For those who still use floppies

[arjepsen]

Note: further description of using the software on page 2 in the thread.

Hey.
Just thought i'd share my experiences.
I recently bought both a d8b and an HDR
I've been fiddling with new powersupplies and more quiet processor coolers, and also new/bigger harddrives.
However the new harddrives required that I reinstalled the OS, and here it got tricky:
I had no floppies lying around, and neither did anyone I knew.
After driving around some, I eventually found a computer shop that sold me one, which then turned out to be nonfunctional when i got home.
This made me try out various other ways to install the software.
My searches brought me around amazon where I found some "floppy emulators".
It turns out that there are actually a variety of different companies that makes these thingies, with a quite wide range in price.
I ended up making an order for the cheapest one I could find:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/3-5-Inch-Floppy ... e+Emulator
Mostly these seems to be made in china and sold from there, but for the cheap price I was willing to risk it.
It took a while to arrive, but I finaly got it, and it works wonders.
The biggest problems with these seemed to be the software used to put floppy images on the usb stick that the drive uses.
The software came on a very small cd, and was mostly in chineese.....
However, I had read somewhere, that these drives are a close copy of ones that the german company "ipcas" makes, so I went to their website and downloaded the software for their drive:
http://www.ipcas.com/support/usb-floppy ... nload.html
Whaddayaknow.... It worked perfectly! Their software is in english.

Anyway, just thought i'd share it with anyone else getting too annoyed with the floppy challenge.

Regards
Anders

[Old School]

Hi,
Great post! Thanks for the info. I bought a floppy emulator but have never installed it. Did you have any problems with the motherboard recognizing it. Does it store the OS on the disk as two separate floppies & if so how do you switch to the virtual "disc 2" ?

Have a blessed day in Christ,
Mike W.

[the boss]

Or if you also want to read old disks

http://www.geekalerts.com/usb-floppy-disk-drive/

[arjepsen]

Hi,
Great post! Thanks for the info. I bought a floppy emulator but have never installed it. Did you have any problems with the motherboard recognizing it. Does it store the OS on the disk as two separate floppies & if so how do you switch to the virtual "disc 2" ?

Have a blessed day in Christ,
Mike W.

Hey - sorry for a very slow response-time. Been moving to a new house, which has taken a long time.

No, there were no problems for the MB to recognize the drive.
The software I mentioned formats the usb-stick into 100 small partitions, the size of floppies.
It also lets you access each partition, to put files on there - IIRC the softare also lets you use a floppy image file, to put the files inside the image onto a partition. (otherwize there are shareware that will let you extract the files from an image, and then put them on the partition).
There's two buttons on the front of the drive, that you use to access the different partitions. So when you install, you start out by using the first partition, and when the mixer/computer asks for the next floppy, you just switch to the corresponding partition number on the drive, and there you go.
Let me know if you have other questions.
A blessed day to you too.

[Boughman]

Hi Anders,

I purchased a Gotek floppy drive emulator but am having trouble getting the D8B to read the files from the USB stick. I did download the ipcas software you used and was able to format the USB into small partitions but I copy disk 1 of the 5.1 install to the USB and boot, the D8B says its a non-system disk. What OS (Windows 7, etc) did you use to run the ipcas software? When I try to image a partition of the USB from the 5.1 disk I get an error that the disk image is the wrong format. Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Boughman]

Okay installed a floppy drive into the D8B and it reads the disk I created with a USB floppy drive with my Windows 7 machine so I know the files are good. The issue must be with the gotek floppy emulator. The documentation with the gotek leaves a lot to be desired. Did you nave to install any jumpers on the floppy emulator?

[captainamerica]

Curious to know if anyone has developed a good workflow for 5.1 reinstalls using these drives?
Also, I assume the drives have gotten better?


Thanks

[arjepsen]

Sorry for a very late reply

I just used the ipcas software, and it worked without problem.
It's so long ago now, that I don't remember all details, but I definately didn't move any jumpers.
My guess is that it's a matter of how you do everything, and in which order.
Maybe try a different partition - try using f.ex. 5, 6, and 7 for the three disks?

Regards
anders

[arjepsen]

another thought - when I bought my gotek drive, I saw actually saw several different versions.....
Maybe you are using a different version than mine?

[captainamerica]

OK, will have to try the ipcas software

Thanks