5.25" floppy drive

Jerry freebsd.user at seibercom.net
Sat Oct 2 11:21:09 UTC 2010


On Sat, 02 Oct 2010 10:50:00 +0000
Thomas Mueller <mueller6727 at bellsouth.net> articulated:

> from "Christoph Kukulies" <kuku at kukulies.org>:
> 
> > Thanks to all.
> 
> > Solved.
> 
> > It was a multiple cause issue:
> 
> > 1st: BIOS Setting was incorrect (had to enable 1.2MB 5.25 rather
> > than 3.5 which was it set to - an oversight in the firts place,
> > that occured to me).
> 
> 
> > 2nd: Cable issue: I had a combined cable (3.5 " connector at the
> > end and edge connector second but last.
> 
> 
> > 3rd:  in combination with 2nd: DS0 jumper issue.
> 
> 
> > Anyway, I found a cable that had two edge connectors.
> 
> > In the end it turns out that the floppies that were lying in a
> > drawer for 19 years, are producing read errors. I also learnt about
> > fdcontrol. Floppy interface has changed significantly since Joerg
> > Wunsch and Bruce Evans worked on them in the early FreeBSD days
> > back in 1995 :)
> 
> 
> > --
> > Christoph
> 
> Congratulations on solving your floppy problem, but I can understand
> your problems with floppies.  They've gone bad with age for me too.
> I can read but not write, then I can't read and in most cases can't
> even reformat. 
> 
> FreeBSD installation sets structure (base.aa, base.ab, base.ac etc.)
> suggests that one could install from a big set of floppies, but
> there's no way I could get such a good set of floppies together.  I
> think my 5.25" floppies and drive hold out better than the 3.5"
> floppies and drives.

I had a similar problem last year on a Windows platform when a local
municipality asked to move the data from nearly 500 5.25 disks to CD.
The disks were in storage since mid 1990. I located an external 5.25
disk drive, they are dirt cheap, and attempted to copy the data. Like
you pointed out, the majority of the disks were severely damaged. I
finally settled on Spin-Rite <http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm> to
repair the disks. I had used it before and was familiar with its
workings. It took nearly a week for us to get the disks repaired and
copied; however, with only a couple of exceptions, the job ended
successfully. I cannot comment on 3.5 vs 5.25 disks, except to say
"good riddance" to both formats.

-- 
Jerry ✌
FreeBSD.user at seibercom.net

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