Besides a floppy drive, what else uses a floppy drive connector?
- Thread starter JEDI
- Start date
Some old tape drives used the floppy connector. But I'm unaware of any current devices that do so, with the obvious exception of floppy drives themselves (and even those are quite rare now!).
Yeah, back when tape drives had 10 to 20 megabytes, they used to connect to the floppy interface.
AH, my old Conner tape backup drive. So long ago. Back when cd drives were $600, blank cds were $2ea (in lots of 100), and oh so many coasters. lol
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
- 16,240
- 7
- 76
nope.
One of the reasons why is the floppy interface is a dumb interface.
I don't mean dumb as calling it dumb, but that as far as electronics go, its very very basic.
With ata interface you send the drive commands like read data, the drive does the rest.
With flopppy you have to do it all, like , turn on motor, move head , read data bit 1, move read head, read data bit 2, move read head again, turn off motor. The drive itself is essentialy brainless.
I learned more than I care to about the floppy interface a year ago when I was working with someone to develop a floppy emulator.
It plugged in place of the floppy and was a flash drive.
It was developed because there are still tons of equipment out there that can only be upgraded by floppy, this stuff doesn't have hard drives or any other ports like usb, its slow and prone to errors. A flash drive works every time and can be done quickly.
With the ide interface you can connect compact flash to it in about 10 minutes of work.
With floppy you have to have an embedded chip to translate the dumb calls the pc makes into reads of the flash.
One of the reasons why is the floppy interface is a dumb interface.
I don't mean dumb as calling it dumb, but that as far as electronics go, its very very basic.
With ata interface you send the drive commands like read data, the drive does the rest.
With flopppy you have to do it all, like , turn on motor, move head , read data bit 1, move read head, read data bit 2, move read head again, turn off motor. The drive itself is essentialy brainless.
I learned more than I care to about the floppy interface a year ago when I was working with someone to develop a floppy emulator.
It plugged in place of the floppy and was a flash drive.
It was developed because there are still tons of equipment out there that can only be upgraded by floppy, this stuff doesn't have hard drives or any other ports like usb, its slow and prone to errors. A flash drive works every time and can be done quickly.
With the ide interface you can connect compact flash to it in about 10 minutes of work.
With floppy you have to have an embedded chip to translate the dumb calls the pc makes into reads of the flash.
Are you people talking about the floppy drive (ribbon) cable or the floppy-style power cable? I've got a tape drive that takes the latter, as well as a video card.
I was sure the Jaz drive never used the floppy data cable -
From Iomega web site:
So floppy and tape drives are it. The Iomega Zip didn't use floppy interface either, but just about everything else: IDE, SCSI, parallel port, USB, etc.
.bh.
From Iomega web site:
So floppy and tape drives are it. The Iomega Zip didn't use floppy interface either, but just about everything else: IDE, SCSI, parallel port, USB, etc.
.bh.
Zip drives didn't use the floppy data cable, but Imation had a Zip-like drive that held 120MB(?) and connected to the floppy cable. It also could read/write standard 1.44MB floppy disks at twice the usual speed, IIRC.
Nope, the LS-120 SuperDisk is IDE (the slowest IDE Ive ever seen, maybe PIO-1), I've got one here that still works fine. Lemme see if Wikipedia has an entry...
Quote from Wikipedia.org:
There ya go.
.bh.
Quote from Wikipedia.org:
There ya go.
.bh.
Sorry guys, this isn't correct. Both the 120MB "SuperFloppy" drives and the ZIP connected on IDE. ZIPs alternatively came in SCSI and (external) parallel port, and the IDE ZIP came in two flavors, ATA and ATAPI.
But no such drive ever had the legacy floppy controller interface.
I thought the Asus Xonar D2X used a floppy power cable? I guess that's kind of OT though.
As for the floppy ribbon cable, im 99% sure nothing nowadays uses it.
As for the floppy ribbon cable, im 99% sure nothing nowadays uses it.
Interestingly enough, the Voodoo 2's internal SLI connector was almost the same, just with a few connections switched around. I remember that you could make an SLI cable out of a floppy cable by repositioning those wires. It probably doesn't carry the same kind of data though.
