It's 2025: do you know where your 5¼" floppy drives are?

[eccerr0r]

Oh wow.

As in the other thread I was trying to revive/re-bootstrap an old Apple IIe and wasn't successful reading or writing any disk. Both drives behave similarly.

Then I was wondering, what about my PC floppy drives? I have a HH 5¼" HD drive and a combo 5¼+3½ drive. I tried formatting the disk that wouldn't work in the Apple and it didn't work in the PC either!

Then I tried a HD 5.25 disk ... it won't even touch the disk either! Just like the Apple DD disk, "Not Ready!"

Weird. Seems the PC drive is having trouble clamping on the diskette and not spinning (should be a direct drive so no belt). (The PC is an K6-233 on 82430TX running an old copy of Linux and just the DOS portion of Win98).

The Apple IIe does use a belt, so perhaps it's suspect. But then I realized, do I have any more fluorescent lamps that blink at 60Hz? All are LED or high frequency electronic ballasts!?! Ugh... then I found a LED hooked up to a transformer with no filter caps. Ahh that should work!

The Disk ]['s speed check ring came up pretty solid didn't move all that much. So I guess it's spinning okay at least.

So now is the question... what's your success rate on reading/writing 5¼" disks today? Surprised I'm having no luck at all.

The 3½" disk party is going to be another issue, though I have a small pile of 3½ drives (and an HP OB600 and another USB 3½" floppy drive) to go through to find a working drive. 5¼ drive? Not so much, just those two PC drives and the two on the //e...

[CapLeaker]

I don’t have any Apple disks, but I DO know where my 5.25” and 3 1/2” disks are. Remember those huge 8” floppy disks? I guess I should be in a museum too.

[stj]

3.5" disks are shit,
always where.

[eccerr0r]

sometimes I wonder, were the number of 5¼" disks ever made more or less than the number of 3½" disks?

But yeah, already having readability losses in 3½" disks, leading to believe 5¼" disks are older and worse...

[CapLeaker]

The 5.25” and 3.5” were a ton more popular than the 8” ones. But the most produced floppy disk was the 3.5”.

[eccerr0r]

Yeah seems so, though probably the largest contributor was the PC and partially mac. Amigas and other systems were minor consumers. But there were so,so,so many 5¼" computers out there that one would think there were a lot too.

Granted every single 5¼" HD (15spt) disk was PC I think, though not all 80 track 5¼" disks were PC. DD 35/40 track disk were all over the place...

[CapLeaker]

There were a lot of 5.25” disks, true… but there were more 3.5”. Also the programs got bigger needing more disks.

[eccerr0r]

Uh wow. not related to your post but this new version of forum software put an irrelevant inline ad in your reply as if you wrote the ad and trying to peddle the product... I'm not sure I'm liking this version...

[CapLeaker]

Uh wow. not related to your post but this new version of forum software put an irrelevant inline ad in your reply as if you wrote the ad and trying to peddle the product... I'm not sure I'm liking this version...

I hope that is getting taking care of!

were you logged in and got the add?

[eccerr0r]

Yes I'm getting ads while I'm posting. I don't think I can post this without being logged in... Some of these ads are obtrusive and distracting and TBH if it's trying to get me to leave this platform, it's working...

BTW back on topic, I just got some known good formatted disks. Was able to verify one of my Apple Disk II's as working as well as my dual combo drive. My single 5¼" HD drive however is sick... just a mechanical issue however: the hub clamp is not working. A bit of extra force on the clamp and the drive reads once more!

[eccerr0r]

Ugh ... back to square one. just lost a working disk, think something's pooping in the soup, or rather, one of the bad disks is contaminating the head.

[CapLeaker]

Take the drive apart and clean it? While your at it fix the clamping mechanism.

[stj]

3.5" disks had a higher track density, when i used them i was throwing them away pretty often after less than a year.
also the drives wore out!
i learned real fast with the Amiga that CHINON drives are the good ones.

[eccerr0r]

The drive I'm currently trying to fix is a half height chinon 5.25" floppy drive. It's mechanically broken 😢 probably will have to design a fix. Then also having to deal with the apple disk ii... find which disks that need to be disposed of...

Damn where can I get cheap 5.25" DD's...

[eccerr0r]

Glued the broken piece back together. Still weak but the drive works once more. Don't recall when it broke or if I acquired it broken, alas glad the drive is otherwise working.

Odd that I ran into a bunch of HD 5¼" disks that have bad sectors or won't format. And 3½" disks that had bad sectors... should just toss all the bad disks I suppose.

hmm...need a better way to test disks if they're really still good or not...

[Agent24]

There were a lot of 5.25” disks, true… but there were more 3.5”. Also the programs got bigger needing more disks.

3.5" was probably more popular too since idiots can't put it through a hole-punch and stick it in a ring binder...

[CapLeaker]

3.5" was probably more popular too since idiots can't put it through a hole-punch and stick it in a ring binder...

That is the BEST answer I’ve heard for a long time!

[eccerr0r]

I thought that write protect hole/high density media detect were for the ring binder...

[eccerr0r]

BTW are these advertisements trying to sell me 5¼" DD's?

(How do I get rid of these ads?)

[Hondaman]

I still have my 5.25" and 3.5" drives. My first computer was a 386 DX-40 with 4 Megs of RAM. Later, I increased RAM and added the 387 math coprocessor.

Am I the only one here who remembers the Windows 3.1 error where all colors would become inverse (green would become violet, etc)? And am I the only one who remembers the Windows 3.1 "0xDEADBEEF" error?

I envied Apple users. They paid a lot more money for their computer, and a lot more for their printers IIRC. But part of that was the royalty for PostScript. So they could produce fine manuscripts FAR BETTER than my Windows machine with my dot-matrix printer !