Truth. Thanks for the reminder there. Got some nostalgia for a minute when reflecting on home computing back in the day. Learning a little coding and writing text based adventure games 40 years ago. It's been a trip!
🎶What a long, strange trip it's been..🎶
I still have a dual disc drive for 5.25" & 3.5", a drive for just about any camera card, CDs/DVDs & adapter ports for USB cables & FireWire. I had to be able to read & mark stuff as trial exhibits during that 40 yrs. I never knew what experts would send. 😂💚
I have two dozen 30- year old 3.5 floppys from a Brother word processor containing old newspaper and magazine articles I wrote in the early nineties. Also, many sentimental musings to my daughters I would LOVE to recover. Anyone out there that might be able to offer up some ideas how to?
This will do Brother format disks, and it says it does apple now.
May be more trouble than it's worth, but if you can find one the Fluxengine interface is cheap.
I doubt Brother used FAT since that would've required paying money to Microsoft in the 1990s but maybe they did. First thing to do is try just mounting the disks as FAT, it might work if you're lucky and they're 1440K.i
If the disks are not FAT, you'll probably need to dd the disks to files from the appropriate /dev/fd0 (u???? if not 1440K) device node on a Linux box and look through the dump files with a hex editor and hope the filesystem's not too complex and the files were encoded sanely.
I remember hearing of someone who collected 3.5 and 5.25 and 8" flipped for government use... Sounds like this would be a helpful technology and would help bridge towards technology upgrades which the government is slow to handle...
I've seen 3.5" floppy drive emulators with a USB port or a compact flash slot. I think that was "good enough" for the market and no improvements were needed
The same reason I don’t build a death ray. I built one before a small version of it. The beam at 3rd order intercept ran my ears so bad I decided that I wouldn’t fuck with project anymore I created something that is deadly. So I tore it apart and all the plans I shredded. I didn’t want this out.
USB floppy drives typically handle *only* 80 tracks, 2 heads, and 18 512-byte sectors/track. This is 1440K. On a non-USB drive, you could use 82 tracks, 22 sectors/track for 1804K, something Tom's RootBoot used to great effect back in the day when many x86s couldn't boot from USB.
I screwed up, it's actually 82 tracks, 2 heads, and 21 sectors/track for 1722K which Tom's RootBoot used. It's been 15 years since I had a floppy drive in my x86 after all.
They made great bookmarks. I started in IT in 1977. I’ve seen it all. And programmed when programs were circuit boards and alligator clips. I once dropped a whole tray of cards. Thank goodness for numbers written in the corners by hand 😂
Too expensive to add the mechanical guts to a simple solid-state device when most people would never use the feature.
And they do make 3.5" USB-connected floppy drives - I have one, and every once in a while use it to install old software on a new PC.
😆I was going to say "because they haven't been made yet" and then I started to nerd out on the mechanics of such a thing. Not only are the speeds way different but also the memory, As for the body of it that could easily be made with a 3D printer, whether the older computer could read the better...
Wrong technology, its incompatible. The storage is too big and things don't know what to do or how to allocate it. There's period-correct memory card adapters, but those really only exist to take more pictures with Sony Mavicas.
I have MSDOS 6, Windows 3.1, 3D Studio (3?), and WIldcat BBS all on floppies ... not a single disk is readable today though unfortunately. They are just decorative pieces of the past at this point
Like the PATA and SATA if you have the computer and the software then you can use the compatible software for the hardware you have. Really hard to find it now. I have like 5 computers from the 1980 to now. New parts I picked up cheap or free.
My nightmares started once I got a 2.4 baud rate something modem and pissing my dad off when he tried to call the house. I couldn't keep off Prodigy though.
Everything was a headache back then but at the same time, it was kinda cool & fun because it was so new
I agree. This would be useful to have. Obviously floppies are not practical for most contemporary uses, but many people have old floppies kicking around that we might want to get data off of. It also could be useful for writing data to old floppies to use with old computers for nostalgia sake.
Well, I personally would really appreciate it if some genius could find a way to keep track of my phone, by like wiring it to a wall in a convenient location! or something. 🤣
Yep, I have one in my own psp. 😬 But I think Sony changed the design somehow in between, so pro, duo, etc, doesn't work in this older adapter. (Could also be that it just understands 128MB/256MB cards, and pro etc was 1GB+)
Be careful what you wish for. I pulled a bunch of 3.5” floppies out of my deceased dad’s box of old computer supplies & booted up old IBM to see what was there -> First disk: My Dad’s old porn pics. 😖🫠 To recycler the rest went!!
It took me a moment to realize what you're asking for, because I couldn't imagine a single device that had an SD card slot that didn't also have a USB slot
Finally someone else who gets that all technological progress in IT is somehow driven by porn. And games. And very lazy men who would rather spend insane amounts of time looking for an “easier” “solution” for the job at hand than actually doing the job at hand.
