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Have you installed a internal floppy in your Blue & White?

mraroid

Well-known member
Hi...
 
My B&W came with a CD drive and a empty bay below it where a Zip drive is often installed.  Has anyone installed a internal floppy drive in the space below the optical drive?
 
Yes, I know I can plug in a external USB floppy drive.  But I am interested in learning if anyone has installed a internal floppy drive.  If so, is it a clean looking install from the outside?  I though a face plate might be hard to find. If you did a install, can you post a photo of your tower and the model number of the drive?
 
Any other interesting things folks have put in that drive bay? I saw a Multiport Kit for sale. It needed to plug into a PCI card to work.  The company selling it is quite slow on shipping, answering email and phone calls.   So I am probably not going to buy anything from them again. 
 
mraroid
 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
Are internal USB floppy drives a thing that exists? As far as I know that would be the only way to do this. There is no Apple/mac floppy controller onboard the Blue-And-White, as there is on the original iMac board.

I grabbed a Zip drive from a PC back in the day, to put in my blue-and-white, but today I'd be more likely to pull that zip drive and put a hard disk there instead.

EDIT: I haven't seen this but one thing that would be neat and would work well is the IDE version of the Imation SuperDisk drive. Unfortunately I don't know if there was ever a dedicated faceplate/bezel built for that drive on this system.

 
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mraroid

Well-known member
Well, I have a internal floppy drive in my Color Classic.  I guess it is asking too much to take a internal drive like it, plug in the ribbon cable and a power and have it work?  :-(

I did not know what a Imation SuperDisk drive was until I googled it. They are quite inexpensive on ebay.  I have a PCI Sonnet card that gives me two external firewire ports and two external USB ports.  The card also had a internal USB port.

I once installed a 8 track player in my 1972 El Camino. The 8 Track was stock, but I could not find the correct face place.  I ended up making what I needed out of thin plywood.  After primer and two top coats of paint, it looked great.  Maybe I can make a wood face plate and paint it blue or white....

Which Floppy drive would you suggest?  The Imation SuperDisk?

mraroid

 

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
There is no "classic" Mac floppy port on the B&W's motherboard, so USB and IDE are your only options. Cory has mentioned the Imation SuperDisk; it should work fine to hang an internal one of those off the secondary IDE channel (IE, the 16mb/s port that's normally used for the CD-ROM drive), that's where the IDE Zip drive was on the models so equipped. (My B&W has a stock Zip drive in it that I've never actually used, ever.) The advantage this drive would have over most USB floppy drives is it has a powered eject motor, so you can drag disks to trash to eject them both logically and physically in the standard Mac fashion. You could of course also use the USB version of the SuperDisk, although if you rip the case off of one of those you'll find it's just an IDE unit with a bridge board stuck on it so you might as well just put it on your IDE chain. (Set it to "slave" and your CD-ROM/DVD drive to "master".)

Just remember that no matter what you pick it'll only work with standard 1.44/720k format floppies*. (*Actually, some USB drives don't work in 720k mode, 1.44 HD only.) So you still won't be able to use your B&W to make disks for truly ancient macs (IE, Mac Plus and such) or otherwise read/write 800k images.

 
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Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
So you still won't be able to use your B&W to make disks for truly ancient macs (IE, Mac Plus and such) or otherwise read/write 800k images
This is a very good point and it deserves even more clarification:

No USB floppies will do this at all. You MUST use a beige Mac if you want to write 800k diskettes.

Further, you have to use a much older beige Mac running a maximum of system 7.1 in order to use 400k diskettes. ref. http://lowendmac.com/2016/floppy-disk-compatibility-and-incompatibility-in-the-mac-world/ 

 

mraroid

Well-known member
[SIZE=small][/SIZE]Hello Gorgonops[SIZE=small]  & Cory....[/SIZE]

My first thought was to install a internal Apple branded 1.44 floppy drive in that slot under the optical drive.  I see a ribbon cable and power connector swinging the breeze.  I believe the size of the ribbon cable and the size of power cable may need an adapter so they can plug in correctly.  I never did think [SIZE=small]about[/SIZE] the master and slave option - thank you for that tip.

[SIZE=small][/SIZE]

[SIZE=small]I have a Apple 1.44 drive that came out of a Color Clasic or a LC 575.  The ribbon cable connector on the back of it is not like the ribbon cable feeding that empty slot under the optical drive.  I will post a photo. I see no power input on the floppy drive I have.  Do I plug an adaptor into the ribbon connector on the back of the floppy drive and then plug in power and the existing ribbon cable?[/SIZE] Or do I need to start looking for another floppy drive altogether?  If it would work, what is the name of the floppy ribbon cable that the floppy drive takes?

I suspect a USB floppy would work fine, but I would like to use the ribbon cable and power cable under the optical drive if I can.



 
Cory - I am only looking for 1.44 floppy support at this time.
 
mraroid
 
flop2.jpg

 

mraroid

Well-known member
I found this on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Imation-SuperDisk-Drive-LS-120-120MB-LS120-IDE-LKM-F733-1/302595654953?epid=21012723378&hash=item46741b4529:g:lywAAOSw8i9aVB5i:sc:USPSPriority!97301!US!-1:rk:51:pf:0

Would this work?  I also found one in a housing:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Imation-Superdisk-SD-USB-M2-USB-Drive-for-Macintosh/192805309891?epid=1700246874&hash=item2ce4178dc3:g:H8MAAOSwPrdcTSmC:rk:54:pf:0

With the one in the housing, I can remove the housing, and it will expose a power input plus a place to plug in the IED cable that I have available?

