Connecting The Floppy Drives

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Floppy drives are in danger of extinction because floppies generally don't hold much data. Most software is generally installed from CD-ROMs now, anyway. CD burners are very popular for archiving data. Nevertheless, a floppy drive can still pay off if you work with old programs or data from time to time.

 

Floppy connector (34-pin) above, IDE connector(40-pin) for hard drives and CD-ROM below.

 

It's easy to spot floppy cables. They usually have a "twist" of individual wires, as you can see in the upper corner of the image. The image shows a color marking on a cable. This is frequently a red line that marks pin 1. Pin 1 is also printed on the motherboard. On modern motherboards, notches and/ or a missing pin in the middle (see picture blow) prevent the cable from being inserted the wrong way. You still need to watch out when hooking up older drives or motherboards. The red dotted line at the other end of the cable should always point in the direction of the power supply. Here, too, there is a reverse-connection protection to keep it from being improperly configured.

For Further Reading,

Building Your Own PC