Mark Winsor
Aluminum
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2013
- Location
- Hartford, CT, USA
I have been attempting to replace the 3.5" floppy drive on my Bridgeport with a USB emulator.
I started with the following:
Well, on first attempt to run the .exe, the USB thumb drive was not recognized, which makes sense as it's not a floppy...
Next I downloaded a free program which formats USB drives to look like Floppy drives. It offers the following options:
format options.PNG - Google Drive
No matter which options are chosen, the .exe file from Southwest does not recognize the thumb drive as a floppy. The same goes even after changing the drive letter from E (default of this free program) to A.
no floppy.PNG - Google Drive
A few questions: What is "formatting" a floppy? Is this different than deleting all data on the disk? What happens when you "make bootable"? Is this different than copying and pasting data onto a disk? I notice that when I check the "make bootable" box, I see these files on the disk after formatting:
made bootable.PNG - Google Drive
Not sure if these are helpful to my situation or not.
I ask because I'd like to try skipping the .exe file all together, since I have no way to figure out what it's doing, and Southwest doesn't support USB conversions. Could I manually "format, make bootable, and copy necessary files" to my thumb drive?
I also bought a USB floppy drive, and used it to read all the files off of the working MX2 floppy. I then pasted them onto the thumb drive, which had been "formatted" as a 720kb floppy. The data seems to write ok and look just like the floppy drive it's replacing,
whats on E.PNG - Google Drive
but the MX2 computer still won't boot off of this thumb drive when installed w the emulator. The monitor says something along the lines of "bootable disk not found".
Any advice is appreciated, as I've not had any luck searching for a working USB conversion and would like to do a write up of what works if I can get it running.
I started with the following:
- A cheapo floppy->USB emulator from ebay (720kb version)
- A .exe file downloaded from Southwest which is supposed to "format a floppy, make it bootable, and copy the necessary software all in one step"
- A USB thumb drive
Well, on first attempt to run the .exe, the USB thumb drive was not recognized, which makes sense as it's not a floppy...
Next I downloaded a free program which formats USB drives to look like Floppy drives. It offers the following options:
format options.PNG - Google Drive
No matter which options are chosen, the .exe file from Southwest does not recognize the thumb drive as a floppy. The same goes even after changing the drive letter from E (default of this free program) to A.
no floppy.PNG - Google Drive
A few questions: What is "formatting" a floppy? Is this different than deleting all data on the disk? What happens when you "make bootable"? Is this different than copying and pasting data onto a disk? I notice that when I check the "make bootable" box, I see these files on the disk after formatting:
made bootable.PNG - Google Drive
Not sure if these are helpful to my situation or not.
I ask because I'd like to try skipping the .exe file all together, since I have no way to figure out what it's doing, and Southwest doesn't support USB conversions. Could I manually "format, make bootable, and copy necessary files" to my thumb drive?
I also bought a USB floppy drive, and used it to read all the files off of the working MX2 floppy. I then pasted them onto the thumb drive, which had been "formatted" as a 720kb floppy. The data seems to write ok and look just like the floppy drive it's replacing,
whats on E.PNG - Google Drive
but the MX2 computer still won't boot off of this thumb drive when installed w the emulator. The monitor says something along the lines of "bootable disk not found".
Any advice is appreciated, as I've not had any luck searching for a working USB conversion and would like to do a write up of what works if I can get it running.