exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Looks like I finally filled that blank space on my main PC.
...and finally found a use for that USB internally pointing USB socket on my PCI usb card.
This might interest EXXOS as he too uses win 7
Basically my ASUS 97-P motherboard never supported floppy and never would.
It is often inconvenient to power up an older PC just to format or write a diskette.
So I aquired one of those.
Floppy Adapters
I had the PC case open for some mods and upgrades anyway so why not fill that blank 3.5" bay with something useful.
Serviced a nice black fronted floppy drive and fitted it..and with the adapter plugged directly to the floppy drive...and linked to the internal usb 2x header on the pci card..powered up the PC.
It does slow the boot process a little but not by much...and the win7 OS auto assignes the floppy drive to A:
OK does it work ?
The answer is yes..but windows will read a 720k disk but will not perform a format from windows.
Windows _will_ format a 1.44mb disk ...though as to it being made bootable ? I've yet to test this but it is doubtful.
Win 7 being the last windows OS to partially work directly with floppies.
...
Anyhoo...I figured this info might be of some interest.
rgds

Interesting.. Not sure I've seen those. You can format 720k from the dos prompt.

I hacked a usb floppy drive internally in my pc. It supports 720k.

viewtopic.php?p=90354#p90354

Mine came from Amazon..but I wanted in a hurry..
1.44MB USB Cable Adapter to 34 Pin Drive Connector U Floppy to Floppy Board Disk Drive Connector
They are available on ebay cheaper ..but there's the wait time.
I assume your mobo has a floppy header then ?
Mine sadly doesn't

I have a ryzen based board. No floppy headers...

viewtopic.php?p=90354#p90354

Those adapters don't seem to mention 720k. :shrug:

So ..you are basically doing the same thing as I am but with an external drive..
I wanted something to fill the 3.5" bay...which is why I chose the adapter method.
Same principle tho'
Can you write a bootable floppy with your setup ?
good to know 720k is still do-able from the cmd prompt.

Vipersan wrote: 08 Mar 2026 15:54 Can you write a bootable floppy with your setup ?

DOS bootable? Never tried. I just copy files between ST and pc, 720k or 1.44. Programs which are supposed to write images to floppy never worked right. But not really a problem as my daily drive is just copying files about.

exxos wrote: 08 Mar 2026 16:01

Vipersan wrote: 08 Mar 2026 15:54 Can you write a bootable floppy with your setup ?

DOS bootable? Never tried. I just copy files between ST and pc, 720k or 1.44. Programs which are supposed to write images to floppy never worked right. But not really a problem as my daily drive is just copying files about.

I get it...and most likely that's what I'll be using mine for..data transfer.
I've plently of PCs that can make bootable disks...so not a problem.
I am curious though.