External Floppy drive probs.

[bertsau]

Hi,
First post then...
I have a 21.5 late 2013 Imac running OS SIERRA 10.12.6
Dug out loads of old 3.5 discs from 18-20 years ago.Thought i'd jog the memory a bit.
Plugged in a floppy drive and find that when i wack in a disc,nothing happens until i pull the USB plug out and then replace it.
From that point everything loads and displays just fine.
Please could someone tell me if i am not doing something i should have?
Remote disc appears in Finder but is un-responsive.
Floppy disc icon appears next to the above and also on the desktop.
I could continue to push/pull the power but is there a reason that this happen.
Is it because i am pushing USB 2.0 into 3.0 although the guy i got the drive from stated there should? be no problem.

In anticipation.

 

[ferrarr]

Is the drive powered by AC, or by USB? You could try an SMC reset, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295.

 

[MacInWin]

The OS recognizes the drive when there is activity on the USB port. The OS then looks to see if there is something to be mounted. With no disk in the drive, there is nothing to mount, so the OS ignores the port. Now you put in a disk, the drive starts up, but the OS is ignoring the port. You unplug, re-plug and now the OS sees activity at the port, looks for media to mount, finds the floppy and off it goes.

Remote disc appears in Finder but is un-responsive.

Can you say more about what that sentence means? Are you referring to the floppy as the "remote" disk? And what does "un-responsive" mean?

Frankly, I don't know if Sierra can even read the old floppy disk format. And if the disks themselves are old, they may well have lost all data by now. Magnetic media is NOT a permanent storage, the magnetism decays over time.

 

[bertsau]

Thx ferrerr,drive is USB powered.

 

[bertsau]

In the Finder sidebar under devices, clicking"my iMac"shows Macintosh HD Network and a Remote Disc icon..I am assuming and possibly wrongly?that this Remote Disc icon relates to the external floppy drive.
As for un-responsive...Nothing happening when a disc is inserted.
Sierra reads the discs absolutely fine but only when i push-pull the USB lead.
Thankyou so much for your first paragraph.
That helped me straight away understand as to how the computer reads something plugged in from the outside..Im learning by the minute here.

 

[MacInWin]

Remote disk is generally for a networked drive, not something directly attached. Do you display the Macintosh HD on your desktop? If you do, the disk you insert into the floppy should appear there, too. If you don't, open Finder Preferences and make sure that under General that External disks is checked.

 

[pm-r]

Is the USB drive connected directly to your Mac or via a hub??

If you have a choice, try switching the connection(s) and even try a different USB port(s).




- Patrick
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[pm-r]

I have a 21.5 late 2013 Imac running OS SIERRA 10.12.6
Dug out loads of old 3.5 discs from 18-20 years ago.Thought i'd jog the memory a bit.

BTW: It seems that you aren't alone with the problem:
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=G7t8Wf-1GoHt8weF0JuQDQ


And you're lucky you don't have the older floppy discs to read as the USB drives can't even read them:
Floppy Disk Compatibility and Incompatibility in the Mac World
http://lowendmac.com/2016/floppy-disk-compatibility-and-incompatibility-in-the-mac-world/




- Patrick
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[bertsau]

Finder preferences has External disks checked.Now i understand why the disk appears

 

[bertsau]

Many many thx Patrick

 

[bertsau]

Sorry.....thx so much for the links


-Bob
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[pm-r]

Finder preferences has External disks checked.Now i understand why the disk appears

And I keep forgetting that Apple has that set to not show by default for some strange reason.

But I guess for the same thinking "logic" that they virtually hide the power switch on an iMac and don't even have any indicator that an iMac is powered On and if the display is asleep.

Odd logic…




- Patrick
======

 

[chscag]

Well Patrick, you brought back old memories here.... (And a note to Jake)

As an experiment I broke out my portable Sony USB 2 Floppy Drive, attached it to my iMac, inserted a 3.5" Floppy disk dated 1991 and it read it just fine. ;D

I guess my Floppy Disks are like what Mark Twain once said about the rumor of his death. LOL.

And by the way, as Jake stated, the floppy drive does not show on the desktop until media is inserted. As for Patrick's statement about the default for showing external drives on the desktop (Finder setting), I have found just the opposite to be true. I guess everyone's mileage on that may vary.

 

[bertsau]

Thats quite reassuring for me chscag.
I am only dealing with discs from 2000/2001

 

[bertsau]

Apple do tend to keep you on your toes a bit


-
======
Bob

 

[pm-r]

Well Patrick, you brought back old memories here.... (And a note to Jake)

As an experiment I broke out my portable Sony USB 2 Floppy Drive, attached it to my iMac, inserted a 3.5" Floppy disk dated 1991 and it read it just fine.

I guess my Floppy Disks are like what Mark Twain once said about the rumor of his death. LOL.

Sorry chscag, but it's not the date of the floppy disk that makes the difference but the type and format that was used that makes the difference as to any read/write possibilities.

As Dan Knight said I already mentioned here and that I referred to previously:
http://lowendmac.com/2016/floppy-disk-compatibility-and-incompatibility-in-the-mac-world/

BTW: I had to use one of my old Macs to read and salvage some data from some old Apple Pro DOS formatted 3.5" floppies just a few years ago for a client that was quite a job that only an old Mac's internal "superdrive" disk drive could manage and even several older OS versions were required.

And I understand that the family involved has now got the recovered files and stories into a published storybook of the deceased family member author's stories. Nice and satisfying.






- Patrick
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[chscag]

Sorry chscag, but it's not the date of the floppy disk that makes the difference but the type and format that was used that makes the difference as to any read/write possibilities.

Not sure what you're referring to? Standard 3.5" floppies back in the DOS days were either low density 720 KB or high density 1.44 MB. IBM also came out with what they called very or super high density floppies 2.88 MB but those required a special drive in order to read them. If you're referring to the older Apple formatted floppies, they were an odd ball size and format which could not be read by a PC drive. Later on, Apple began using standard 3.5" 1.44 MB floppies.

All my floppies were formatted on a home built PC and the Sony USB drive can read them. The one disk I mentioned above was a commercial disk, actually an old Windows game from 1991. Unless the drive that originally formatted or wrote to the floppies was out of alignment, generally floppy disks can be read. Magnetic media lasts for a very long time unless it's subjected to some outside force.

 

[pm-r]

If you're referring to the older Apple formatted floppies, they were an odd ball size and format which could not be read by a PC drive.

Yup. You got the picture. :Blushing:

And Apple's unique variable speed 3.5" floppy drives were required for any read or write data and were also restricted by the Apple System OS in use.




- Patrick
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[Slydude]

There was a variant of disk that I believe were double density 3.5" floppies. On an Apple II / Mac they could be formatted out as 800k disks rather than the 720k typical on the PC side. When Apple dropped 3.5" drives some third part High Density drives could read 1.44 MB high density disks but did not read the 800K disks IIRC

I stand corrected Wikipedia says that the 800k disks achieved this capacity by varying the rotation speed of the heads. See here I think that is why some drives had problems with these disks.

Edit: Got to type faster, research faster, or give up a hat to that Patrick guy. Kudos.

 

[pm-r]

Edit: Got to type faster, research faster, or give up a hat to that Patrick guy. Kudos.

Thanks Slydude, I just happened to have experienced being there several times and I just wanted to backup my own old Apple floppy knowledge with some facts in case it could be useful to other users.





- Patrick
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