[X4U] OT: accessing old floppy disks

[Randy B.Singer]

Jim Freeman said:

>Thanks for all the helpfull answers. Apparently he has tried an 
>external floppy drive, which will take a 1.4 meg floppy, but not an 
>800k floppy. His currenlty computer is apparently a modern Mac running 
>some version of OS X. I also own a VST external floppy drive, which I 
>never use. I just checked it and it works with the 1.4 meg floppies I 
>found in the bottom of a box somewhere. I don't have any 800k floppies 
>to test, but from what I'm hearing it sounds like it won't work. Should 
>I even bother sending my floppy drive to work with my wife tomorow?


A few years back I had a client who needed to read some 800k floppies.  I 
tried every USB floppy drive that I could find (and there used to be 
close to a dozen different brands on the market).  Not a single one could 
read an 800k floppy.  One drive, from, I believe, Mitsumi, claimed to be 
able to read 800k floppies, but I could never find one to purchase to 
check.

But any old Mac with an OEM internal floppy drive should be able to read 
800k floppies just fine.  I've found that if you ask at any Macintosh 
User Group (MUG) you will quickly find several folks who have old Macs in 
their closet that they would be willing to give you for free.  The 
limiting factor here is that you need a Mac that can communicate with 
your modern Mac, so a Mac with built-in Ethernet is preferable.  

 

Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html