3.5" Floppy Drive Cleaning Kits

[BoneSnapDeez]

Well, that's a tape backup, not cassette. That's a little different.

Are you trying to tell me that a craigslist seller lied to me?!

Thanks for the info though haha.

[Ziggy]

You can just buy a brand new drive for less...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6821121001

Unfortunately, I don't think that would work. I'm talking about 15-20 year old computers here.

Yeah, what Hobie said. The PATA and Berg connections are gonna be the same. You'll be able to use the same cables that are in the computer now.

Seriously, just buy a new one. Why mess with cleaning an old one when you can just buy a new one for roughly the same money? Even if you clean the old one, you don't know what condition the drive is really in. It could wreck a floppy.

The 5.25" drive though, you may wanna clean. I haven't come across any new ones. Maybe if you hunt you can find some new old stock drive, but I don't see it being cheap like a 3.5" drive. I have seen 5.25" cleaning kits on eBay for about $10 though.

@ the pic: Awesome! I get the retro PC bug every once in a while. I revived my PII Compaq Deskpro in June. I slapped a 5.25" drive in there too. I've had that drive for years and never used it. It took a little effort for it to play nice with the 3.5" drive, but it turned out to work perfectly. I picked up a copy of Out of this World so I could use the 5.25" drive lol. It's funny how much of a bitch it was to configure stuff back then compared to today. Upgrading the graphics card in that PC was a bitch, and I still can't get Turok to run (tells me I don't have a compatible card lol).

But you're doing it wrong! You need to get a beastly CRT monitor for your retro PC!

[Anapan]

I've used one before. It got dirty when I used it.
My friend had a "vacuum drive" that needed 30 seconds of vacuuming before it'd read anything.
Idunno about the cables being the same, I have some old ribbon cables that have a slot for a connector that looks like an atari cart's connector.
Most of the machines that old have a fair ammount of gold in them. I know a jeweler who got most of his raw material from old mainframes back on the day.

[Ziggy]

Let me clarify. All 3.5" floppy PATA cables are the same. Well, for the most part. IIRC, some old cables are straight thru and I believe you want one with a crossover (a twist in some of the wires). But if Bone Snap uses the same cable that's in there now, he should be fine.

Twist:

What you're referring to, the Atari connector, is the older style cable for different size floppy drives (5.25"). Since Bone Snap has two floppy drives (3.5" and 5.25") he probably has a PATA cable with both connections like this one...

[tintinmayo]

Don't they make floppy drive emulators now? I mean, the ones that function and can be attached to old machines like normal drives, but instead of actually taking floppy discs - they use SD cards?

They're meant for old factory machines that still rely on floppy disks to run, that are too large and expensive to replace.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Thanks for the info guys. This will give me something to work on for the upcoming months.