Floppy disks are a relic of the past these days. You can still see the odd 3.5″ floppy – and there are even still companies making 3.5″ USB drives you can plug into your system today. But 5.25″ floppy drives (360k and 1.2 meg variety) are much more scarce. So scarce, in fact, that you’re likely not to find any outside of an old vintage computer. Most modern PC’s since the Pentium don’t even have connectors, interfaces that support them, and I know of no vendors that make USB 5.25″ drives.

So what is one to do if they have old 5.25″ floppies they need to read? Turns out others have had the same problem – so you’re not alone.

Here’s some options:

1. Find a service that will convert them – Usually for a fee around $5-$25 per disk.
   
2. Buy an old vintage Intel pre-Core based computer from eBay that has a working 5.25″ drive.
   This means a 486 or lower computer. Almost all plug-in floppy controllers require a PC who’s motherboard has an ISA interface (not PCI). You must also be careful because older 8-bit ISA floppy controllers (from the XT/AT era) often will NOT work in faster 386/486/Pentium ISA interfaces (even though they are supposed too).
   
3. Use a flux-style reader. These allow you to attach a 5.25″ drive to a controller board which then connects to your USB port. The big limitation is that you cannot interact with the disks via DOS or command line options. Instead, you need to read/write whole disk images or operate at the sector level. These readers do this by reading flux data. While this is more complicated, it is the method that archivists are using to backup disks. Reading flux data gives you the ability to read/write disks from almost any platform and in any format – even copy protected disks.
   
   1. GreaseWeasle V4 [NEW 2022] – https://decromancer.ooo/greaseweazle/
      Interfaces with 8″, 5 1/4″, and 3 1/2″ drives. Amazingly, it only costs $31 CAD and seems to get as good reviews as the Kryoflux. Definitely one of the cheapest options on this list. Since it extracts the raw flux transitions from the drive, any diskette format can be captured and analyzed – PC, Amiga, Amstrad, PDP-11, many older electronic musical instruments, and industrial equipment. The Greaseweazle also supports writing to floppy disks. The design is fully open and comes with no license encumberment.
      [UPDATE 10-2022] I just bought one of these and could not be happier. It’s pretty sweet!
      
   2. Kryoflux – https://www.kryoflux.com/
      The Holy Grail of floppy readers, but not cheap at 105€. It is able to read all formats, save as a raw stream, or export to common sector formats like the Acorn Electron, Apple, Amstrad CPC, Archimedes, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, BBC, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, MSX, IBM PC, PC-8801, Sam Coupe, Spectrum, E-MU Emulator & Emulator II, DEC RX01 & RX02 and many others.
      
   3. Device Side Data’s FC5025 –http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html
      USB 5.25″ floppy controller plugs into any computer’s USB port and enables you to attach a 5.25″ floppy drive. Even if your computer has no built-in floppy controller, the FC5025 lets you read those old disks. It also understands formats used by Apple, Atari, Commodore, TI, and others.
      
   4. Supercard Pro – https://www.cbmstuff.com/
      I don’t know very much about this one, but here’s a review and this page which contains a lot of useful information.
      
   5. DREM – https://www.drem.info/
      DREM is a MFM/RLL hard drive emulator that can read raw dumps of a hard drive. It also allows you to read floppies. More here.
      
4. ISA on modern PC’s
   • See complete list of ISA devices (mostly over USB) here on my other article.
   • dISAppointment LPC to ISA adapter (*new* Jun 2023)
     I recently read about this adapter.  [TheRasteri] found he could access the ISA bus lurking in modern computers through the Low Pin Count (LPC) bus which is exposed on the TPM port in many modern motherboards. He then exposed an actual ISA slot and plugged in a sound blaster card. Low and behold it works! More details on his youtube site, as well as on Vogons. No word yet if he’s producing any for purchase.

Cables/Adapters for connecting 3.5/5.25/8″ floppy drives to your PC:

• CablesOnline – http://www.cablesonline.com/ also their (ebay store)
  CablesOnline has a good selection of universal floppy cables for a very reasonable price.
  • universal floppy cable Item # FF-002 for $9.99
• IEC.net also has a selection of floppy cables, and can custom-make floppy cables for you.
  • They also have MFM and RLL hard drive cables (and can make them to order)
• Dbit – http://www.dbit.com/fdadap.html
  The DBit FDADAP board is a small adapter which adapts 8″ floppy disk drives (Shugart SA800 style bus) to work with the PC 3.5″/5.25″ floppy disk cable pinout. It has 34- and 50-pin connectors which can be connected to the PC floppy controller and the 8″ disk drive using simple straight-through ribbon cables (not included), and a 3.5″ style power connector for the on-board microcontroller
• TexElec – https://texelec.com/product/8-inch-floppy-adapter/
  TexElec makes tons of retro computing dream boards (clone Adlib, IDE, floppy, and other controllers) as well as this 34 to 50 pin 8″ floppy drive adapter board that allows you to plug in 8″ floppy disk drives with a standard PC 3.5″/5.25″ floppy disk cable.

Dead/Discontinued controllers

• Catweasel – http://www.nishtek.com/cw.html
  Discontinued PCI board for connecting to floppies. Like other solutions, it doesn’t make drives show up as a drive letter – but rather lets you read raw formats for all sorts of platforms.

Other resources/discussions:

• FloppyDisk.com – Source to buy various sizes of floppy disks
• CablesOnline has a universal floppy cable (Item # FF-002) for $9.99
• TULARC – MASSIVE resource of information about vintage hard drive, floppy drive, motherboard, disk controller cards, IO cards, etc. Pinouts, drive format properties, jumpers, specs, and so forth. Probably the most amazing resource of vintage setup info on the web I’ve found.
• https://www.xbitlabs.com/how-to-read-floppy-disk/