Oops. Guess I mistakenly assumed that the backwards compatibility with floppy disks meant that it worked from a floppy connector. I frequently considered buying an LS-120, but somehow that never happened... probably because I was an early CD-R adopter with a 2X Sony SCSI burner.
Link to one of the few places that stock the YE:
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=3956616 -almost everyone else carries the Mitsumi. The one at JR looks like the older version, if you want one, I may be able to get you a later version for a lot less than JR's price.
. This page shows you what the current model looks like:
http://www.yedata.com/multi/yd_8v07.html -and here is a look at all models of it: http://www.yedata.com/support/cardreaders.shtml -left to right they are newest to first. The 8V07 Drive 2 looks like the pic at JR.
Tiger Direct used to carry the YE Data but now they've rebadged the Mitsumi and bumped the price 50%. The Egg has the Mitsumi at $20. I think that Mitsumi floppy drives are unreliable, so I won't have one in my machines.
.bh.
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product=3956616 -almost everyone else carries the Mitsumi. The one at JR looks like the older version, if you want one, I may be able to get you a later version for a lot less than JR's price.
. This page shows you what the current model looks like:
http://www.yedata.com/multi/yd_8v07.html -and here is a look at all models of it: http://www.yedata.com/support/cardreaders.shtml -left to right they are newest to first. The 8V07 Drive 2 looks like the pic at JR.
Tiger Direct used to carry the YE Data but now they've rebadged the Mitsumi and bumped the price 50%. The Egg has the Mitsumi at $20. I think that Mitsumi floppy drives are unreliable, so I won't have one in my machines.
.bh.
These drives use the Floppy connector for the floppy drive, and an extra USB link for the card reader part.
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
- 16,240
- 7
- 76
Its like I explained above .
The floppy interface is not used for other things because its a very very basic interface. It requires the host pc to do everything.
Its tons of work to connect anything to that connection when you can use usb, ide, even parallel port with ten times less work. The floppy interface is also very very slow on sending and receiving data. About 1Mbit at the most. Thats about 125KB a second. Compare that to even the parallel port which can handle 2MByte/sec.
look at the pinout of the floppy interface here:
http://www.interfacebus.com/PC_Floppy_Drive_PinOut.html
Notice it requires the host pc do everything from starting the motor, to moving the read head.
Now compare it to the ide pinout:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_IDE.html
There are 16 data lines, floppy only has 1.
Also notice there are no motor control lines or head control lines, just data lines sent to the ide drive telling it what you want it to do and it handles the rest.
To even read flash media with a floppy interface requires a custom fpga and asic chip.
About 30.00 in extra hardware. Not worth it unless you really need to use that interface.
The floppy interface we use now is 30 years old.
Long overdue to be retired.
The floppy interface is not used for other things because its a very very basic interface. It requires the host pc to do everything.
Its tons of work to connect anything to that connection when you can use usb, ide, even parallel port with ten times less work. The floppy interface is also very very slow on sending and receiving data. About 1Mbit at the most. Thats about 125KB a second. Compare that to even the parallel port which can handle 2MByte/sec.
look at the pinout of the floppy interface here:
http://www.interfacebus.com/PC_Floppy_Drive_PinOut.html
Notice it requires the host pc do everything from starting the motor, to moving the read head.
Now compare it to the ide pinout:
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_IDE.html
There are 16 data lines, floppy only has 1.
Also notice there are no motor control lines or head control lines, just data lines sent to the ide drive telling it what you want it to do and it handles the rest.
To even read flash media with a floppy interface requires a custom fpga and asic chip.
About 30.00 in extra hardware. Not worth it unless you really need to use that interface.
The floppy interface we use now is 30 years old.
Long overdue to be retired.
If the guy I was getting them from still has some, I expect somewhere between $20 and $30. more likely less than $25, but they are getting scarcer and scarcer, so I'm not sure. I'll send him an eMail and see what he says. He never has any black ones, just beige, but the front bezel pops right out and would be easy to paint with some Testor's model paint.
.bh.
.bh.
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