[PLUG] 5-1/4" Floppy Issue

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Tue Nov 27 02:20:08 UTC 2012


On Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:19:21 -0800
"Richard C. Steffens" <rsteff at comcast.net> dijo:

>On the Advanced menu page there is an entry called Floppy
>Configuration. When I go to that page, there is an entry called Floppy
>Type. There are only two options, <1.44MB> and <2.88MB>.
>
>Is it possible that the BIOS doesn't support 5-1/4" drives? Or did I 
>miss something else?

It is not only possible, but likely. One of the advantages of the
(then) new 3-1/2" drives was that they were standardized. The bad old
5-1/4" drives were sometimes 360 MB, sometimes some other number, the
number of sectors were different from one manufacturer to the next,
and there were all kinds of other incompatibilities. It was a nightmare
for BIOS manufacturers as well as users. You were lucky if your 5-1/4"
floppy could be read on your friend's machine. The computer world
flocked to 3-1/2" drives as quickly as possible.

Assuming the disk you want to read is for an IBM PC (or clone), which
at least standardized on 360 MB, you'll need a BIOS from probably
significantly before 2000.

I'll bet Free Geek has a ton of old motherboards with a BIOS that would
do the trick. In fact, you can probably get one for free just by
dumpster diving in their trash.



More information about the PLUG mailing list