USB floppy

#1 Fri, 3 Dec 2010 - 19:54 68kMLA

I landed this week for $4 a NIB Iomega USB floppy drive, which I find works fine with my Pismo without drivers (OS9), but not at all on a G5 running X.5.

Still, it's nice to have a floppy for Pismo sneakernet file transfers to older equipment.

#2 Sat, 4 Dec 2010 - 03:04 68kMLA

We just got a Teac one at the thrift and it works on everything even the intel mini.

#3 Sat, 4 Dec 2010 - 06:42 68kMLA

Do other USB mass storage devices (flash drives, hard drives, etc) work on the G5? USB floppy drives should use the standard USB Mass Storage drivers...so as long as you can use other mass storage devices on the G5 you shouldn't have any trouble with a floppy drive.

#4 Sun, 5 Dec 2010 - 15:16 68kMLA

i have no problems with USB storage devices on my G5's (2 Powermacs, 2 iMacs); HD external, stick, ipod

but data transfer is slow, so i prefer firewire 400/800 external HDs

the floppy drive i use is from imation

imation.gif.f6af1ee9479f595b8ff35d64030c9c30.gif

#5 Sun, 5 Dec 2010 - 15:26 68kMLA

SuperDisk drives are the best because they read and write 1.44 MB disks much faster than normal disk drives. They also support SuperDisks (100MB floppies) but those don't have much purpose nowadays.

#6 Mon, 6 Dec 2010 - 02:08 68kMLA

The Iomega USB floppy works fine on my G4 Cube running X.4.11, connected to the built-in USB1 hub in an acrylic Apple LCD. Still no show on the G5 running X.5, no matter what USB port I connect it to: keyboard, CPU, and aluminum Apple display.

#7 Mon, 6 Dec 2010 - 02:25 68kMLA

The driver on your USB floppy is probably outdated (well it is anyway, but you know what I mean) hence why the G5 cannot register it. I had a similar problem when I tried to hookup my 2004 Lacie USB floppy drive to my 2010 MBP (which is now running 10.6.5). So I went online, and downloaded a more current driver for it on Lacie's website. It works now.

#8 Mon, 6 Dec 2010 - 03:13 68kMLA

According to Iomega, the drivers are built into the Mactintosh OS, both Classic and OSX. The documentation, however, only goes up to X.2.

It's not a big deal. I am still pleased with the "conquest."

#9 Tue, 7 Dec 2010 - 00:54 68kMLA

An interesting find just now was that, having installed X.4.11 on the G5 because of minor stability problems in X.5, I find that the Iomega USB floppy works.... So presumably, the built-in floppy driver on which the Iomega drive relies was removed from X.5.