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 127
Not 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!
5 thoughts on “Review: TEAC USB Floppy Drive”
Eric Andersen
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
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?
Trackbacks, Pingbacks, and Boosts
Der har været mange tvivlsomme bærbare musikafspillerformater gennem årene (kan nogen huske Iomega HipZip?), men Terence Edens hjemmebryggede Walkman, der afspiller hele album fra old-school 3,5-tommers disketter er et uklart mesterværk. Hvis du betragter dig selv som en lydfil, skal du straks se væk.Opbygning af Walkman selv var relativt let. Efter at have modtaget en grundlæggende TEAC USB diskettedrev til gennemgang, Eden besluttede at gøre noget andet end at smide det i skuffen til afdøde lagerformater. Han sluttede det til en Raspberry Pi i fuld størrelse, for hvad skal du ellers med et 3,5-tommers diskettedrev i år 2020? De mindre versioner af den miniature-pc mangler et hovedtelefonstik. Derefter tilsluttede han al hardware til et tykt bærbart batteri til strøm. Et par elastikker senere, den grimeste Walkman, du nogensinde har set, var fuldt funktionel og klar til at rocke.Den største udfordring ved dette hack var at montere et helt album på en diskettens dårlige 1,4 MB lagerplads. Til sammenligning kræver cd-kvalitetslyd ca. 10 MB lagring pr. Minut lyd, mens en MP3 i høj kvalitet kræver omkring 2 MB for det samme beløb. Det er grunden til, at Eden valgte The Beatles album En hård dags nat, der kun er 30 minutter og 45 sekunder lange. Startende med en enkelt WAV-fil af hele albummet brugte Eden Opus Interactive Audio Codec at komprimere alle 13 numre til kun 1.429.105 byte, hvilket efterlader en lille smule plads til albumcover.
G / O Media kan få en kommission
Hvis du nogensinde har lyttet til en station, der spiller musik på en AM-radio, der bare er lidt for langt væk fra udsendelsestårnet til perfekt at indstille signalet, så har du en grov idé om, hvordan The Beatles lyder som at spille gennem Edens diskettedisk Walkman. Komprimering og lydkvalitet er omtrent så dårlig som den kan blive (du kan høre eksempler på Edens websted), og i den nuværende form har afspilleren ingen dedikerede knapper til at springe spor over, hurtigt fremad eller endda pause i musikken. Der er meget plads til at forbedre dets fysiske æstetik og funktionalitet, men så længe disketter er det foretrukne medium her, er Edens trommehinder i en hård tur.
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