I think I fixed it, but I'm not sure how/why. Ah well. All's well that ends well?

I need a 5.25" double density USB floppy drive. Although I suppose such a thing does not exits.

Let's see - can I take a 15 year old 5.25" double density (not high-density) floppy drive and stick it in a modern PC, using the built-in floppy controller?

eta: Oh, and access the drive with Linux?

Let's see - can I take a 15 year old 5.25" double density (not high-density) floppy drive and stick it in a modern PC, using the built-in floppy controller?

You'll need a ribbon cable with the old-style connector (card connector instead of pins) on the drive end of the cable. Also, high density floppy drives could still read double density disks, couldn't they?

Also, high density floppy drives could still read double density disks, couldn't they?

Yes. Writing to a double-density disk with a high-density drive is problematic, but I just need to read stuff. However, I don't have any high-density 5.25" drives.

I'll have to see what floppy cables I have.

I also found a service that'll copy info off of 5.25" floppies - at $5 per floppy. Je-sus.

If you're not in a hurry, I could do it for you. I still have a 5 1/4 drive in one of my work computers. I charge much less than $5 a disk. :)

Anyone ever use Parallels Desktop for Mac? It lets you create and run virtual computers while running OS X. So you could run XP and OS X at the same time (with XP running at 70% of its native speed).

Currently I'm installing FreeDOS in a virtual machine. There's something cool and geeky about having to parition and format a virtual drive on a virtual computer....

Anyway, I'm gonna install Windows 2000 and/or XP once I upgrade the memory of this puppy.

Oh, you need an Intel Mac to do this....

Oh DX, thanks for the offer. For now I'm gonna try to setup an older box with a 5.25" floppy, and also I'm gonna try to add the 15-year-old card-drive I have....

Hee. You know, we're in the process of our move, and among other things I want to do is a giant data project whereby I move all my files off their various archaic media, floppies, zips, external hds into their permanent hiatus of dvd storage. And then I want to move all my vhs tapes onto dvd. And then I can put all the information in the world on a single spindle.

And then immediately afterwards, dvds will become obsolete.

I shudder at the prospect of dealing with the shelves of various media I have from the past 15 years of doing audio work. Bernoulli 90 drives, Syquest EZ135, Zip100, Jaz, Jaz2, Syquest 44, and an unknown number of other formats are all in storage with old show files on them. I do tend to have at least one of each of those drives still around, but who knows if there are drivers and such. I should do it soon while I could still get a vintage machine up and running and slowly shift the media to a newer and more transportable standard.

I really like the new google reader. I dropped bloglines like a bad habit.