Can we build a USB 5.25" Floppy Drive?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video, I explain my journey to modify an external CD-ROM enclosure to work with a vintage 5.25" floppy drive. Using the DeviceSide Data FD5025 controller to connect to a floppy drive via USB, I finally get this project working. I then evaluate the hardware, documentation and software provided by DeviceSide, and provide my opinions on the experience.
00:00 - Why?
00:41 - The Options
01:22 - Prices
01:56 - Features
02:40 - The Mission
03:21 - Some Constraints...
04:05 - Getting to Work
07:33 - Quality Assurance
09:41 - Cleaning Up
10:12 - Evaluation
11:50 - End
Links :
www.deviceside.com/
www.winimage.com/ - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Kryoflux is not just a USB floppy drive, in fact, it's not that AT ALL. You cannot directly access disks with it.
What is does is read magnetic flux levels on the disk medium and transcribes them to your PC. These files will be about 40-50MB in size for each disk.
Reading the magnetic flux is important for preservation because floppy disks aren't usually mastered on a normal PC disk drive, they were written on specialty hardware that allowed them to do things normal drives can't. That's how floppy disk protection sectors work, they show up as errors in normal drives.
With a Kryoflux though, you can back up disks as a 1:1 analog copy, including these kinds of purposeful error tracks, and because it's format agnostic, it works on any format of disk from IBM PC to Mac to Amiga.
That is excellent info, thanks for sharing!
Great video!
Another major reason that 5.25 drives aren't normally supported via USB is that the USB specifications for floppy drives omitted 5.25 support. I was surprised by this until I read the specs myself.
I have yet to be able to wrap my head around the fact we cannot get the collective hobbyists to put together an actual working read/write 5.25 solution that reads/writes natively without images. I know the USB standard doesn't support it, but so what? There are plenty of proprietary USB devices with custom drivers etc, so what is holding back the development of an actual USB 5.25 floppy? Some say demand, but it is VERY evident (especially lately) that there is a huge demand for such a native solution. Ideally, an external shell with the pcb and power with connectors inside. USB and standard power plug on the outside. Or heck, even a brick 12v adapter would be suitable. I don't know enough to even begin, but it is obvious there are plenty of people who are.
Would buy one of these
Holy shit this is amazing! I've been looking for something like this for years! I do have an Epson SD880 installed into my Athlon X64 that is still up and running so I don't actually NEED this, but I certainly WANT it. Thank you for the video!
I have a 3rd-gen i7-3770K running a massive RAID array for storage. Attached to that machine is everything from Orb 2.2GB, Jaz, Zip, and other removable media drives, to floppies and a select few tape backup drives. That system is for nothing else but archiving and backup storage. That's all it does.
Agree. Data archival and preservation is more and more relevant as physical media starts to disappear. So much important stuff is still on there with no way to be seen or useful.
¡¡¡Simply, AWESOME!!!!
Another option to consider which would probably have been cheaper, though the software may have been more command-line oriented (I have a KryoFlux, so I haven't tried them yet) is to build a FluxEngine or a Greaseweazle.
(They're similar things you can make by soldering an appropriate connector onto an inexpensive development board, developed by people who felt the KryoFlux was too expensive and/or the personal edition had too restrictive a license or were in a region of the world the KryoFlux people won't sell to because they consider it too hard to enforce their license terms.)
Can this usb floppy controller, or any other like this one, be used as a normal old standard disk controller?
Having the old 5.25" disk drive in Windows as A: or B: -drive?
Without having to use any extra software to read/write to the disk drive?
To the extent of my current knowledge... no?
I have tried the USB to Floppy adapter (that includes a floppy controller chip) available on eBay or AliExpress, but the chip on it only supports/detects 3.5" drives, and even then, only the 1.44mb ones (and not the 720k). So maybe if that chip could be hacked to support more drive types, it would be possible? but that's way above my skill level. It DOES get detected as A: or B: drives by Windows, but seems to not be compatible with any drive that is not 3.5" 1.44mb so far.
This said, you would be still needted to do some adapting the connector (feasible) and matching the additional input of 12V with an external power supply because USB doesn't give that much voltage (also feasible).
