yellowdog-general digest, Vol 1 #1134 - 8 msgs

[Isaac Wingfield]

>From: Harvey Ussery <huboxwood@earthlink.net>
>To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>Subject: External floppy drive
>Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>
>I need to buy a cheap external USB floppy drive in order to retrieve
>some old files generated on my former Linux box (a Dell) before I got my
>iMac & installed YDL 3.0. (Macs no longer come with floppy drives.)
>
>Anybody in a position to recommend particular brands of external USB
>floppy drives that work with both MacOSX & LinuxPPC? I've been looking
>at the Y-E Data site. They offer a USB floppy drive that
>reads/writes/formats 2HD 1.44 MB floppies (which is what I'm working
>with) and supports MacOS8.6 and higher "as well as other 'Mass Storage
>Compliant' operating systems including many *nix systems."
>
>Or am I making too big a deal of the question? Is an external floppy
>drive such as this likely to be like the typical after-market
>mouse--just plug it in to any OS and it works?

Considering the limited storage capacity of a floppy, how much use would
you have for that drive after you transfer your files? It may be cheaper to
buy an entire older Mac instead, and it would be far more useful than just
a floppy drive. I picked up an entire 8500 system for $5.00 at a garage
sale a few weeks ago. It runs YDL just fine.

Second suggestion: use a borrowed PC to transfer the floppy files to a CD.

Isaac