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IBM Personal System/2 Model 80 5.25 floppy drive questions

S

sentinel

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Dec 4, 2017
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Location
Union County, NJ
Hello all, my first post here, but I've been lurking for quite some time.

I'm looking at possibly getting an IBM ps/2 model 80, and am wondering what it would take to install an internal 5.25 drive?

I've seen this faceplate on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-15F6911-PS-2-8560-8565-8580-5-25-1-2MB-DISKETTE-DRIVE-BEZEL-15F7915/142535003856?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D49454%26meid%3Dbf87f37afd6d46a78b3dd97770535d45%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D6%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D332440389196&_trksid=p2481888.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%253Aa23e122d-dad7-11e7-b8e9-74dbd1808ff7%257Cparentrq%253A2e0478ec1600a866a47454d4fff0bb38%257Ciid%253A1

But what else would be needed to make it fit in a full-height 5.25 bay? And then would I need a specific drive that works with the model 80, or perhaps a controller card to connect the drive to? Is the model 80 able to boot off external controllers?

I just haven't been able to find answers to these questions, any help from model 80 / 60 owners would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

-Mike
 
This page should help a bit:

http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/floppy/5_25-Floppy.html

The second controller supports internal 5.25" floppy drives, that AFAIK are standard.

An alternative may be to convert the connector for drive B: to the standard 34-pin interface, then connect that to the 5.25" drive. Although there are pitfalls. I don't remember if the 80 has a BIOS option for B: as 5.25", this could be got around with dos's DRIVEPARM. If I were to go this route, I would try getting a standard 1.44MB drive setup as drive B: first. Test that it works, then experiment with the 5.25" drive. This is all a bit involved really, I can't guarantee that it will work.
 
I have one in my model 80. It came with one, but it was not an IBM drive. It was a standard drive on a special card controller that requires a dos driver to work. Works just like a cd drive actually. I recently bought an adapter that runs the signals from the lower 3.5" bay through a buffer card, to the EXTERNAL 5.25 floppy drive.

The way it is now, works okay. There are pitfalls with software that wants to talk directly to the disk drive (copy protection). Lucky for me, this is a minor annoyance.
 
I still have two cartons of them. NOS.

I repurpose them as external drive boxes. Power supplies are a little wimpy for hard drives and CD-ROMs, but that's easily remedied. Small switchers with+12 and +5 are plentiful.
 
I might be interested. The one I bought was the "technically" the wrong one. I got the one with the edge connector and I needed the one with the pins. Or vise versa, I don't remember exactly right now, I'd have to open the case and look.
 
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