No. Your only option is to find a PCIe based Floppy controller that is loading its own small firmware and booting it and then trying to boot from the attached drives. That might work. But that only applies, if this small BIOS is capable to use the memory addresses, which the original PC BIOS used for floppy drives. And i am not sure, if the latter is possible.
Did you try it on linux? I read that linux still supports internal 5 1/4 inch floppies. Maybe usb will work, too?
What is the "F *_D_* 5025" supposed to be?
You can have a 5.25 drive in a computer that supports USB if you have the right period motherboard. This makes it immensly easier to copy data from ancient 5.25 disks.
Please elaborate as I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Period-correct motherboards would indeed have the on-board floppy connector. This project is a solution for modern motherboards that do not have the floppy connector, so we have to rely on a separate USB adapter/controller to access 5.25 disks.
This said and if you prefer, the FD-5025 is designed to be put inside a computer case along with a drive, provided there's also an internal USB plug inside. I just preferred to put it in an external enclosure for portability across multiple computers.
@@theSoundCarddatabase I'm pretty sure what he meant is that most Pentium 4 boards and I think a hand full of core 2 duo type boards have floppy controllers that work with 1.2MB drives. I think once you get to the Core I series I think you can't find them... And well to be considered actually modern I think you want to at least be in that Core I series age range. So you could make something of a slow windows 10 machine that reads the floppies natively. Though I think your solution allows you to read non-pc disks, and not have to suffer with a "modern" machine that is kind of not modern.
This was a very detailed and well produced overview! But, if you had several vintage PCs with working floppy drives, why didn't you just read the disks there, then transfer the contents over to a modern system?
Thank you!
Very valid question too, and it's much appreciated.
For very pressing files I originally copied the data on other floppies, then transferred them on my modern system, just like you suggested. But the extenal 5.25" drive provides some benefits in my eyes :
1. Saving steps/time. I figured archiving lots of 5.25" floppies would be faster if directly done on the target system. Transferring to intermediary 3.5" floppies and archiving those instead, is a bit more time-consuming. My up-and-running retro system (currently singular) isn't networked, so an FTP server was not an option for the moment. I'm working on it!
2. Archival software. I haven't found a good disk imaging program that works on MS-DOS. Then again, I probably haven't searched enough? But even with the image file on a vintage system, there still needs to be a way transfer the files out.
3. Data integrity. I also feared injecting minute errors into the archival process without realizing, by tranferring the data from 5.25" drive to 3.5" drive, THEN from another 3.5" drive into a disk image.
4. Authenticity. I like to image original floppies when I can. Copying the contents of a 1.2MB floppy to a 1.44MB floppy, then imaging that second disk, felt wrong for some reason.
I hope this explains my frame of mind. I might not be seeing the whole picture though, so any of your insight is welcome. Cheers!
@@theSoundCarddatabase Any way they get archived is the best way :-) I was just curious. My usual process is to archive them on old hardware that has a network card in it, and I FTP them to a server. You can also use smb networking, and some others, see Retro Chris who has some good tutorials on his channel.
@@JimLeonard that’s the way I do it as well. Have a 486 setup with NT 3.1 and winimage 2.00 with the 5.25 and 3.5 inch drives. Copy it over to an ftp server and they’re good to go. I can definitely see the appeal of having a USB 5.25 inch floppy drive though and will consider building one of these in the next year.
@@kathrynradonich3982 There is not much point in having a USB based floppy drive, because you can't boot from them. All the boot disks and bootable games from the old days expect to see a floppy controller and their software can only talk with a floppy controller and not a USB controller.
It even gets worse, if you have some special formats. A USB based floppy drive solution can usually only read the most common formats.
Thus, reading and writing files to floppy disks formated with a FAT12 format is the only purpose of these USB floppy drives.
In my opinion, a ISA Ethernet NIC is a much better investment for an old PC. And that is what i use on my old 486 with a 3,5" and 5.25" drive.
@@OpenGL4ever I’m not looking to run the games or programs from the USB floppy, but instead use it to image the disk for archival purposes. As I said in my earlier comment I currently use a 486 I built specifically for this purpose. But being able to do it with more modern hardware would be a nice option to have.
Does the 5.25” USB floppy drive work with Commodore 64 5.25” floppy disks? Does it work with the C64 Mini and C64 Maxi?
