Speed up a 3.5" floppy drive?

[S. Whitmore]

I hate having a 3.5" floppy drive, especially the slow read/write
access, and I hate the clutter of the disks themselves. (I hate to
admit that I still have a 5.25" floppy drive in one system and a few
of those disks too...)

However, I have an older Sony Mavica digital camera that writes
directly onto 3.5" floppies. Until I can afford to get rid of that
thing (see OT comments below), I have to continue using my PC's 3.5"
floppy drive to unload photos. That is a slow and troublesome process.

According to the documentation, the Mavica uses a sped-up "4X" floppy
drive inside the camera. So if the technology exists inside a
camera, maybe it's available for a regular drive in a PC... Does
anyone have any info about either speeding up an existing floppy
drive, such as by tweaking some (unknown-to-me) configuration
options, or about 4X (or faster) drives for PC use?

<ot: topic="camera-prattling">
I'm really hoping to buy a Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D to go with my
existing Maxxum 7, but at ~$1600 it's well out of my price range for
now. I'm also trying to "win" a Canon PowerShot S1 IS through one of
those sites where you complete an offer and get friends to do the
same, like the free IPod sites, but that's been a dead end because
I've completed *two* offers and not received credit for either one...
{sigh}
</ot>

 

[philo]

I hate having a 3.5" floppy drive, especially the slow read/write access,
and I hate the clutter of the disks themselves. (I hate to admit that I
still have a 5.25" floppy drive in one system and a few of those disks
too...)

However, I have an older Sony Mavica digital camera that writes directly
onto 3.5" floppies. Until I can afford to get rid of that thing (see OT
comments below), I have to continue using my PC's 3.5" floppy drive to
unload photos. That is a slow and troublesome process.

According to the documentation, the Mavica uses a sped-up "4X" floppy
drive inside the camera. So if the technology exists inside a camera,
maybe it's available for a regular drive in a PC... Does anyone have any
info about either speeding up an existing floppy drive, such as by
tweaking some (unknown-to-me) configuration options, or about 4X (or
faster) drives for PC use?

<ot: topic="camera-prattling">
I'm really hoping to buy a Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D to go with my existing
Maxxum 7, but at ~$1600 it's well out of my price range for now. I'm also
trying to "win" a Canon PowerShot S1 IS through one of those sites where
you complete an offer and get friends to do the same, like the free IPod
sites, but that's been a dead end because I've completed *two* offers and
not received credit for either one...
{sigh}
</ot>

yep those floppies are slow...
but even a 4x increase would still be slow...
you really need a compact flash type camera...
i use a canon eos digital rebel...
the price is right and it does a great job for me

btw: my backup machine stil has a 5.25 floppy drive...
just in case i need it

 

[Papa]

Forget speed. Floppy drives are simply slow. If you want to deal with
digital photography, and do it efficiently, you need to upgrade your
equipment.

 

[S. Whitmore]

Forget speed. Floppy drives are simply slow. If you want to deal with
digital photography, and do it efficiently, you need to upgrade your
equipment.

No argument there, but as I said in my original post, I can't do that
yet. (Not on my personal budget, at least.) So if there's a way to
make life a little easier until I *can* upgrade, then I'd like to do
so. Writing a Perl script that semi-automated offloading the disks
was one (free) step that has paid off. Increasing the PC floppy
drive speed would be another step, thus my inquiry about whether it's
possible. I didn't say it was a "good" option or even an alternative
to upgrading. (It's only a 1.3MP camera anyway, with a fixed lens,
so an upgrade is overdue even without the slow transfer. Not
surprisingly, though, advances in technology don't imply advances in
my financial condition.)

 

[Justice Gustine]

I hate having a 3.5" floppy drive, especially the slow read/write
access, and I hate the clutter of the disks themselves. (I hate to
admit that I still have a 5.25" floppy drive in one system and a few
of those disks too...)

However, I have an older Sony Mavica digital camera that writes
directly onto 3.5" floppies. Until I can afford to get rid of that
thing (see OT comments below), I have to continue using my PC's 3.5"
floppy drive to unload photos. That is a slow and troublesome process.

According to the documentation, the Mavica uses a sped-up "4X" floppy
drive inside the camera. So if the technology exists inside a
camera, maybe it's available for a regular drive in a PC... Does
anyone have any info about either speeding up an existing floppy
drive, such as by tweaking some (unknown-to-me) configuration
options, or about 4X (or faster) drives for PC use?

