13.4 How do I hook up a 5.25" floppy drive on my system?

From FlightSim

Q:

HOW DO I HOOK UP A 5.25" FLOPPY DRIVE on my system?

A:

You should not have too many problems hooking up your 5 1/4" drive! Your existing 3 1/2" drive will be connected to your PC motherboard (or expansion card) via a ribbon cable. That ribbon cable will have some spare connectors on it (usually 3). If the ribbon cable has some wires twisted in it, then identify if your 3 1/2" drive is connected before the twist or after it. The twist determines whether the drive is assigned as "A" or "B". I can not remember if the A drive is before or after the twist. But wherever it is connected, connect your 5 1/4" to the other side of the twist. If there is no twist in the cable ( unusual but not unknown), then the drive letter assignment is controlled by jumpers on the back of the drive. Note that there are two different type of connectors on the ribbon cable - one is designed to fit the 5 1/4" connector, the other fit's the 3 1/2". Also note that the red stripe on the cable must align with pin 1 on the drive connector. Once you have connected the drive up, plug in a spare power connector and you will then have to set the drive type up in your computer bios (5 1/4" (360K Low density, 5 1/4" 1.2M high density, 3 1/2" 720K low density, or 3 1/2" 1.44M high density) for drive B. If you have the 5 1/4" high density type, then I would recommend that you use this as it will also read the low density floppies. Once you have done this you should be able to access your 5 1/4" as drive B.

There is one complication however. Your old software may require you to boot from the game floppy to run (early eighties copy protection for you). I.E. the program may boot up from machine power up and doesn't load DOS first. If this is the case, then the only way you will make it run is to make the 5 1/4" floppy your A drive by swopping the position of the drives on the ribbon cable and then altering the drive definitions in the bios. Make sure that in the bios, the boot order is a: c: and if you start with the fs2 disc in the A drive, the program should load and run.

Kieran G. Flemming