The current list I have is :
- Apple DOS 3.3 (16-sector)
- Apple DOS 3.2 (13-sector)
- Apple ProDOS
- Commodore 1541
- TI-99/4A 90k
- TI-99/4A 180k
- TI-99/4A 360k
- Atari 810
- MS-DOS 1200k
- MS-DOS 360k
- North Star MDS-A-D 175k
- North Star MDS-A-D 350k
- Kaypro 2 CP/M 2.2
- Kaypro 4 CP/M 2.2
- CalComp Vistagraphics 4500
- PMC MicroMate
- Tandy Color Computer Disk BASIC
- Motorola VersaDOS
I don't have more specific information than that, but you are welcome to write to DeviceSide and report back!
What about just using a 1.44 floppy to USB adapter, an adapter, and a separate molex plug?
Good question, and I did try it off-camera. It doesn't work because the 1.44 floppy to USB adapter you speak of (the one easily found on eBay and AliExpress) has two flaws :
1. It has the wrong connector, but that could be arranged.
2. The controller chip on the adapter, only supports 1.44mb drives. Not 720k, not 1.2mb, not 360k.
So while I could adapt the cable itself, the adapter wouldn't recognize the drive itself, and the drive wouldn't appear in my OS.
where can i get a good cheap 5 1/4 unit?
Good question! I found some at computer recycling centers, others on ebay, and others on amibay. Amibay is a good retro community to trade.
Great video but I think i'll keep my windows xp machine with a motherboard which has a fdd in it. Pop that tower aside my desk and remote access the windows xp machine, files can even be accessed via my windows 10 machine by sharing both A and B drives on the xp machine.
Sure, that seems like a viable solution too! I needed something... more compact than a second tower.
is this USB-floppy adapter still orderable?
yes.
But can you write an image back to a floppy disk?
Not to my knowledge. I mean the drive physically can do it in hardware because it's a real drive, but I believe DeviceSide didn't implement write in their software/app yet.
Holy cow, how come the KF costs so much?
Does the drive appear accessable natively within Linux?
It's a good question, but I don't have an answer! I currently only have DOS/3.11, Win7 and Win10 systems running over here.
put Linux on a usb drive, run it on your newer windows 10 systems and it will boot as a Live OS, no installation required and it should appear as a mountable volume that you can access natively.
Beutifull!!
Where do I get it in Canada?
send them an email! they will make arrangements.
@@theSoundCarddatabase to who do I send it I just want usb 525 desk Drive
the company name is "Device Side Data". I think they can sell a kit with the USB device and an enclosure for your floppy drive. You have to find your own drive (on ebay probably?)
In theory you should be able to make it work within Windows as an actual floppy drive. If you have access to the source code of that imager, you could figure out how the communications happens and then write your own driver.
I have placed a 5.25 1.2MB drive into a Windows 7 machine (newest Ive tried since I have no need after that) and it was able to recognise, but the problem was that when I put in a known good disk and double click the B: drive, Windows keep showing that there is no disk inside, but if I go and open the drive as a block device in a hex editor or some sort of imaging software I am able to dump all the sectors of the disk as an img file which can later be opened and the contents extracted. Funny that even in newer and more recent Windows Builds the 5.25 floppy drive icons are still being updated my Microsoft; someone is actually sitting at their desk at MS and using a graphics editor to make the icon of an obsolete rarely used piece of hardware look modern!?
here's
it's way easier to write drivers for Linux than Windows
I do like the concept but I don't like this proprietary software to use it. It will be much better if windows could see this drive as regular floppy
Agree! I can tinker with stuff and have some programming basics, but I'm far from where I can make my own drivers, sadly :)
This said, in my specific case where I needed to image/archive floppies, it serves my goal so far.
if this can work with a PC then I'm sure I can try this for a Raspberry PI 4.
Read only! Better solutions is old PC who support 5.25 floppy and have USB port. Read file with 5.25 floppy and copy on USB stick and insert in new PC than read data.
For most applications, this would be an entirely appropriate solution! But for archiving exact disk images (sometimes important for old copy-protection) or just preserving data as it is, I found it easier to skip the middle step.
