On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:39:37 -0500, Ignoramus14736
wrote:

I had a 17 year old diskette (1994) with some of my old C code
archives from 1988 or so. I could never get around to reading it,
finally bought a USB diskette reader. To my utter surprise, I could
read it and recovered all archives. Now I have my old MS-DOS library
that I wrote and made money using. Amazing...
==========
After my recent computer disaster, I got a new computer, one
without a floppy drive and no bay to install one. Indeed
the motherboard did not have the header pins for a floppy
drive cable, so I was unable to cannibalize the old cables
and drives [3.5 + 5.25]

Walmart has a Sabrent USB unit that seems to work very well,
and is available through their site to store program with
"free" shipping. The one I got was 19.88$ + sales tax
http://www.walmart.com/ip/MicroPac-U...-Black/9871217

They also have a new unit *INTERNAL* unit also from Sabrent
for 17.22$ + sales tax that combines a USB 3.5 floppy drive
with a multi format memory card reader. I have not tried
this one or seen it in the flesh, but if you have an open
bay and can access the internal USB port header pins it
might be worthwhile.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/MicroPac-C...riter/11060821

FWIW -- I just got the recovered data from the fried hard
drive back from Fields Data Recovery Service. The did a
pretty good job, and recovered almost 50 gig of data. The
problem being that the file names and directory structure
were lost, and the recovered files have names like
103472.dwg, 1125712.doc etc. so the only way to make this
useful is open each of the files, rename and move to the
correct directory. Backups are much cheaper and easier... I
got good prompt service and the data was returned on a 500
gig Seagate SETA drive, which was quickly transferred to the
main system drive using another Walmart site-to-store
accessory.
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sabrent-US...erter/15819320
Somewhat slower than a DMA connection, but works well with
both the new desktop and laptop through a USB hub.


--
Unka' George

"Gold is the money of kings,
silver is the money of gentlemen,
barter is the money of peasants,
but debt is the money of slaves"

-Norm Franz, "Money and Wealth in the New Millenium"