Anyone still using a 5-1/4 floppy drive in a new(er) system?

[LadyNiniane]

We've got a bunch of old 5-1/4 disks with text files that I would like to archive, if possible. We've also got plenty of still working 5-1/4 drives that came out of otherwise dead computers.

I've got a new ASUS MB-A7V (the newer one with RAID support, although I'm not using RAID at the moment). HD is ATA100, so it is attached to the Promise controller; as far as I can tell, there should be an available spot on the regular IDE side. (There is plenty of bay space - full tower case) Can I hook up one of those old 5-1/4 drives to this board?

And a related question - does anyone know if Win98SE/WinME even supports 5-1/4 drives?

If it can't be done, I will look at installing it in an older machine, but my nice shiny new one has the Plextor writer in it, so I would really like to use it if I can do so safely.

Thanks,

Lady Niniane

 

[Eug]

Works fine with at least Win 98, but I've long since taken mine out. I have two in my closet. Haven't tried it with Win 2000.

Correct me if I'm misinterpreting you, but IDE/RAID has nothing to do with the 5 1/4" disk drives. It's a floppy afterall and thus runs off the floppy controller - If there are settings in your BIOS for selecting these drives then you should be fine.

 

[reicherb]

You hook the 5-1/4 drive to the same cable as the 3-1/2. It will work just fine with Win98SE and your board.

 

[LadyNiniane]

Eug, I wasn't certain about which controller - I just pass the answers along to my husband, who is the hardware person around this house. His concern was whether a 5-1/4 drive would even be recognized by this mobo and WinME (which is what I have).

From the replies here, I think I will be able to use it. Hope so - otherwise, I will have to use Zip disks and sneaker-net to get these files where I want them (which is on some CD-R disks).

Thanks,

Lady Niniane

 

[Gunbuster]

you better check the bios, some new boards only support 1 3.5 drive and nothing else

 

[bluemax]

You're kidding! :Q
I'm quite surprised they would drop support like that! I can't see any reason for it, unless they designed a whole new radically different BIOS from scratch!

 

[LadyNiniane]

Update: The 5-1/4 drive got installed on Friday evening - WinME seems to be able to handle it without too many problems.

The available/maximum space on the floppies isn't always being reported correctly, but the problem is only acute on low density (360K) disks; as long as I don't need to reformat them, it's not a problem. The data is readable and copyable - I've checked several of the copied files and all appears to be intact.

I've even been able to copy between the 5-1/4 and the 3-1/2 drives, using the IOmega CopyDisk tools.

But that brings up another, minor problem - I've lost access to my Zip drive (parallel port attached). I've removed and reinstalled the IOmega drivers, unplugged and replugged in the cable, etc., etc., but it cannot be found at this point. The port seems to be okay, but isn't being used for anything else at this point (I use a USB-connected printer and don't have the scanner down here on this machine), so I can't tell if it's a port issue or a drive issue.

I suspect it's an IDE limitation of some sort - at this point, I've got two floppy drives and two CDs plugged in (one burner, one reader), as well as the HD attached to the ATA100 controller.

Unfortunately, the latest BIOS updates are stored on - you guessed it - a Zip disk.

At this point, I'm going to finish copying these old floppies, and then have husband de-install the 5-1/4 drive from this machine. Then we'll see what happens at that point.

Stay tuned.

Lady Niniane