USB floppy drive

[supernova777]

ok enuff is enuff
i need a floppy drive
can i just buy any old usb floppy? and literally any model/make/brand will work fine on a macos9 system?
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/usb-floppy-drive

will it need some kind of driver?

who has done this?
please share your experience

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-706018-Floppy-Disk-Drive/dp/B00006B938
do i need to get one that specifies mac os 9.0 compatibility?
140$ is a bit steep LOL

[MacTron]

ok enuff is enuff
i need a floppy drive

¿?
but why?
The last time I've used a floppy was in the PM 8600 era. In the end, most of the floppy disk and floppy drivers I had, failed. Thanks god I had everything on CD already.

can i just buy any old usb floppy? and literally any model/make/brand will work fine on a macos9 system?
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/usb-floppy-drive

will it need some kind of driver?

who has done this?
please share your experience

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-706018-Floppy-Disk-Drive/dp/B00006B938
do i need to get one that specifies mac os 9.0 compatibility?
140$ is a bit steep LOL

I don't know for sure, but Mac Os 9 still contains drivers for floppy drives.

[supernova777]

why? because im using ancient sampler hardware that uses 3.5" floppies
sample librarie disks... device driver disks.. ancient mac programs on disk..

[GaryN]

You can use essentially any USB floppy drive BUT watchout! There are a lot them out there, they're reasonably priced and almost NONE of them will read Mac floppies. They're all marked like "1.44 Mb compatible" - fine for Windows but the Macs were what, 1.2Mb ?
I tried a few different ones and it was always the same story. "Unrecognizable format". You'd be better off scavenging a drive from an old Mac and wiring it up.

[supernova777]

would be great if diehard could offer his assistance here..

[Knezzen]

I have one of these: http://zxpc.en.alibaba.com/product/530630037-801113010/USB_floppy_drives_TEAC_FDD1_44.html

Works great with all of my OSX machines (even in Yosemite on the Mac Pro) and with my Mac OS 9 machines. Screenshot attached of my TiBook accessing a floppy in 9.2.2 using it

I bought mine at the local generic PC shop down town for $10 USD or so.
Only had "OSX Compatible" on the box, and that was fine.
Was intending to use it to make Atari compatible floppys in OSX anyway, so the Mac OS 9 functionality was just a bonus.

[supernova777]

thanks knez... so unless im really unlucky whatever one i get should work just fine right?

[Knezzen]

Probably, but this is the only USB floppy I have ever owned, so I can't swear that others will work.

BUT, it seems to use some kind of generic mass storage device driver.
So theoretically as long as the drive presents itsef as a floppy, it should work.

Just as pretty much all USB thumb drives works in Mac OS 9, and all USB keyboards and mice.

BTW, it reads and writes Mac formatted floppys just fine. No problems there either.

[GaryN]

so unless im really unlucky whatever one i get should work just fine right?

No… But if you don't pay attention when someone is trying to tell you something, you'll just go around in circles until you start.

I said, "most any of them will work but…" what that means is they will write and read back just fine BUT (now this this where you NEED TO PAY ATTENTION)

They will not -  repeat will not read old Mac formatted DD (dual density) disks! When I said 1.2Mb, I was misremembering. The original Apple HD disks were actually 800kb. To achieve that they used a CLV (constant linear velocity) format that required the drive to spin at variable speed! The issue is NOT with the driver OR the filesystem - it's the way Steve Jobs, as usual, jumped the pack first in 1984 and crammed more data onto the same disks that everyone else was using, and damn the fact that it was incompatible with everything else. Sound familiar?  In 1987, IBM spit up a new 1.44Mb format and said "Nyah nyah nyah" to Apple. Apparently, they were working so hard to get that together that they DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION EITHER when someone told them about those newfangled shiny disc things that were coming out that would hold a gazillion time as much…

READ THIS TWICE

If you have an old Mac 800k disk - and there are an awful lot of them - identifiable by a second square hole punched in the back opposite the write protect tab - it can only be read by an old Apple drive or a later Apple (Sony) "Superdrive"
If you stick one of them into the Teac or any other one of those little USB floppy drives that read 1.44 Mb disks, the system will just offer to format it for you.
Don't believe me? Ask Diehard.

If you have a 400kb disk or a 1.44Mb IBM-style disk from a sampler, it will probably work insofar as you'll see that there's data on it, but I'm not sure what it'll take to handle it since it won't be using the HFS filesystem.

Knez is doing just fine because I'll bet he doesn't have any old original Mac 800k disks to read. IF HE DOES AND THEY WORK in his Teac drive, I'll eat one. Seriously, I'll eat one and I'll post the video of it for you.

READ THIS AS MANY TIMES AS IT TAKES    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk

THIS IS ALSO USEFUL   http://www.siber-sonic.com/mac/superfloppy.html

BUT THIS PRETTY MUCH COVERS IT   http://www.siber-sonic.com/mac/newmillfloppy.html

AND FOR THE INSATIABLY CURIOUS   http://web.archive.org/web/20070506114354/http://home.socal.rr.com/fuweb/floppysite/index.html