If I take the time to bring back to life a more period correct system with an actual IDE floppy drive would it read the disks more accurately?
It's worth noting that floppy drives (with rare exceptions like the LS-120) do not usually have IDE interfaces. In the PC space, floppy drives instead use, well, floppy interfaces. They're completely unrelated to everything that is IDE. (More specifically, they use floppy interfaces that are based around what the Shugart Associates used in the 1970s with their SA400 floppy disk drive -- but ~nobody says it like that.)
One option for hardware is my parent's Leading Edge WinPro 486. The case looks to be in good shape but I have not opened the case to see the condition of the capacitors yet.
Cool! Way back then, we tended not to have so many problems with electrolytic capacitors. Boards didn't tend to use so many of them and the capacitor plague was not yet a thing.
It's possible that my risk profile is misaligned, but: I'd start by just turning it on and seeing if it works.
Feed it some floppy disks. See if they read.
If it shows positive signs of life, then: You can try your copy of Spellbound.
If that works, then: You can use the old machine to transfer the software to a newer machine. Methods vary (and that's a few steps out), but they usually involve the serial port on the old machine and a USB to serial adapter for the new machine. Sometimes, with a null modem adapter. (It's kind of a whole thing...and it kind of was way back then, too.)
LS-120 users unite! Loved that particular piece of tech, still have the drive and a few sealed floppies for it in my "data recovery storage bucket", forgot about that incredibly interesting detail w.r.t. it taking an IDE-chain position rather than riding the floppy-bus.
I went through my "sentimental" 3.5" floppy spelunking era, basically a bunch of `rsync /mnt/floppy ./floppies/xyz-whatever` and pushed that to my remote server backups... ahh, the joys of finding my old CS1301 homework with "SSN: xxx-xx-xxxx" in the README.txt (or header comment)... good times!
I've already bought a USB-Floppy (and other USB-based "old media" bits), but I'll definitely be keeping the LS-120 now as I think IDE is more durable (and IIRC LS-120 drives were more "precise" w.r.t. track recovery/locating since they supported the higher data densities). Doing some searches show there's also "IDE-to-USB-C Adapter Kits(!!!)" which will definitely be going into the bucket too!
I don't have an LS-120 anymore, but I did have one at the very tail end of the floppy era. I never fed it one of the fancy disks. :-/
It worked, though, and it was really fast with regular floppies. Part of me says that I should have held onto it, but the rest of me is kind of glad that I haven't been moving it from place to place for the past ~20 years.
LPT: You can plug your USB floppy drive into your modern pocket supercomputer. In what may be the funniest bit of anachronistic computing you've seen in a long time, it will show up as removable storage without any effort and you can read and write files with it. :)
... the joys of USB-A to C adapters! It's on my list to try that with a CD drive, but I'll add floppy to it as well (especially since I'm looking in to data recovery stuff was well... wonder if ye-olde appendable/eraseable WORM/CD-RW drives are still kicking around out there??!?
Comments
It's worth noting that floppy drives (with rare exceptions like the LS-120) do not usually have IDE interfaces. In the PC space, floppy drives instead use, well, floppy interfaces. They're completely unrelated to everything that is IDE. (More specifically, they use floppy interfaces that are based around what the Shugart Associates used in the 1970s with their SA400 floppy disk drive -- but ~nobody says it like that.)
Cool! Way back then, we tended not to have so many problems with electrolytic capacitors. Boards didn't tend to use so many of them and the capacitor plague was not yet a thing.
It's possible that my risk profile is misaligned, but: I'd start by just turning it on and seeing if it works.
Feed it some floppy disks. See if they read.
If it shows positive signs of life, then: You can try your copy of Spellbound.
If that works, then: You can use the old machine to transfer the software to a newer machine. Methods vary (and that's a few steps out), but they usually involve the serial port on the old machine and a USB to serial adapter for the new machine. Sometimes, with a null modem adapter. (It's kind of a whole thing...and it kind of was way back then, too.)
LS-120 users unite! Loved that particular piece of tech, still have the drive and a few sealed floppies for it in my "data recovery storage bucket", forgot about that incredibly interesting detail w.r.t. it taking an IDE-chain position rather than riding the floppy-bus.
I went through my "sentimental" 3.5" floppy spelunking era, basically a bunch of `rsync /mnt/floppy ./floppies/xyz-whatever` and pushed that to my remote server backups... ahh, the joys of finding my old CS1301 homework with "SSN: xxx-xx-xxxx" in the README.txt (or header comment)... good times!
I've already bought a USB-Floppy (and other USB-based "old media" bits), but I'll definitely be keeping the LS-120 now as I think IDE is more durable (and IIRC LS-120 drives were more "precise" w.r.t. track recovery/locating since they supported the higher data densities). Doing some searches show there's also "IDE-to-USB-C Adapter Kits(!!!)" which will definitely be going into the bucket too!
I don't have an LS-120 anymore, but I did have one at the very tail end of the floppy era. I never fed it one of the fancy disks. :-/
It worked, though, and it was really fast with regular floppies. Part of me says that I should have held onto it, but the rest of me is kind of glad that I haven't been moving it from place to place for the past ~20 years.
LPT: You can plug your USB floppy drive into your modern pocket supercomputer. In what may be the funniest bit of anachronistic computing you've seen in a long time, it will show up as removable storage without any effort and you can read and write files with it. :)
... the joys of USB-A to C adapters! It's on my list to try that with a CD drive, but I'll add floppy to it as well (especially since I'm looking in to data recovery stuff was well... wonder if ye-olde appendable/eraseable WORM/CD-RW drives are still kicking around out there??!?