No idea, and it's unfortunately one of those topics that's technologically pretty fascinating, but where it's tough to get anyone to weigh in authoritatively because of, uh, reasons :)
I had a vhs dvd converter in the mid 2000s by Toshiba. It could also directly record from tv onto dvds. At the time I did not want to rebuy all my Disney movies which would disappear for years from buying market. My kids ended up being How to Train Your Dragon people.
My collection of computer media is put completely to shame by my collection of audio media and devices.
Seen here the CTRL=ALT Delete button from the 1st IBM 360 I worked on, punch cards and a IBM MSS Cartridge. I always used the punch cards as notes for speeches.
Jerry, you must have drunk from the fountain of youth. Or that’s a really old profile pic! Because I can’t believe you even know it 3 1/2 inch floppies are!
Not sure which way around you meant but for me a device that functioned the same as a Gotek but in the form of a 3.5 inch floppy disk would be AMAZING! With a flat-flex cable with USB-C socket out the back of it for power, a built-in mono OLED display and some buttons to select a floppy image file.
have you SEEN the size of floppies? those are MASSIVE and the adapters wouldnt necessarily be portable. but if you dont care abt portability, thats fine, i can take other ppls opinions.
hahaha “drops a 1tb sdcard filled with base64 encoded lolcats into the converter and waits for dir to come back on windows 3.11” computer probably smells like a bitcoin farm before it bluescreens.
You needed drivers running on the host—FlashPath wasn't plug-and-play drop-in replacement, and plenty of old hardware beyond stuff that ran Windows as a desktop is a consideration here.
I think the maximum theoretical limit on a floppy controller is 16MB. And even that requires some creativity. It’s been done with the SD floppy emulators.
Unless you mean an adapter that you can put into a real floppy disk drive, that has an SD or TF card in it. Talk about a challenge! (Have Gotek SD to 34 pin floppy controller interfaces. Planned on going to USB floppy drive and disks to SD. Didn’t really work.)
I have a 3.5" SSD dock in the box for boot drives. Switch between main Linux and Winders for games. Winders destroyed my Linux in a dual-boot arrangement TWICE so I don't trust it anywhere near those drives. Besides you CAN find 3.5" SD card readers, just Google it.
OK, Take this seriously... bet.
The floppy drive had a PATA (precursor to SATA) connection that ran at about 30KB/sec. By comparison an installed MicroSD to SD adaptor goes across a SATA 6GB/sec connection, and at Class 10, transfers at about 10MB/s.
I need it the other way around. Let me play awful Windows 3.1 games on the Steam Deck.
Heart of China was so terrible. One time I had to block off the top my monitor so I could focus on winning 3 card monte while the con artist was talking.
Under $50 even new :) Or we're opensource so if you were so inclined you can build them yourself as well! We have a huge community so come join in on the retro fun :)
Great! I certainly can build them 😀 since I do do electronic repair. I did get a TF (or SD) card to SCSI adapter a few years ago, but it was not reliable on the Mac desktop I used with it. (Can’t remember if 68030 or 68040 but was 50 pin/single ended. Tried different termination, no difference.)
We are mac first (but not mac only!) and there's no mac it doesnt work with. Be sure you get a V2 - we sell kits for a reasonable price as well if you dont want to source the parts yourself (and just want one) - enjoy and let us know if you have any questions.
PS: I just looked them/it up, and was thrilled to see 2.5” available!! Have a few 540 laptops, and while I have not used them in years, I have been dreading when their drives die (if they have not yet) plus going up to system 7 2GB size would be nice.
I used to work for TEAC, and we made floppy drives and another device which combined a card reader and a Bluetooth transceiver, but never a floppy drive with a card reader or an adapter so a floppy drive could read an SD card.
I remember making ASCII drawings on my moms green phosphor screen word processor, ran on the 5" floppies. It did get old loading from the 3.5"s 4 DOS tho. Aren't mag tape drives, write once, read only after that the most efficient cost and space wise? I did have fun soldering RAM to motherboards tho
Aside from low demand, you will need an electric source to feed the SD card and circuitry that creates the electromagnetic field for the drive head (and probably specialized components for that making very expensive). I suppose the power can generated it from the motor spinning the axis tho.
Another problem is that 3.5" floppies are like 1.44M (I think there were 2.88M versions too in the end), so your device will only be able to read a teeny weeny tiny portion of the card.
I still own a Sony Mavica that takes both memory sticks and floppy disks without any adapter. Not sure if it could be used for straight file conversion.
I’m all for vintage technology but if we’re talking reliability and rehabilite of reading and writing information over the longest period of time possible. CDs and DVDs are the most reliable digital storage. Assuming you don’t break or scratch the disk, it outlives any SD or other flash drives
Oh come on, one week in sunshine and a writable CD is a beermat. Punched paper tape is long lived as a storage medium and the only one you can fix with clear tape.
I have working flash storage media older than the oldest still working writable CDs so I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I even have unreadable normal music CDs. And no, they weren’t left out in the sun.
On a serious note, I had a terrible time learning how to use PCs when they first came out...but I persisted and eventually left accountancy and went into the IT field. I still remember having to use one of those floppies to fire up my IBM PC...and the unbearable time it took to load.
