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Where Can I Get an Old Serial Floppy Drive?
Wade:
--- Quote from: urbecrisch on April 15, 2008, 10:18:53 pm ---Does anyone know where I can get a 3.5" 1.44MB SERIAL FLOPPY DISK DRIVE?
I'm trying to get an old touchscreen with CPU to work for a bartop and I recently replaced the HD. The problem is that I need to boot an OS onto the HD but the only way is from a floppy serial port on the motherboard.
Does anyone have one of these lying around or knows somebody or someplace where I can get one? I'm willing to pay for it of course. It's the only thing preventing me from getting this bartop running.
Help!
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I don't think there's a such thing as an RS-232 serial floppy drive that would work without special drivers. So in other words, I don't think it will solve your problem, even if you could find a serial floppy drive.
Wade
urbecrisch:
The reason it may work out is that when I access the BIOS, the CPU screen shows the A:\ drive is 1.44MB floppy so it seems it would be ready to go if I had one to try. It's at least worth the effort :)
Thenasty:
I dunno if this is the same guy about this machine.....in other post before.
If so, why not just connect a CD-ROM and a HARD (MASTER/SLAVE) and BOOT of the CD-ROM with Win98 or DOS 7.1 ? Goto BIOS to setup boot priority.
Also, is there a ISA/PCI SLOT available ? If so, why not get a IDE CONTROLLER and use the NORMAL FLOPPY DRIVE with it ? Disable in BIOS the built in controller.
All the years I been doing PC repairs/work/building, I never came across a SERIAL External Floppy DRIVE that connects to RS-232 port. Except for LAPTOPS.
Here are some USB ones
http://www.become.com/shop?q=1.44mb+external+usb+floppy+disk+drive
paigeoliver:
I have seen that in the bios of countless systems that never came with floppy drives. Including the similar system I had, my last floppiless notebook and my current tablet PC.
I don't recall the brand name of the system I worked with, but it had a 14" touchscreen and the system was sort of a brick without external drives, all the components were laptop ones. I had two of them, one had the screen and keyboard on a pole with the brick in the base and the other had all the same components (minus the pole) in a suitcase with foam inserts (both were Pentium 166 era hardware running Win 95). I had picked them up at a pawnshop for $150 each and they brought me about $700 each when I resold them on ebay (this was a LONG time ago).
The basic dos install and copy the win-98 (or 95) install files onto the hard drive is MUCH easier than trying to find the accessory floppy drive that may have been available with that system (but probably wasn't serial, the complete lack of serial floppy drives on ebay says a lot about that).
You will probably still need to pick up a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor to copy your files, but it will be way easier (and cheaper) than trying to deal with an external floppy.
--- Quote from: urbecrisch on April 16, 2008, 11:07:03 pm ---The reason it may work out is that when I access the BIOS, the CPU screen shows the A:\ drive is 1.44MB floppy so it seems it would be ready to go if I had one to try. It's at least worth the effort :)
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urbecrisch:
--- Quote from: Thenasty on April 16, 2008, 11:16:30 pm ---I dunno if this is the same guy about this machine.....in other post before.
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I think that would be me :)
--- Quote from: Thenasty on April 16, 2008, 11:16:30 pm ---If so, why not just connect a CD-ROM and a HARD (MASTER/SLAVE) and BOOT of the CD-ROM with Win98 or DOS 7.1 ? Goto BIOS to setup boot priority.
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The reason I cannot use a USB CDROM is because the BIOS does not offer a BOOT from USB. Only A,C, CDROM (but only connection is through parallel port but I cannot load any CDROM drivers), and a few others.
--- Quote from: Thenasty on April 16, 2008, 11:16:30 pm ---Also, is there a ISA/PCI SLOT available ? If so, why not get a IDE CONTROLLER and use the NORMAL FLOPPY DRIVE with it ? Disable in BIOS the built in controller.
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The PIC below shows the available PCI slot (white) and the 2 AGP slots (black)? Not sure if I'm right about this but what your telling me is I can buy a PCI card which will allow me to plug in my floppy or CDROM via IDE? Don't I need a driver to allow this PCI card to work?