Tonight's job - sewing machines.

[PC]

... but if I had something I could insert in the 3 1/2" drive that gave me a USB end it would be so much easier. Wistful thinking I suspect.

Don't hold your breath on that.

The old cassette adapters were pretty easy technology. The cassette form factor was large enough to easily contain electronics and the read head is fixed, making for easy alignment of the data transfer interface.

Floppies are much thinner, not just the case but specifically at the read/write interface, which is basically paper thin. And the read head moves while expecting to see a very precisely defined track pattern.

It's probably possible, but hard to imagine anybody rationalizing the trouble and expense of developing it.

Somebody who makes a living using floppy based equipment can justify the cost/hassle of converting the drives to flash based emulators, which is cheap compared to the cost of wholesale replacement of industrial equipment.

The enthusiast/hobbyist with time/budget/technical limitations is sort of stuck in purgatory. The fact that you have the workaround you have now puts you light-years ahead of people with more archaic legacy equipment. (Try doing the same with 8" floppies or the myriad of proprietary tape formats.)

 

[NutmegCT]

JP - I've got a 5.25" floppy drive with USB interface to my laptop. Use it for reading our old library disks.

What exactly do you need a 3.5" disk with USB connector for? I'm trying to understand why a 3.5" drive with USB connector won't work for you.

Thanks.
Tom M.

 

[PC]

What you (and he both) have gives you the ability to read and write floppies with your computer. So you can get stuff on/off your computer.

He has a sewing machine that operates by reading floppies with its own internal floppy drive. To use it he has to feed it with floppies. He'd prefer not to do that anymore. He'd rather plug thumb drives or something into it.

But he doesn't want to disassemble the machine and replace the floppy drive with a floppy-emulating flash reader. He'd rather just load a floppy-emulating gizmo into the machine's disk slot (like we used to be able to do with cassette decks in the old days).

Since no gizmo like that exists he has to keep using floppies with his machine. He can use the external USB floppy drive with his computer to store and organize his files. But he still has to write files to floppies in order to load them into the machine.

 

[PC]

Speaking of disassembling sewing machines, quite a few years back I was trying to hunt down some very European tools. At the time there were only two sources in the US for the PB Baumann brand of hand tools from Switzerland. One was a distributor in the electronics manufacturing industry. The other was a really cool lady named Barbara who was in the sewing biz.

Barbara had noticed that people servicing sewing machines had a problem finding precision tools. So she decided to start a business importing them herself. After she was setup and serving sewing machine technicians, the printing press people found out about her and rushed to her (metaphorical) doorstep.

Since then, PB Baumann has re-branded itself PB Swiss Tools and become much more available in the US. Even Amazon has some of their stuff. Still, when I was visiting friends in Switzerland, I had to stop at a hardware store and buy some screwdrivers.

I hadn't talked to Barbara for a long time. Sadly, I just found out she is no longer with us. But her company, Tool Lady lives on, still small and family owned

 

[NutmegCT]

Thanks PC. If that's what JP is trying to do, he'd still need to copy files from/to another USB device (laptop I assume). I'd think just getting an external USB 3.5 drive would be a heck of a lot more reliable - and less trouble. You don't know what the sewing machine "expects" when it's reading/writing from its standard floppies.

Just my two cents.
Tom M.

 

[dklawson]

JP - I've got a 5.25" floppy drive with USB interface to my laptop. Use it for reading our old library disks.

Really? ! Wow! It was just a few months ago that someone on this board was looking for a USB connected external 5.25" floppy drive. I remember everyone who posted said they were unable to find anything except some external 5.25" drives that used a parallel port interface.

I wonder if that person will see this thread.

 

[NutmegCT]

That was me! After searching in vain, a fellow old computer nut told me about building a similar device. I cobbled a system together, and use it to read old research documents on 5.25" floppies in our library. Old TEAC drive reads the disk, USB controller interface sends info to laptop. Works great.

Really? ! Wow! It was just a few months ago that someone on this board was looking for a USB connected external 5.25" floppy drive. I remember everyone who posted said they were unable to find anything except some external 5.25" drives that used a parallel port interface.

I wonder if that person will see this thread.

 

[dklawson]

Fantastic! I'm glad you found a solution!

 

[pdplot]

When we were first married, we bought a sewing machine with its own table. You flipped the top upside down and the machine was there to work. It was never used. Still sits in my finished basement.