Floppy Drives on Modern Computers
Background
I just recently cleaned out my horde of old motherboards and systems (most went to good homes). What I kept were more modern machines that no longer have:
- A PCI slot
- A floppy controller
- A PATA controller
This now ruled out the use of all my old 3.5 floppy drives and my old PATA iomega internal Zip 100 drive.
Find a controller
First issue was to find a controller that’s compatible with my new PCIe architecture. After quite a bit of searching, turns out StarTech has what I need! (PEX2IDE). It even includes the ribbon cable!
I know what you are thinking. You are going to have to find a floppy controller too. Well not quite, more on this further down.
Install the Zip Drive
This is extremely straight forward since my Zip Drive works natively with my brand new ATA controller.
Install the Floppy Drive
This is where we diverge a bit off the usual path. Standard floppy drives and controllers just don’t work with the PCIe controller. Yes there are external USB floppy disc drives and, they work great. I wanted something internal in my old PC tower.
Enter the SuperDisk LS-120. The LS-240 drives should work but are incredibly hard to find. The LS-120 in addition to reading it’s own proprietary discs can also natively read 3.5 floppies (1.44mb & 720kb). They also come in a variety of interface formats:
- Parallel Port
- USB
- ATAPI
- SCSI
Now you start to see where this is going. Ok off to ebay to find an internal LS-120 ATAPI drive. Well not so fast, turns out they are EXTREMELY rare! Thanks to a tip from a friend what we need can be found in the SuperDisk USB Drive For Macintosh.
If you dismantle the cover off of the external drive you will find an ATA-USB adapter board along with a standard ATAPI LS-120 drive. A few screws and the front cap slides off to reveal the drive. Just mount it into your PC and plug it in along size the Zip drive on the same PATA interface cable (be sure to set the jumpers on each drive).
Very important note: Be sure to use a native PCIe ATA adapter. SATA & USB -> ATA adapters will not work! They will cause the drive light to flash and no way to eject the disk. It has something to do with having full ATA interface support.
One item missing from your disasembly is the front bezel to the drive. With a bit of 3d printing and the STL files from thingiverse you can print your own!
Finished product
| Created: 2024-09-17 | Modified: 2024-09-17 |