Diskette Floppy Box: My case solution for housing and using floppy disk drives with boards like KyroFlux, SuperCard Pro, Device Side FC5025 and GreaseWeazle.

The purpose of this page is to show how a case (for burning disks originally) was repurposed to serve as my floppy diskette drive "tower" for the 3.5 and 5.25 inch internal drives, along with wiring things up. Once completed and with the controller hooked up and plugged into a modern computer, reading (in some cases writing) floppies becomes possible and...with OS emulators...those vintage applications can be brought to life (cue Egor and Frankenstein?). At the end I'll even get into one of many reasons it may be worth considering having diskette drive hardware; in that thought experiment - diskette secrets...old-school 007. :)

The Disk Controller
In today's age, aside from an actual internal floppy diskette drive (that fits in a 5.25 inch drive bay), you'll also need a disk controller that can interface with the drive and allow you to connect it to a computer (like standard USB). During my research for controllers I found four different ones that could be purchased at the time of this writing. The capabilities of the controllers varies; for example, a single disk drive may only be supported, interfacing with an 8 inch disk drive may not be possible, etc. So it would be up to you to decide which one may be best for what you want to accomplish. That said, I got my hands on the KyroFlux board so I could interface with 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy diskette drives at the same time:

* sourced from hxc2001.com

The Floppy Diskette Drive
While getting a new internal 3.5 inch floppy diskette drive is still possible today it is quite challenging to find a new internal 5.25 inch floppy diskette drive (it has been decades since they were manufactured) unless you have buku bucks. With the latter, thankfully, there are still lots of used drives that can be purchased. In terms of used 5.25 inch used drives, usually with a little cleaning, one that did not work could start working again as seen with this video.

In my case I went for the Panasonic JU-475-4xx 1.2MB 5.25 internal diskette drive, with a range of jumpers to customize things like fixed and double density operation, switching in and out of 1.2MB, and so on. As for the internal 3.5 inch floppy diskette drive, I got the TEAC model.

The Emulator
The next key component is having an emulator to get your floppy diskette content to run (for lack of a better word) once it has been ripped for today's computers. While most have probably heard of dosbox, one site that I managed to find HERE has details on a bunch of emulators for a computer (and other platforms) ranging from Amiga to ZX. Pretty handy to have all that in one place to reference.

The Case Build
With all that out of the way, let's get into the case build. This will take some time to do and you'll likely need a Dremel (for custom cutting), and drill with some bits.

	After the Copystar Dvd Duplicator 3-bay Tower arrived, like this one, I put a multimeter on the molex plugs to make sure the built-in power supply was working and that the molex pins had the voltages needed (12VDC, 5VDC)...nowadays you just never know; turns out the molex plugs were outputting the correct voltages at the correct pins. It also has other power plugs (SATA, etc) but in this application, those will not be used.
	In order to connect the case to the computer via a USB cable (and so there are no cables poking out of the case), I used a 2-foot panel mount USB 2.0 A Female to B Male cable, like this one. The male end will plug into the disk controller. In order to seat the female end into the bottom area of the case, as seen in the image, you'll need to cut out a piece to get it mounted and a drill for the mounting screws. Finally, bay #1 (the one closest to the USB cable) will have a 5.25 inch bay plastic drawer like this one. The USB and disk cable will go into the drawer and connect to the disk controller. NOTE: On the plastic drawer itelf you will need to cut out a portion of the back so you can feed the cabling through it.
	Next, insert the drive bay drawer frame (without the drawer) into the case and secure it. After you have mounted the 3.5 inch diskette drive to a 5.25 inch bay sled (like the 3.5" to 5.25" Front Bay-Mounting Bracket), slide in and secure it in the second bay. Be sure to connect the molex and disk cable to the drive as it will become inaccessible once the 5.25 inch diskette drive is added.
	At this point, feed through the male USB cable end and the disk cable through bay slot 1 where the drawer will be used. You may want to cut out a portion in the back of the plastic drawer for the cables.
	If you happen to have a Panasonic JU-475-4xx series 5.25 inch floppy diskette drive, there are some jumper locations that you might want to be aware of in case you need to change them around, as shown in the image. In my case, the jumper settings work for my needs.
	Now, slide in and secure the 5.25 inch floppy diskette drive into bay 3 (the top-most bay in the case), and connect the molex and disk cable. The reason why I placed the 5.25 inch drive on the top of the bay stack is, if I need to change jumpers or need to work on the drive in the future (such as to clean the motor head assembly or related parts) I'll have easy access to the drive and won't have to remove it from the case. Pretty chill.
	After plugging the usb and disk cables to the disk controller (in this case, KyroFlux) in the drawer (see image), everything is ready! You may be wondering why I have the disk controller in the plastic drawer. The first reason is so that I can have easy access to it without busting open the case. And, the second reason is that if other disk controllers become available in the future (perhaps an all-in-one that can actually work with disk media without ripping and do emulation at the same time - so the end-user simply interacts like they do with files and executables on a computer today) I can simply unplug the current disk controller, plug in the new one, close the drawer and be ready for use. Extra Credit Question: Now that you've seen how I put together a case for different floppy diskette drives with a controller, you may have heard that there are external 3.5 inch disk drives that plug into a computer with a usb cable. I have one of those, like this one. Yet, for some reason, nothing like that is available for a 5.25 inch floppy diskette (or drive). So here's the question: Since you've seen that the 3.5 inch diskette drive uses the same cable as a 5.25 inch floppy diskette drive, has anyone tried to hack the 3.5 hardware so a 5.25 inch floppy diskette drive can be jacked into it?
	Here's the front-view image of the fully assembled case. Awesome project! A few other notes of interest: 1. Depending on how the disk cable was connected to the drives (in my case, the 3.5 inch drive after the twist at the end of the cable, and the 5.25 inch drive before the twist (so closest to the disk controller)) are seen by the KyroFlux disk controller as Disk 0 (3.5 inch drive) and Disk 1 (5.25 inch drive). 2. While you can select which drive to work with via the GUI (the GUI requires java) to select the Drive, you can also use the DTC command-line. 3. Some example DTC commands to run from the command-line for calibration (track seek) which can also be used to clean the drive heads if you have a cleaner include: DTC -d0 -c2 (this will run calibrate on disk 0) DTC -d1 -c2 (this will run calibrate on disk 1) 4. With what I've found for 360KB and 1.2MB 5.25 inch floppy diskettes and the 5.25 inch drive, it is possible to use a 360KB diskette in a 5.25 inch drive. The first bit is to know the track information: 360KB Diskette = 40 tracks. Typically DS/DD (MF2-DD "LOW DENSITY"). Usually has a visible plastic white or black "hub" ring in the center. 1.2MB Diskette (or 1.44MB, 3.5 inch Diskette) = 80 tracks. Typically DS/HD (MF2-HD / MD-2HD "HIGH DENSITY"). Usually does not have a "hub" ring in the center. There may be a jumper on the board to make the switch for the media. Another option that is possible is that, for a 360KB diskette, the HEAD STEP can be set to 2. That said, that may not cover all media types, such as some niche format, but this has worked for what I've come across. Speaking of that, diskettes of 720KB (DS/QD) typically are read as 360KB per side.