Why oh why would that be useful in 2025? It would certainly make private data more secure in the short run than, say, weak encryption. But the key word is “short.”
A floppy drive‘s ability to read and write to a floppy disk is heavily dependent on the physical layout of how the data is stored on the magnetic medium. This is very different from a file system on a SD card.
And even if you find a way, you’d still be stuck at the speed of a floppy drive.
I think their branding department was desperately trying to appropriate their largest criticism - the "click of death" - which would lock your drive down, or destroy your data...
Something more readily witnessed nowadays with PR stunt call-outs, an understanding that SEO is a *very* real method of moderating visibility, and the level of influence that corporations can wield in order to drive an industry.
There is a piece of equipment I work with that backs up to a 3.5" floppy disk. When it gets full we have to replace the disk and once in a while it happens when I am running the test on a Gen Z. I love busting out my "Want to see a real life save button?"
You want a cheap floppy drive emulator. Presents "disks" as folders at the root level. Just swap out the floppy drive with the emulator hardware, and you get USB et cetera. Have fun.
Because the entire disc can only hold that one HD pic of a beautiful actress you downloaded all those years ago 😀 🤣 I'm sure you could find her again in 0.006 secs on googler - in my case anyway, that that beautiful actress was ME and that was a scanned pic of ME dancing hahahah!
The electronics you'd need to buffer the SD storage into the sector by sector read/writes a floppy controller understands would be complex. And drive wouldn't be faster than actual floppies because of that.
Oh and nobody makes the <2Mb SD you'd need.
Comments
The Atari 800 is long gone though.
I still have a dual disc drive for 5.25" & 3.5", a drive for just about any camera card, CDs/DVDs & adapter ports for USB cables & FireWire. I had to be able to read & mark stuff as trial exhibits during that 40 yrs. I never knew what experts would send. 😂💚
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196470388964?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=4fujpxklsze&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=pnfgFWYPTpe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
May be more trouble than it's worth, but if you can find one the Fluxengine interface is cheap.
http://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html
It'd basically a connector that goes to an old floppy drive with a usb on the other end and a chip in the middle.
Good luck 😀
Okay, that was a bad joke. It's Monday, gimme me a break.
However, the two technologies are just too far apart.
A CD drive with a SD card slot? That would be more reasonable to me.
*alt tabs back into club penguin
Although not exactly the same thing, fake floppy drive that takes more modern storage are a thing.
And they do make 3.5" USB-connected floppy drives - I have one, and every once in a while use it to install old software on a new PC.
My nightmares started once I got a 2.4 baud rate something modem and pissing my dad off when he tried to call the house. I couldn't keep off Prodigy though.
Everything was a headache back then but at the same time, it was kinda cool & fun because it was so new
Used to build our desktops together. 👌
But now we both hide when 10 year old grandson shows up 🤣🤣
I see many under Olympus, Toshiba, SanDisk and Fujifilm labels on eBay.
But this would be nice for platforms where Goteks aren't an option, like the Macintosh
I've lost plenty of usb sticks over the years, but i still have a cd-rom booklet with my games and backups since the mid-00's.
No idea, and it's unfortunately one of those topics that's technologically pretty fascinating, but where it's tough to get anyone to weigh in authoritatively because of, uh, reasons :)
I see many on eBay.
Seen here the CTRL=ALT Delete button from the 1st IBM 360 I worked on, punch cards and a IBM MSS Cartridge. I always used the punch cards as notes for speeches.
And goes in the direction you need.
-> An USB stick has gigabytes of space !!!
...
Holup"
And they hold 1.44mb normally (or slightly more, depending on usage of course).
https://bsky.app/profile/hammyhavoc.com/post/3lflb254vrs26
The floppy drive had a PATA (precursor to SATA) connection that ran at about 30KB/sec. By comparison an installed MicroSD to SD adaptor goes across a SATA 6GB/sec connection, and at Class 10, transfers at about 10MB/s.
Or to put it shorter it would tansfer the...📜
That and the fact that almost no one has a floppy drive is why there is no Floppy Drive SD Card Reader Adaptor.
Heart of China was so terrible. One time I had to block off the top my monitor so I could focus on winning 3 card monte while the con artist was talking.
Oof.
Because I desperately need the latter
https://cowlark.com/fluxengine/index.html
Motherboards have had USB headers since the 90s.
Some of like to play Zork old school.
Archiving relies on rotating stores through technology fashions, but the problem remains for every generation.
Such fun days...all gone now. 😪
And even if you find a way, you’d still be stuck at the speed of a floppy drive.
they had me at "infinite memory!"
a full stack of 40mb! oreos right in your pocket!
kinda mindboggling to think how much more advanced the manipulations must be nowadays (and scary invisible with the matryoshkas...)
just sayin.....
Now all we have to do is explain to the younglings wtf that square “save” icon on their PC is.
Or, I guess they don’t use PCs anymore which is why they’re so bad at technology :^)
Oh and nobody makes the <2Mb SD you'd need.