[cbm-vic-20]

This is pretty much the only way 5.25" floppies are read today with modern equipment. While you can still get USB 3.5" floppy drives there are no USB 5.25" floppy drives. Modern PCs don't have the correct drive headers anymore, either, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to read Commodore or Apple II floppies.

However, there is hardware and software called GreaseWeazle that actually reads the magnetic flux transitions on the disks to extract the data within.

https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

[snvzz]

GreaseWeazle is great (I own one!), but it's far from "the only way today".

Not that long ago, motherboards still had a floppy controller. These computers do mostly still work.

So do the ones from the 80s, for that matter.

>USB 3.5" floppy drives

To anybody considering: Don't bother. They can only read/write the most standard IBM PC format. No flux streams.

Instead, get any old floppy drive and a greaseweazle at about the same cost. You'll be able to read and write all sorts of formats, and recover data from damaged and otherwise unreadable floppies.

[branon]

The greaseweazle still looks like a connector for an existing 5.25" drive, is there any hardware you know of that replicates the drive itself?

[efreak]

> The greaseweazle still looks like a connector for an existing 5.25" drive

That's because it connects to an existing 5.25" drive

> is there any hardware you know of that replicates the drive itself?

Why would you build a device to emulate a device that already exists, when all you need to do is communicate with it?

[branon]

Because nobody's made new 5.25" drives for decades and eventually they will all be gone?

I don't want to have to buy used gear off eBay, and wouldn't need to for 3.5" disks or drives - you can actually find people producing new stock.

Why doesn't 5.25" hardware get the same treatment?