floppy disks?

[rikona]

On Fri, 8 Mar 2019 17:18:11 -0800
Keith <KM6WIZ at att.net> wrote:

> If you are asking about a 3.5 inch floppy then a USB 3.5 inch drive
> will work in Linux.

The older ones are 5.25 - may be harder...

> You can use MS-DOS tools to read the floppy:
> 
> <http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialUsingDOSFloppies.html>
> 
> 8 inch floppy discussion:
> 
> <http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s_drives_howto.html>

Nice ref - thanks! Looks like this is a hard problem for 5.25 & very
hard for 8 inch disks.

> 
> On 3/8/19 4:12 PM, rikona wrote:
> > I need to get some files from some VERY old MS floppy disk archives.
> > Running Ubuntu 16.04 updated but thinking of upgrading. Can I buy
> > and use a USB floppy disk drive to read these disks on a plug and
> > go basis? If so, do I have to buy certain drives to work well with
> > Ubuntu?
> >
> > Will I have to download any software to do this, or perhaps do this
> > in a better way? Some may be early floppies and have lower density
> > - might these not be readable by what is now recognized by Ubuntu?
> > Also, will newer or older versions of Ubuntu have more/less/the
> > same capability for old floppies?
> >
> > Even worse, I also have some 8-inch floppies from ancient CPM days.
> > Is there any way to read such floppies now?
> >
> > I guess what I needed to do was to transfer files every time a new
> > generation of storage came out. Archives are not really archives
> > if there's no way to read them. :-((
> >
> > Any info much appreciated.
> >
> >  
>