Review: TEAC USB Floppy Drive
gadget review USB · 5 comments · 450 words · read ~2,168 times.
This rather generic USB Floppy Drive has just arrived for me to review. It's sold by Dainty / ChuangZhiJLB - but it has the same internals as every other floppy drive on the market.
It worked instantly in Linux and MacOS. Shows up as a USB drive. Shove a disk in there and your OS should automagically mount it.
Appears to draw about 500mW in power. The disk read and write speed is pretty good considering the medium. It only takes a few seconds to read the entire disk.
Absolutely no bells and whistles. You get a drive, and a small paper manual. Which basically says "plug it in".
The casing shows P/N: 19308801-19, S/N: U356244 - but inside it's a TEAC. The plastic casing comes off pretty easily with a spludger. There's a screw under the QC sticker - but I only found that out after ripping it open! Ooops!
Inside is a what looks like a pretty old floppy disk. P/N 19307588-21. S/N 9448981. TEAC FD-05HG 8821. Originally from a laptop, I think.
The drive is connected to USB via this little circuit board attached to the ribbon cable.
That's a UF001F USB Floppy converter which costs about ¥20 (£2.50).
For Linux nerds like me, it shows up as 0644:0000 TEAC Corp. Floppy.
Some people have had problems with this device, but it worked perfectly on a modern Ubuntu install.
Full lsusb info is:
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 1.10
bDeviceClass 0
bDeviceSubClass 0
bDeviceProtocol 0
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x0644 TEAC Corp.
idProduct 0x0000 Floppy
bcdDevice 2.00
iManufacturer 1
iProduct 2
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 1
Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 0x0027
bNumInterfaces 1
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 0
bmAttributes 0x80
(Bus Powered)
MaxPower 500mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 3
bInterfaceClass 8 Mass Storage
bInterfaceSubClass 4 Floppy (UFI)
bInterfaceProtocol 0 Control/Bulk/Interrupt
iInterface 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x01 EP 1 OUT
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes
bInterval 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x83 EP 3 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes
bInterval 127Not the world's most exciting bit of tech, but handy for recovering anything from old disks.
Thanks to @Gas_Liverpool for sending me some old floppies!
| Verdict |
|---|
A floppy-disk Walkman - using a Raspberry Pi
Eric Andersen says:
Ahhh, something for the techie that has everything! I remember, back in the good old days, backing up to dozens of 1.44 floppies. Came back from computer shows with floppies in cases of 100.
hydrophobia says:
Hi there, I bought a usb to 34-pin board to plug an old floppy drive to usb which is based on the same TEAC chipset of this external drive. It works fine, but when no disk is inserted the head bangs every second or so, which is annoying and may damage to the head over time. I noticed on your "floppy-disk walkman" setup video that the floppy drive does not have that issue, how did in the world you fixed that? Please answer me, i'm kinda desperate 🙁
I didn't do anything. I suspect you have either a faulty drive or converter. I suggest unplugging it while not in use.
I have a Teac Floppy disc drive Model N. FD-05PUB, which works perfectly well on Mac OS9. I have a stack of floppy discs all of which are Mac formatted. I am trying to use it on a Mac iMac running 10.15.7, but the floppy disc does not mount onto my desktop. Do these floppy disc drives actually function on Apple Macs using OSX?