Floppy Emulator --> USB on Express or MC 24/48 consoles

[scotteckers]

My floppy disk drive on the Leviton MC 24/48 console broke. The console works well and I don't want to replace it; I also would like to convert the floppy drive to USB. I have seen several options online that claim to do this and was wondering if anyone has successfully converted the floppy drive to a USB/floppy emulator on a lighting board. Thanks.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Not sure about compatibility, but USB 3.5 floppies aren't hard to come by; Toshiba made a bunch of em. Check the Bay.

Sent from my SPH-L720

 

[scotteckers]

I have a floppy drive I can stick in there but was curious to see if anyone got the USB option working. The save process takes about 5 minutes per show!

 

[lwinters630]

Search cb, I have seen that subject. About $100. Worth the gamble.

 

[microstar]

The topic of the USB floppy emulator for lighting consoles seems to come up on various forums every once in a while and the answer always seems to be the same..... why don't you roll the dice and try it. Makes one wonder if anyone has ever actually bought and installed one.

 

[domiii]

Has anyone tried this:

USB Floppy Emulator http://www.ebay.com/itm/231089883601?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

My floppy is still good but how much longer.

 

[JD]

Looks like a standard floppy drive. I would hang at a local recycle event and watch for people dropping off old computers for scrap. Grab a couple that have floppies and yank the drives out of them so you have a bit of a supply! I did that for other reasons and sure enough two days ago someone brought in a file on a 3.5!
Problem with USB drives is that they don't all take the same software driver to operate. No problem on a PC, but might get tricky on the board at a later date.

 

[wolfman005]

I just scraped a bunch of old Windows 95 computers a friend thought I could use. Wish I would have through to save the floppy drives...

 

[Mac Hosehead]

I have replaced the floppy drive in an ETC Express and in a Hog 1000 with this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C4PCK9S/?tag=controlbooth-20
It worked in both cases. It seems to work better with flash drives 1GB or under. Using the format floppy command from the console results in a flash drive formatted to the size of a floppy. Files can be transferred from a computer like a normal flash drive. There is a feature that will format the flash drive into multiple floppy sized partitions. You can then select the working partition as if you had a stack of floppys. This feature worked on the Hog but not on the Express.

-MH