How to build a working external 5.25″ USB floppy drive #VintageComputing #IBMPC

(Video) Converting an external 3,5″ USB floppy drive to run a big old 5.25″ drive. It should not work in theory, but it actually does work.

All it took was a very old NEC USB Drive (Model UF0001) and an Intel passive 26 pin to 34 pin converter like this here: https://store.cwc-group.com/c74972.html .. hook that up to a good old Teac FD-55GFR and you’re ready to go!

Read more including the comments on YouTube.


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2 Comments

  1. Fancy! I think my only USB floppy is actually an LS 120, but it makes me wonder if somebody could do something with the pio peripheral on an rp2040 to build their own USB floppy controller.

  2. I think a fast microcontroller could emulate the floppy control signals. Being a parallel interface, PIO likely would be overkill. Presenting to a computer as a proper USB disk interface would appear complex. I think some software captures from the project here to see what commands are being passed could make this more compatible. A USB analyzer and a signal analyzer would be ideal to spy on both interfaces.

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