What exactly are you planning to do with this floppy drive? If you are planning to do any kind of serious archival, USB floppy drives are simply the wrong tool for the job.
Specifically, USB floppy drives, are limited to standard 1.44mb, 720k, and Japanese "mode 3" floppy disk formats. You won't be able to read copy protected disks, Microsoft DMF disks, or other oddball formats. Many USB drives even fail to support 720k and mode 3 disks, even though that is in the USB spec.
In practice, most USB floppy drives are cheap and have completely random internals. So it is impossible to be sure what you are really getting.
Now, if you are just looking for something to use as a convenience to get standard data disks to or from a floppy based system, then a USB floppy drive might just be adequate.
So, if you really need a USB floppy drive, I would suggest sticking to something that is at least branded with a big brand name. I would also strongly suggest rejecting any drive that does not support 720k and mode 3. The only problem is most sellers have no idea.
If you are looking to do any kind of serious archival, I would suggest a flux level device like a Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, or Greaseweazel. Then get a standard 3.5" floppy drive (Teacs are usually a good bet). This gives you the power to read almost any odd format, including Macintosh GCR VBR encoded 400k/800k disks. These devices attach to a computer via USB.
The drive I recommend for casual USB transfers would be a Dell MPF82E. It is a removable internal laptop floppy drive, but it has a female USB Mini-B 5 pin connector on the drive itself for easy connection to a modern PC. As well, it supports 720k diskettes.
Hi....you could generally utilize bootcamp to duplicate the documents onto the floppydrive. Or then again even equals/WMware. You can get these bits of programming (counting Windows) as preliminaries so you wont have additional expenses there. Simply save them onto the harddrive on her new iMac and she will not have any issues.
@elgibbons Thanks for the tip on the MPF82E. My regular no-name USB floppy drive doesn't read 720k so I have ordered on of these to play with. It may even fit my Dell Latitude.
Comments
Specifically, USB floppy drives, are limited to standard 1.44mb, 720k, and Japanese "mode 3" floppy disk formats. You won't be able to read copy protected disks, Microsoft DMF disks, or other oddball formats. Many USB drives even fail to support 720k and mode 3 disks, even though that is in the USB spec.
In practice, most USB floppy drives are cheap and have completely random internals. So it is impossible to be sure what you are really getting.
Now, if you are just looking for something to use as a convenience to get standard data disks to or from a floppy based system, then a USB floppy drive might just be adequate.
So, if you really need a USB floppy drive, I would suggest sticking to something that is at least branded with a big brand name. I would also strongly suggest rejecting any drive that does not support 720k and mode 3. The only problem is most sellers have no idea.
If you are looking to do any kind of serious archival, I would suggest a flux level device like a Kryoflux, SuperCard Pro, or Greaseweazel. Then get a standard 3.5" floppy drive (Teacs are usually a good bet). This gives you the power to read almost any odd format, including Macintosh GCR VBR encoded 400k/800k disks. These devices attach to a computer via USB.