5.25" Drives on modern PC's

[Nevac]

Is there a relatively easy way to get a 5.25" drive working in a modern PC? I have an external USB 3.5" drive which works great but I was wondering if there is a way to do the same with 5.25". Either a USB controller card to plug a drive into or fully functioning USB 5.25" drive like the external 3.5" drives you can still buy these days. I was considering playing some old games on the original media with all the disk swapping glory.

[Collector]

I know of no ready made external 5.25" USB drive. There are solutions, though none of them very cheap. One of the cheapest that I have found is this read only USB floppy controller for $55.25, for a TEAC FD55GFR drive or equivalent. besides the drive itself, you would need some kind of case with power supply. The same company also has a case with power supply for $48.00, but I am sure you could do better elsewhere. You can pick up a FD55GFR from eBay. Currently, price plus shipping for "Buy it Now" start at about $30 up to well over $100. When money is not quite so tight for me, I may get that controller as I can probably dig up most of the other stuff from what I have on hand. Still, it would be nice if it were read plus write capable for that money. I would love to also have such a controller for floppy drives from other platforms that used drives that were physically different from that of the PC.

[Nevac]

Thanks for the reply shame there isn't a external one and that they are pretty pricey might be better off just getting a Tandy or something. I tried Bequest on disk but since you need to revisit locations a lot the disk swapping gets tedious real fast I need to try a more linear adventure game for that.

[gumby]

Yeah, I've got a pair of floppy drives that I'd love to set up externally, but all my searching on the internet for simple solutions came up with nothing.

[Collector]

Well that controller that I linked to would work. If you already have a drive and an outboard case or are able to find one cheaply enough, the main cost would be just the controller. Just replace the IDE to USB controller in the case with the floppy to USB above and throw the drive into it. Finding a reasonable solution for a power supply may be a bit of a trick. I think most outboards incorporate the controller with the interface.

[Nevac]

The problem with that is you need write capabilities for the 1st disk of any SCI sierra disk game to create the CFG file on the 1st disk. Don't 5.25 use standard HD molex power plugs?

[Collector]

Yes, usually molex, but most of the outboards just have a small transformer with a single voltage output. I am not sure, what of the different rails of the molex has that may be used by any particular drive. Not that difficult of a problem, but one that would have to addressed. Why not just copy the disks over to your hard drive? Like any magnetic media, there can be degradation from usage, so why risk it anymore than what is necessary. Almost all of the SCI games were designed with the ability to run from the hard drive. The CPC protection was not used with the SCI games and does not work on modern Windows, anyway. The only reason that I would like to have write capabilities is to restore corrupted files on the floppies. Out side of that, I only need to copy the files to burn.

[Nevac]

I already have them on my HD but sometimes it's fun to play the games the way I used to play them.