do have legacy ports they
still don't list 5-1/4" availability.

Oh really ! I'm curious why they removed that functionality. I'm sure it has to be
patchable. Does it still support 2 floppies ?

Graham

 

[Rich Grise]

YD wrote: ....

Thanks! That is a good idea. Would that be the Knoppix CD people are
always talking about?

Either that or one of these:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Jamie]

I wonder if the chip for the external USB floppy drive will support
either 5.25" drive? It would be a niche market, but I'm sure that there
would be some sales. Either that, or start a reasonably priced data
conversion service.

New 5.25" drives are becoming scarce, but I have about 100 good, used
360 KB and 1.2 MB drives, along with computers that support them. If I
put a clean install of Windows 98 SE, or ME on one I could burn a CDROM
or copy their files to a USB stick, one floppy per folder. That way
they could make as many 1.44 floppies as they want, or just keep it on
the media. A few bucks per disk, plus the media and shipping costs.

BTW, I have about 1000 new Maxell 1.44 MB floppies on hand that I
could use.


I am working to recover the bookkeeping data for a local non profit,
after their Windows 95 computer died. They made the mistake of not
replacing the computer, because it was only used a few hours a month.
When the power supply started acting up, they just kept using it, even
when it took them a half hour to get it to power up.


I would recommend that you tell your customers that any old media be
converted while it's still readable. Some 5.25" floppies become
unreadable with age. Programs like the original Norton Disk Doctor can
recover a lot of files, but it takes hours, or days. If they are too
far gone, you have to go the expensive route of commercial data recovery
services. I wonder how much it would help, if I added another gain
stage to the head preamp circuit, for those failing disks?

I have a cheap (computer show purchase)USB floppy drive reader/write
that simply plugs into the port of an existing drive. it supports the
5.25 drives. You simply go into it's software and specify the drive type
that is connected to it. It does not auto detect the drive type.

If any one is interested, I would have to look at the make and model
of it at work tomorrow.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

Won't help much because while the other mobos do have legacy ports they
still don't list 5-1/4" availability.

My Asus is less than 2 yrs old, and has full 360k 1.2M 720k 1.44M
coverage.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

ChairmanOfTheBored [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Baron wrote:
Joerg wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:33:35 -0700, Joerg

It's the
Phoenix AwardBIOS 1.0.3. I am very surprised that such legacy
features were chopped off.

It's not THE phoenix Award BIOS v1.0.3, It is the:

<insert MOBO make and model name here> BIOS v 1.0.3, provided
by the
Award Bios vendor. The versions are MOBO specific, and IF Dell
comes out
with another, it will increment. Phoenix is merely the
provider. Dell authors the code.

So Dell wrote the BIOS? Interesting. I thought they were
migrating farther away from the design process. At least they
seem to be doing that with hardware.


Actually, the entire MOBO is likely made FOR Dell by a popular
MOBO
maker.

Yes, by Foxconn.


There's your solution. Examine the form factor of the MOBO,
and BUY a
cheap MOBO that fits it, that carries the floppy utilization
capacity you
need! :-] Bet you could find one for less than $50.

Either that or get a BIOS for a similar G33 Foxconn mobo that
includes the drive support I need. If the HW is on the mobo it
can't be rocket science to access it. Someone said that Linux
bypasses the BIOS and see all the stuff that's on the mobo but
was blocked out by the BIOS that came with it. Maybe there is a
kludge for Windows that does that.

My curiosity tells me that I want to figure this out some day and
not take the easy road of swapping the mobo. But not right now,
no time.

Joerg, Don't mess about! Try a Linux Live CD. You could be
pleasantly surprised.


Much of my stuff doesn't work under Linux and some supposedly not
even in a VM.

Bullshit. I'll bet that it works under DOSBox, or QEMU either one,
whether from within DOS, Windows, Linux, or even on a MAC, as the
app has no way of knowing what it is running under.

Utter retarded horseshit. Every one of those OSs has documented calls
to ask just what OS and version is installed.

XP under QEMU looks like XP from the boot to software. PERIOD.

 

[IAmTheSlime]

Either that or one of these:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

;-)

Cheers!
Rich

Actually, the most comprehensive "service utility" disc would be the
most recent, Knoppix 5.1.1 Live DVD.

http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix-dvd/

Very fast streamers, Kernel's servers are.

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

I have a cheap (computer show purchase)USB floppy drive reader/write
that simply plugs into the port of an existing drive. it supports the
5.25 drives. You simply go into it's software and specify the drive type
that is connected to it. It does not auto detect the drive type.

If any one is interested, I would have to look at the make and model
of it at work tomorrow.

Yes, and to see if it's still available anywhere.



--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[YD]

Late at night, by candle light, Joerg

Late at night, by candle light, Joerg

Baron wrote:
Joerg wrote:

ChairmanOfTheBored wrote:
On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:33:35 -0700, Joerg

It's the
Phoenix AwardBIOS 1.0.3. I am very surprised that such legacy
features were chopped off.
It's not THE phoenix Award BIOS v1.0.3, It is the:

<insert MOBO make and model name here> BIOS v 1.0.3, provided by the
Award Bios vendor. The versions are MOBO specific, and IF Dell comes
out
with another, it will increment. Phoenix is merely the provider.
Dell authors the code.

So Dell wrote the BIOS? Interesting. I thought they were migrating
farther away from the design process. At least they seem to be doing
that with hardware.


Actually, the entire MOBO is likely made FOR Dell by a popular MOBO
maker.

Yes, by Foxconn.


There's your solution. Examine the form factor of the MOBO, and
BUY a
cheap MOBO that fits it, that carries the floppy utilization capacity
you
need! :-] Bet you could find one for less than $50.
Either that or get a BIOS for a similar G33 Foxconn mobo that includes
the drive support I need. If the HW is on the mobo it can't be rocket
science to access it. Someone said that Linux bypasses the BIOS and
see all the stuff that's on the mobo but was blocked out by the BIOS
that came with it. Maybe there is a kludge for Windows that does that.

My curiosity tells me that I want to figure this out some day and not
take the easy road of swapping the mobo. But not right now, no time.
Joerg, Don't mess about! Try a Linux Live CD. You could be pleasantly
surprised.

Much of my stuff doesn't work under Linux and some supposedly not even
in a VM.

If it lets you mount both the 5 1/4" drive and the NTFS partition you
can copy off the files. Then just boot back into Windows.

Thanks! That is a good idea. Would that be the Knoppix CD people are
always talking about?

Sure. Take a look at http://www.linux.org in distributions/LiveCD for
alternatives. Grab the image and burn it to CD. YMMV.

- YD.