im triying to wire my internal diskette drive to my parallel port and its a laptop how do i have it so the floppy 39 pin cable can be converted to the LPT port and the 4 pin power floppy so its powerd by the laptop
You would need a custom microcontroller interface to accomplish that, and I doubt you even know what that is.
MicroSolutions did make a Backpack 3.5" drive that connected to the parallel port (via their own microcontroller and a DOS mode driver), similar to their Backpack CD drive. However, it is not possible to boot from this kind of drive, and it would be useless for installing any protected-mode OS.
Laptops that supported a parallel floppy drive did exist , but it doesn't work on all computers with a parallel port , the way that it works is they wire the floppy controller to the parallel port , than when you plug in a parallel port floppy , it works . Are You saying that the computer supports a parallel port floppy , and you don't have a parallel port floppy drive? I have no idea if you can wire a standard floppy drive to a parallel port to access the floppy controller over parallel . I think any parallel floppy works that is a floppy drive , a floppy drive that needs a floppy controller on parallel port. Not a parallel port floppy drive that someguy is talking about , they are parallel port floppy drive that work on any computer that has a parallel port, since the drive has its own floppy controller and driver.
The external floppy interface may go through the parallel port but it is not using the parallel port pin out. Instead, the pins are diverted to have some of the floppy pins pass through and other pins may be used for power. This has the disadvantage that a parallel port device can not be used at the same time as the floppy drive. Setting it wrong can lead to destroying floppy drive, printer, or laptop. Worse still, IBM, Toshiba, and several other companies implemented slightly different pin outs so you need a matching drive.
For comparison, http://www.varmintal.com/t1000se.htm shows the 14 pins of the parallel port that are used as the Toshiba T1000 laptop external floppy connector which require the external floppy to have separate power source.
Unless you have full documentation, don't try to build your own. I helped someone build one and it was unnerving even with documentation. Get a backpack floppy if you really need floppy access and can't find the correct external drive.
Comments
MicroSolutions did make a Backpack 3.5" drive that connected to the parallel port (via their own microcontroller and a DOS mode driver), similar to their Backpack CD drive. However, it is not possible to boot from this kind of drive, and it would be useless for installing any protected-mode OS.
For comparison, http://www.varmintal.com/t1000se.htm shows the 14 pins of the parallel port that are used as the Toshiba T1000 laptop external floppy connector which require the external floppy to have separate power source.
Unless you have full documentation, don't try to build your own. I helped someone build one and it was unnerving even with documentation. Get a backpack floppy if you really need floppy access and can't find the correct external drive.