Yes its posible... from usb 3,5 floppy :D
Very cool! Please explain how!
@@theSoundCarddatabase th-cam.com/video/Bjd2jSHBw7E/w-d-xo.html
Actually, USB can do 12V. USB3.1. :D
To my knowledge, the 12v mode is only for speed-charging devices, but doesn't allow data transfer at the same time. But I may be mistaken!
@@theSoundCarddatabase Notebooks can be connected through USB3 and can be charged at the same time, can't they? Or is that Thunderbolt feature? But still, using USB3.x would be just a joke for this use-case. :)
@@MrEnyecz It can't draw enough wattage.
Hmm, yeah, I wonder why they figured they couldn't have made some regular drive drivers for this. Better than nothing, though.
You ez bee port???
meow!
It would have been cheaper to use an old computer and network it to a modern machine or transfer to an SD card.
Agree! It all depends on your use case! if you're only interested in files, then an old computer + SD card would work. I was more into making 1:1 disk images, so this solution worked better for me.
Why are you blurring your user name?
It had personal info in it, something that I rectified since then. I wasn't in the mood to re-record that footage twice, so I just blurred it!
But I'm curious, why are you asking about my blurred username?
You don't need to be limited to 5V power just to have a USB-connected 5.25" floppy drive! How do you think USB-connected printers and scanners, etc. work?
My guess is they're simply made with 5V in mind from the design phase and use only 5V components/motors/lights inside - the IBM USB floppy drives I own are 5V 500mA, and the Canon USB-powered scanner I have is 5V 500mA as well. As for printers, finding one that is exclusively powered by USB seems impossible - most "portable" ones I seem to find actually have a battery inside and are using USB to charge it.
@@theSoundCarddatabase: So my point is that any logic that "Uhh, well, USB 5 1/4" floppy drives aren't manufactured because they'd need to have a voltage higher than what USB can provide, uhh..." doesn't make any sense, because that never stopped mains-powered USB printers, scanners, and hard disk drives, etc. from being produced commercially.
@@HelloKittyFanMan you attribute a lot of uuhhhs to me. I agree with you that a mains-powered floppy drive enclosure, that connects through USB for data only is possible. It is basically what I assembled. If the initial problem was to find a floppy-to-usb solution, then it exists. If the problem was finding a floppy-to-usb-only solution, that would not be possible if you want to reuse actual old floppy drives. This said, why newer floppy drives with 5V inner workings instead of 12V were never done, I have no idea.
@@theSoundCarddatabase: "A lot"? 2 isn't "a lot." But I agree that you didn't actually say those.
Yes, I see that what you've made here is what I'm talking about. But you used the logic that the reason is not made commercially is probably because that sort of floppy drive needs more than 5 volts. Which I'm saying is exactly nothing that would prevent any average peripheral manufacturer from making one of these commercially. But I don't understand your supposed comparison between problems. I'm just saying that your intro. makes it sound like you believe the reason there aren't any commercially produced USB 5.25" floppy drives is simply because of this 5V/12V thing, and that's what I'm saying doesn't make sense, because they can easily get around that. Not as portably, obviously, but it would be very doable anyway.
But you know, these days I bet you they _could_ even make a 5V-only-based 5.25" floppy drive with the motor technology that we have now, in the same way as they have done with 3.5" standard floppy drives. But for some reason that solution still hasn't existed commercially. Do you think I would be wrong to guess that the size of spindle motor needed to spin the kind of hub grip needed for 5" floppies could be driven by a motor that's based on the newer technology for motors of that size now? Or do you think it would still have to be too massive even now, without requiring a higher voltage?
But anyway, I'm almost certain that a manufacturer could make the commercial version of what you have made here, even to the point of making it show up as a regular drive, but with external power if necessary. However, it seems that at least something in just the _market_ has still stopped them from going through with it so far.
Oh, come on, you don't need the fan in that thing!
"I think... in my opinion"? Heheh, oops!
China made shipping crates, upon shipping crates, of stuff. Why they never made one of these, I do not know.
👏👏👏
This is a real Retro guy.
Not that impostor LGR.
Keep them coming!
But you can’t write...
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sadly it seems creator is just going for money sink and no progress and new development to make his product more valuable :/