Diskette Secrets?
With hardly ANYBODY today possessing the hardware to read/write a floppy diskette (particularly the 5.25 inch), it may seem that having 5.25 and/or 3.5 inch (perhaps even the larger 8 inch) drive at hand would not be worth pursuing. Unless, of course, it was a hobby or part of a techie-job for archival, data transfer, etc.

That said, let's say you had some friends who DID have common hardware to utilize diskettes and wanted to pass "eyes-only" data back and forth (could probably be encrypted as well, but that is getting in the weeds a bit). In such a circumstance, why not use diskette media because (1) neighbors may not have the hardware to access them, (2) diskette media is less durable to the environment - meaning, if you lose it, the data it contains will naturally degrade over time faster than something like a usb drive, and, (3) diskettes can be "erased" fairly easily with a strong magnet should the data need to be...disappeared.

Humm.

Using KyroFlux & Don't Like Command-Line DTC to Make Images?
I'll admit, to create floppy diskette image files with DTC (less so with the GUI) can be a bit tedious...particularly when a bunch of the nitty-gritty details (and there are a lot) may not be known for the diskettes you have. After all, its not like everyone jotted down all those details decades ago with the forethought that it would be needed in the future; I know I didn't. Though I tried, I could not find a nifty chart that included all that information from all the different manufacturers of ancient lore either.

Well, there may be a quick and easy solution to making diskette images without needing to know any of the nitty gritty details whatsoever...except maybe the computer the diskette media was used with. Say what?! Now, this may not work for everything created by the ancients as I can only test with what I have on-hand and don't yet have a Willy Wonka Techno Lab spanning a few acres where all tech sleeps, yearning to be awakened. But, with what I have explored and tested, indeed, it does work. So, let me tell you.

Starting with KyroFlux, then to HxC
Once you have saved a RAW preservation stream of the diskette to a folder on the computer, there is a piece of software known as the HxC Floppy Emulator (you can find it in the HxC link at the top of this page) that can take that RAW stream of files, assemble them, and generate an image file (dozens of types to choose from from Atari to Tandy to IBM/PC and so on). You can also go in and make little nitty gritty changes if you want, but for this example, only the default settings were used. Here are the steps:

Go into the HxC software folder (such as x64). Copy the config.script.
Go into the KyroFlux folder where the RAW stream files are located. Paste the config.script there.
Start the HxCFloppyEmulator application.
Move the File Explorer window so it is next to the HxCFloppyEmulator application.
Find the first RAW stream file (it will be named something like track.0).
Single-click and hold that file, and drag it over on top of the HxCFloppyEmulator window and release the mouse button.
Wait for the HxCFloppyEmulator progress bar to finish.
Click the button "Export" and choose location where the file (such as IMG) will be saved.
For Save as type, in this example for regular MS-DOS disk, choose "IMG file (RAW Sector file format)(*.img)".
Wait some more for the image file to get created with the default settings.
Churn some butter because that's it!

Fast way to Verify the Diskette Image Without Installing a Full-Fledged Computer Emulator
Once you have an image, if you want to actually see files/folders contained in that image, the HxCFloppyEmulator application also has a handy "disk explorer" if you will (you also have the ability to copy out files from that image and put on your computer, among other things). This can be handy to use if you don't have time to import and fire up a full-fledged emulator when you just want to verify that files are present, their size, etc. To get a peek into the files and folders contained in the image, do the following:

Start the HxCFloppyEmulator application.
Click the button "Load". Select the image file.
With the image file loaded, click on the button "Disk Browser".
A window will appear showing the files/folders to the left, with a low-level previewer and other options to the right.

In summary, it was shown how to create a RAW stream, convert that stream to an image (without needing to know all the tedious DTC details), and verify the image by examining its files/folders. All with point and click ease.

Desire to achieve balance is rarely tuned to the domain it is realized within, thereby recasting it into atypical substance.