Back when backups were small, there was the 120mb LS120 "Super Disk"
that did a terrible job of competing with Zip drives. The advantage
the LS120 drive had was that it also wrote to 1.44 floppies, and did
it at a faster speed than normal.

If you can find one of the drives cheap it may be worth a try. They
came as IDE internal or USB. The USB had a small following from iMac
users that could not let go of the floppy - they were offered in the
matching iFruit colors.

Panasonic had a digital camera that used the LS120, too.

 

[S. Whitmore]

Back when backups were small, there was the 120mb LS120 "Super Disk"
that did a terrible job of competing with Zip drives. The advantage
the LS120 drive had was that it also wrote to 1.44 floppies, and did
it at a faster speed than normal.

Interesting, I had forgotten about those drives. That might be worth
a try, thanks for the idea!

 

[Phisherman]

Floppy drives are not in demand anymore. I would transfer all data to
CDs or DVDs, and just use floppies for the camera. I assume you
typically have several floppies to transfer to your PC after using
your camera. You could install another floppy drive (~$10) to get 2X
the transfer rate.

 

[Ric]

No argument there, but as I said in my original post, I can't do that
yet. (Not on my personal budget, at least.) So if there's a way to
make life a little easier until I *can* upgrade, then I'd like to do
so. Writing a Perl script that semi-automated offloading the disks
was one (free) step that has paid off. Increasing the PC floppy
drive speed would be another step, thus my inquiry about whether it's
possible. I didn't say it was a "good" option or even an alternative
to upgrading. (It's only a 1.3MP camera anyway, with a fixed lens,
so an upgrade is overdue even without the slow transfer. Not
surprisingly, though, advances in technology don't imply advances in
my financial condition.)

price of a superdisk etc etc probably isn't far off that of a cheap digi
camera that writes to smart media.
however, there used to exist a device that looked like a floppy with a smart
media card inside it. camera writes to this "floppy" and then you can take
the card out and put it in a normal PC cardreader. It might have been fuji
that made it, try ebay...
ric

 

[S. Whitmore]

price of a superdisk etc etc probably isn't far off that of a cheap digi
camera that writes to smart media.

From what I've seen, a used SuperDisk drive on eBay will be about
the same price as what I paid for my daughter's digital camera, and I
wouldn't buy another of those. The old Mavica has much better
features, better image quality, better user interface, and a more
solid body. The $40-range digital cameras I've seen and used barely
qualify as toys.

however, there used to exist a device that looked like a floppy with a smart
media card inside it. camera writes to this "floppy" and then you can take
the card out and put it in a normal PC cardreader. It might have been fuji
that made it, try ebay...

Oh yeah, I do vaguely remember those. Hmm, might try that if I can
find one cheap enough...

 

[traumerei]

I hate having a 3.5" floppy drive, especially the slow read/write
access, and I hate the clutter of the disks themselves. (I hate to
admit that I still have a 5.25" floppy drive in one system and a few
of those disks too...)

However, I have an older Sony Mavica digital camera that writes
directly onto 3.5" floppies. Until I can afford to get rid of that
thing (see OT comments below), I have to continue using my PC's 3.5"
floppy drive to unload photos. That is a slow and troublesome process.

According to the documentation, the Mavica uses a sped-up "4X" floppy

drive inside the camera. So if the technology exists inside a
camera, maybe it's available for a regular drive in a PC... Does
anyone have any info about either speeding up an existing floppy
drive, such as by tweaking some (unknown-to-me) configuration
options, or about 4X (or faster) drives for PC use?

<ot: topic="camera-prattling">
I'm really hoping to buy a Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D to go with my
existing Maxxum 7, but at ~$1600 it's well out of my price range for
now. I'm also trying to "win" a Canon PowerShot S1 IS through one of

those sites where you complete an offer and get friends to do the
same, like the free IPod sites, but that's been a dead end because
I've completed *two* offers and not received credit for either one...
{sigh}
</ot>

Y-E Data makes a USB floppy drive that reads and writes four times
faster than a regular drive. Of course, that implies that you have USB


http://www.yedata.com/products/floppydrives/usb4x.shtml

 

[John E. Carty]

Y-E Data makes a USB floppy drive that reads and writes four times
faster than a regular drive. Of course, that implies that you have USB


http://www.yedata.com/products/floppydrives/usb4x.shtml

Or you can try getting your hands on an LS-120 SuperDisk drive