I recently acquired not one, but 2, 8″ floppy drives. Behold a Data System’s Design DSD 440:

To get this all working in my experiments, I used the following guides

Parts and equipment

• Data Systems Design DSD 440 user manual:
  • Bitsavers: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dsd/040009-01_440_UG_Jul81.pdf
  • Bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/pdf/DSD-440%20Flexible%20Disk%20Memory%20System%20User’s%20Guide.pdf
  • Hosted here.
• Antoine’s 50-pin to 34-pin, 8 inch floppy cable adapter :
  • Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/products/siliconinsider/8-floppy-disk-interface-50-pin-to-34-pin-adapter/
  • eBay (aberco): https://www.ebay.com/itm/115729590176?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=pPzsxZjPS3u&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=XjmXaNNRTlW&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
• Floppy cables
  • CablesOnline – http://www.cablesonline.com/ also their (ebay store)
    CablesOnline has a good selection of universal floppy cables for a very reasonable price.
  • IEC.net also has a selection of floppy cables, and can custom-make floppy cables for you.
• Power supply – the hardest part of all this. My unit thankfully still had a working power supply. Everyone else must use their own bench power systems. Everyone else must look up their particular drives and find ways to get the appropriate mains and line voltages to the several different power connectors.
  • jojobondjs88 seems to be offering a power supply on ebay. Github with details here.
  • See the user manual above – it has complete power pinouts and information. Otherwise, you’ll have to use your own bench power supply
• Software
  • ImageDisk (imd) – for formatting and controlling 8″ drives: http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/img/
  • nformat – for formatting disks: http://toastytech.com/files/nformat.html