I had the idea, while there were so many boring bank holidays, that I'd try and get all my floppy discs onto my memory stick, Lots of old photos and a very good set of cartoons, some rather rude, by a now deceased, ex bobby, pal of mine.
So, dug out the old tower from the wardrobe, wrestled with all the cabling, removed the everyday unit and set it all up. Only needed the monitor, power and a usb connection to the wireless keyboard/mouse. Seemples.
Except, when I turned the power swith on I got an impressive bang and a shower of sparks from the back. So that's not going to work, then !
Is there anything I can beg/borrow or buy that will see me through this project.
It'll be a one off and when they're all done, I won't need it anymore.
Ted
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www.amazon.co.uk/3-5-Floppy-Disk-Drive-1-44Mb/dp/B000I2HBD4
Something like this perhaps?
Don't get too cheap a drive or it may just report all of your disks as unreadable.
Jokes about little floppies start now :-(
John
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You can buy a new floppy drive for less than £20, probably a tenner.
I strongly urge you to back up your pictures, etc., onto an additional storage medium, as well as a "memory stick" - preferably two additional copies on independent media. Once you've got one copy, it's easy to make another onto "something". If you lose your only copy version, you're up the creek, possibly without a paddle.
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I should have lots of spare floppy drives Ted, you could have one of them if you want. Probably got the largest collection of 3.5" floppy drives in Manchester!
I have a 5.25" one too although not tested that.
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Please don't take it over Rattle, or you will only catch each others Flu:)
Perhaps you could drive past and sling it over the hedge.
Pat
Last edited by: pda on Fri 31 Dec 10 at 15:23
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>> Perhaps you could drive past and sling it over the hedge.
Best thing to do with it once the information's been copied off the floppies.
Last edited by: FotheringtonTomas on Fri 31 Dec 10 at 15:50
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>>You can buy a new floppy drive for less than £20, probably a tenner.>>
The last floppy drive I bought, a Sony, cost just under £5 about three years ago...:-)
It replaced one that packed up after more than 10 years' use, but the main problem may be finding a stockist these days.
In fact the very latest DVD-RW drives from top brands are on offer for between £12 and £15 these days - my first CD-RW drive bought eight or nine years ago cost £189.
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I take it from Ted's original post the old desktop PC had a power supply related problem and is not working. And I am guessing you normally use a laptop these days.
So no good buying or borrowing a 3.5" floppy drive unless it's a USB one that plugs into your laptop. Focus has found a few for you. Maybe Rattle has one he could lend you? Our work laptops (all laptops?) used to come with USB floppy drives but alas no more. Maybe I have one somewhere still but I'd not guarantee it works.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Fri 31 Dec 10 at 19:02
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It is somewhat academic but - are you sure? My Dell external floppy had a proprietary connector, not USB. But that's a good few laptops back.
John
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He uses one of them small shuttle PCs, the one Ted was talking about is an old desktop he has in his garage.
So a standard 3.5" drive will work with it. It will have a floppy port on the motherboard.
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>> Is there anything I can beg/borrow or buy that will see me through this project.
RattleandSmoke.
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- - - -> Feeling a bit floppy <- - - -
Probably brewers droop Teddo :-)
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I have only ever had a hard drive and that can't be copied.
If you had a floppy surely you wouldn't admit it.
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I'll admit to anything, feeling as i do. Even brewer's droop......you wouldn't like it on your nose as a wart, though !
Only just got back on line...still rough, slept on and off all evening on my throne.
Rats knows more about my system than me...I don't have a loptap, or whatever they're called. So do pop round for a cuppa, dear boy, and lend me the correct bit of kit !
Thanks to all who stepped up to the plate.
Ted
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Ted will drop one off probably on Monday if you are in will email you. It will nice to see you again and also be able give one of these damn floppies away :).
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>> - - - -> Feeling a bit floppy <- - - -
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>> Probably brewers droop Teddo :-)
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When 3.5" disks came out, south africa was rather disconnected from the rest of the world. Like us they called the 5.25" ones you can bend 'floppies' but they had a different word for the 3.5" ones in hard cases.
I'll always remember a lady who was over in the UK on assignment who called across the office "Have you got that stiffy you promised me?"!!!!
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Now that Ted's sorted, can we drift the thread towards other short-lived storage discs and devices?
My contribution is the Amstrad PCW with its three-inch discs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_PCW
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>> "Have you got that stiffy you promised me?"!!!!
Yes, but i'm afraid it's only three and a half inches.
Boom, Boom!
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strangely i threw out a load of floppies yesterday containing things like windows 98 startup etc
more bizarrely i dug out a 2 year old cdr i had with linux mint on it and you can actually see the disc edge going back to a cabbage, so my new year message is be warned if you have irreplaceable stuff on bits of magpie stoppers as they are leaving their coils
maybe time to buy a zip drive again with acetone free linings?
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>>My contribution is the Amstrad PCW with its three-inch discs.>>
Had an 8256 for two or three years (£399 brand new with printer!) and remember the 3in disks well.
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I had a PCW too, but the shortest lived storage device I ever bought was a Microdrive for the Spectrum.
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>> the shortest lived storage device I ever bought was a Microdrive for the Spectrum.
If you formatted the tapes a few times you got a higher capacity tape. It stretched ;-)
Loading games that had been transferred did take a lot less time though. Using a faster tape loader program was an alternative. But involved 'changing' the original load process.
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Feeling a bit floppy. - Tooslow
