Internal Floppy Drive on iMac G3...is this possible?

#1 Sat, 3 Mar 2012 - 06:24 68kMLA

After removing the logic board from a Bondie Rev A/B with a bad CRT. I noticed that there appears to be a spot on the motherboard for a floppy port, if one were to solder one to the board.

Does anyone have the parts/time/skill to test this theory? I have the part, but no time and no soldering skills.

I'd be interested to see if the ROM would recognize a floppy drive once a port is installed and a drive is connected.

#2 Sat, 3 Mar 2012 - 07:38 68kMLA

Yep, in fact a few people did that back in the day:

http://web.archive.org/web/200102040039/http://www.imac-floppy.com/install.html

I also have an issue of MacAddict from February 1999 that had an article on how to do just this.

#3 Sun, 4 Mar 2012 - 06:53 68kMLA

Quite a few people did that at one time and it worked fine until one of the OS upgrades removed the iMacs ability to use the drive. I can't recall which one it was 8.5, 8.6?

#4 Sun, 4 Mar 2012 - 21:36 68kMLA

I would think that it would be OSX that would have broke the floppy drive. I do know that Beige G3 units upgraded to OSX were unable to use their internal floppy drives.

Still, it would be interesting to see a working floppy modified to work inside an iMac.

#5 Mon, 5 Mar 2012 - 03:13 68kMLA

No, for the iMac it was before OSX. I was of the belief that it was a deliberate act on Apples part.

#6 Mon, 5 Mar 2012 - 15:07 68kMLA

After a quick google, I think it has less to do with the OS itself, and more to do with some firmware updates released around the same time. I am sure it was one of those 'unofficial features' included.

#7 Mon, 5 Mar 2012 - 17:40 68kMLA

Apple was having quite a good time with firmware updates-as-crippleware back then, the somewhat more infamous example being the "update and brick your G4-upgraded B&W" debacle.

I'm pretty sure the floppy-killing firmware update for iMacs was "mandatory" to run... was it OS 9? on those things, so you'd probably have a bit of a time finding an iMac that didn't already have it.