I can probably make a face plate....

mraroid

 

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
My first thought was to install a internal Apple branded 1.44 floppy drive in that slot under the optical drive.  I see a ribbon cable and power connector swinging the breeze.  I believe the size of the ribbon cable and the size of power cable may need an adapter so they can plug in correctly.  I never did think [SIZE=small]about[/SIZE] the master and slave option - thank you for that tip.
There is no adapter that exists that will let you stick that drive there. As I said:

There is no "classic" Mac floppy port on the B&W's motherboard, so USB and IDE are your only options.
Those Mac floppy drives require a completely proprietary-to-Apple controller, the B&W doesn't have it, and there exist no add-on card or converter that will give it to you. That connection that's dangling loose under the optical drive is the second port on the IDE chain the optical drive sits on. (The B&W technically has two IDE controllers; there's an ATA-3 port integrated to the "Paddington" I/O chip that essentially serves as the B&W's "Southbridge", and an ATA-4 controller that sits parallel to it on the internal PCI bus. Normally the hard disk(s) are connected to the ATA-4 controller while the CD/DVD-ROM drive and optional ZIP drive sit on the slower ATA-3 port.) Again, there is *no* way to take a drive out a Beige Mac and plug it into a B&W, ever.

I found this on ebay:
Of those two you might as well buy the bare drive, unless you want the plastic bits, because inside the external version's case is exactly the same mechanism. And, yes, those are the SuperDisk drives Cory and I have been talking about. The selling point of those drives was that they could store 120MB (about the same as a ZIP) on the special, long-discontinued LS-120 media and *also* be backwards compatible with normal 1.44MB floppy drives. If all you want it for is making disks for your older Mac there's no reason to care about the higher-capacity media.

So far as I know one of those drives should "just work" if you hang it off your internal IDE bus without any special drivers, but since I've never done that on a Mac I'm not going to vouch for it.

 

Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
... The other thing that someone could answer better than I can is whether there are any issues with trying to use DiskCopy on either an IDE or USB SuperDisk instead of a native Macintosh floppy drive. I doubt it'll matter, so far as I know it just uses the Toolbox block device drivers, but if anyone has any experience otherwise that suggests that DiskCopy cares about the target device being an actual according-to-Hoyle "floppy drive" I suppose that would be a useful data point. For the "Bridge Mac" application a floppy drive that doesn't work with DiskCopy would be suboptimal.

 

Bolle

Well-known member
I have a LS120/Superdrive in my Wallstreet and it does not work with DiskCopy, pretty sure USB and IDE drives won't work as well.

 
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Gorgonops

Moderator
Staff member
Well, there you go, then. A floppy drive in the B&W may not be a particularly useful investment, especially if you have network connectivity for your old-Tymey mac. (I'm pretty sure that an LS120 in a Wallstreet would be hanging off of the IDE bus, so it would be electrically/software-wise equivalent to an internal drive in a B&W.)

In theory at least you should still be able to write 1.44mb disk images with it, either under OS X with dd or possibly with DiskDup+ under the classic OS, but you'd need to convert DiskCopy images to a RAW format.

 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
I have a SuperDisk Drive, bought it new back in 1999 for my iMac. I can test out and see if DiskCopy will work with it.

If I recall, the only "modern" Mac that a floppy drive port-type setup might work on was some Rev. A iMacs. The iMac was going to have a floppy port when designed, but it was taken out at the last second. I think that the floppy connector wound up on the motherboard. Someone correct me if this is wrong.

 

mraroid

Well-known member
I really need to learn Mac technical terms that apply after about 1993.  I am having a hard time keeping up here....

So Bolle and Gorgonops...

Are you saying this drive will not work at all:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Imation-SuperDisk-Drive-LS-120-120MB-LS120-IDE-LKM-F733-1/302595654953?epid=21012723378&hash=item46741b4529:g:lywAAOSw8i9aVB5i:sc:USPSPriority!97301!US!-1:rk:51:pf:0

Or it will work, but I need a 3rd party application to use it?  I am not interested in using the high capacity disks that this drive will support.  I am only interested in

making 1.44k disks that my Color Classic Mystic can read.

Would my life be any easier if I plugged the external drive version of the above into the internal USB port on my Sonnet USB card?

LaPorta.....

If you have time, I would look forward to your test.  I do not need to install a floppy drive ASAP, so time is not a big issue. 

So I am guessing the floppy drive I have will not work at all, true?

Thanks everyone for the help.

jack

 

LaPorta

Well-known member
I am not sure regarding 1.4 MB support, but at least for the 120MB media you needed the superdisk extensions installed. I still have the installers. I will look into this for you as to what the support is. I can test under Mac OS 8.6, 9, and OS X 10.4. I'll get back to you when I have time.

 

mraroid

Well-known member
Disk Copy has its own Sony disk driver. It doesn't use the standard Sony driver in ROM.
So are you saying that if I used a Sony branded floppy drive, it might work?  I would need to find a Sony floppy drive that could take the ribbon cable plug that

is hanging off the optical drive.

mraroid

 

mraroid

Well-known member
I am not sure regarding 1.4 MB support, but at least for the 120MB media you needed the superdisk extensions installed. I still have the installers. I will look into this for you as to what the support is. I can test under Mac OS 8.6, 9, and OS X 10.4. I'll get back to you when I have time.
Thanks so much LaPorta..... 

Beer is on me next time you are in Oregon! :)

mraroid

 

Dog Cow

Well-known member
So are you saying that if I used a Sony branded floppy drive, it might work? 
I don't know. But what I do know is that the older versions of Disk Copy were designed to use the Sony disk drives through the IWM chip. But later versions of Disk Copy work with volumes of differing sizes. So probably new versions of Disk Copy will work, but the old Disk Copy 4.1 and 4.2 won't work.

 
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