DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Anyone have any working 5.25" floppy drives around that are not required?

boxst

There are some on Ebay: 5.25 floppy drive, Computing, floppy drive items at low prices on eBay.co.uk

It may be worth asking on FreeCycle mailing list if you belong to one.

Steve

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

Blimey, back when floppy disks were floppy!
I bet half the people on here won't even know what a 5.25" floppy disk looks like!

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Due to the nature of our business, we need to be able to read them . . . as well as 21-track & 9 track reel tapes, Zip disks, Jazz drives etc

£150 on eBay is absurd

Coffin Dodger

Wish I had one kicking about now Only got 3.5"s unfortunately including an Amiga one

Coffin Dodger

We had some computers at Uni that had 8" floppy drives

Shaun

If only I knew then, what is known now!

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

why do you need to read them?? If any business is still using this kind of media, THAT is absurd.

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Of course they're not still using it, it's archive storage for the oil & gas industry. Some of this data is 30 years old. Often not touched for years and years, then they sell a well or field and the data needs to be accessed and/or remastered.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

I see, strange that someone hasn't gone through an exercise of putting the data onto new media already though.

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

It's not for the want of trying. Believe it or not, oil companies just don't have the budgets for such projects very often, especially when the data isn't active. It's only when it gets traded that remastering becomes a priority, by which time half of the media has stiction issues.

jpor

iTrader: (1)

Used 5.25" floppies when I was at School and college back in the late 80's early 90's. IBM XT PC's of that day actually needed them to run the Microsoft DOS Operating system if you were not fortunate enough to have a 10MB hard drive installed If memory serves me they too came in single density and then later Dual-density formats. If no one has ever seen the earlier 8" Floppies in action then I suggest watching the Mathew Broderick flick 'Wargames' Still have a 5.25" double-density floppy drive and some old disks lying around somewhere. Be warned though that you will need the correct cable and connector for these as they arn't the same as the 3.5" drives, although they do still use the MFM type cable.

mart360

Missed one from that shot..

Amstrad 3" floppies, look at an xbox 360 PSU, and your not far off the size of the Amstrad 3" external floppy drive


And there's another one missing....

We did some skip scavenging back in the 80,s and a local supermarket was dumping its computer stuff.

They had 12" floppies, well if you could call them that, they were almost like hard disk platters, but

made from what looked like copper, but a lot stiffer, they ran them on there vertical disk readers..

Mart

boomer

IIRC, the VAX/780 used an 8-inch floppy to load the microcode - back in the days when a computer really was a computer

mb