Is it possible to connect a 5 1/2 floppy drive to a 486 machine,How

I assume you mean a 1.2Mb 5.25" floppy? Essentially, all you should need is the drive and a floppy cable that also has card edge connectors on it. http://www.computerhope.com/help/floppy.htm http://www.pcmech.com/show/diskette/84/ http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/tutorials/33/2/ Hook it up; enable it; usually the first bios screen and see if it works. The connector on the floppy drive is keyed and will only go on one way and the red stripe on the other end of the cable goes to pin1 on the motherboard...just like your cd-rom and hard drive cables. Skip

If the cable has 3 connectors, the floppy drive should go on the end connector (past the twist in the wires). That will make it the A: drive. The B: drive connects to the middle connector if used.

Good question George , I also have a similar dillemar in that I want to be able to get some old apple2 roms from my PC and onto 5 1/4 floppy to run on my real apple. I do have an old apple notebook with a scsii conector and I'm hopeing I can find a drive to suit that. I did once try to connect an old BBC 5 1/4 floppy to a P1 133 machine. The drive cable plugged straight into the floppy IDE type slot on the MB and when I switched the PC on the drive fired up but I couldn't get the bios to see it. I'll keep an eye on your post. Regards GaryM Chaintech 9PJL Appogee 800FSB P4 2.8 HT Sparkle Platinum 6800GT 256MB 2*512 Corsair PC3200 2*256 KINGSTONE PC3200 dual 40 gig IDE 120 Gig sata COOLERMASTER " CAVALIER " Case

Just about any ibm pc (or compatible) from the original 8080/8086 to the present day supports 5.25 floppy drives as these were the original ones. Hard discs and 3.5" floppies came later. Assuming you have a spare bay in the pc, to connect:- a) connect floppy interface cable using the 5.25" connector which differs from the 3.5" one. Some cables have two pairs (A: + B:) of connectors while others have only one or no 5.25" connectors present. b) connect cable from the power supply unit. c) set up the bios (nowadays usually as drive B:) Good luck - Keep us posted.