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Present a USB floppy as a physical device to a VM

ManofmilkManofmilk
edited March 2017 in Software
Not sure this is the right place for this question but I shall ask anyway and move to another forum/thread as required :)

I have a USB floppy drive attached to my Windows 10 PC, where it appears to the OS as a floppy drive.
I have a VM am running PC-DOS 2000, hosted on VMware Workstation 12. What I would like to do is present the USB floppy to the VM to appear as the A:/B: drive so I can format the floppies but I don't seem to be able to do this - If I attempt to present a floppy drive VMware just says 'no floppy hardware present'. I can present the USB floppy to the VM as a USB device but would you believe that out of the box it doesn't support USB, what a shocker..... ;)

Any ideas how I can get the USB floppy presented to any VM as a floppy device and not a USB device please?

Comments

  • BigCJBigCJ
    I saw your other thread and understand you want to format 720Kb floppies. USB floppy drives usually freak out when you toss in something other than a high-density (1.44Mb) diskette. The best, if not only way to do this would be to get a real floppy drive and format using WinImage on your host OS.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    Too many USB floppy drives do not support operation with 720k disks. There are, however some that do. First step, make sure your drive does. If it does not, then smash it with a hammer, get another one, and repeat until you find one that works.

    Microsoft removed the 720k format option from the GUI just to be dicks. You can still format 720k on XP/Vista/7/8/10 using the command: FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9

    I think WinImage will also format the disks as it writes them, and it should work with 720k on USB (again, if the drive supports it).

    I don't know that VMs will expose host floppy drives in such a way that they can be formatted like that. That is usually a job best left to the host OS anyway.
  • English InvaderEnglish Invader
    One USB floppy drive I can vouch for is the Packard Bell PB-UFD100. I've used it to format DD disks on Windows XP for use on an Atari ST which reads standard MS-DOS format.
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