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Internal Floppy Drive on iMac G3...is this possible?

Posted by: Strimkind on 2012-03-02 22:24:03 After removing the logic board from a Bondie Rev A/B with a bad CRT. I noticed that there appears to be a spot on the motherboard for a floppy port, if one were to solder one to the board. Does anyone have the parts/time/skill to test this theory? I have the part, but no time and no soldering skills. I'd be interested to see if the ROM would recognize a floppy drive once a port is installed and a drive is connected.

Posted by: LCGuy on 2012-03-02 23:38:48 Yep, in fact a few people did that back in the day: http://web.archive.org/web/200102040039/http://www.imac-floppy.com/install.html I also have an issue of MacAddict from February 1999 that had an article on how to do just this.

Posted by: waynestewart on 2012-03-03 22:53:41 Quite a few people did that at one time and it worked fine until one of the OS upgrades removed the iMacs ability to use the drive. I can't recall which one it was 8.5, 8.6?

Posted by: Strimkind on 2012-03-04 13:36:14 I would think that it would be OSX that would have broke the floppy drive. I do know that Beige G3 units upgraded to OSX were unable to use their internal floppy drives. Still, it would be interesting to see a working floppy modified to work inside an iMac.

Posted by: waynestewart on 2012-03-04 19:13:59 No, for the iMac it was before OSX. I was of the belief that it was a deliberate act on Apples part.

Posted by: Strimkind on 2012-03-05 07:07:45 After a quick google, I think it has less to do with the OS itself, and more to do with some firmware updates released around the same time. I am sure it was one of those 'unofficial features' included.

Posted by: Gorgonops on 2012-03-05 09:40:38 Apple was having quite a good time with firmware updates-as-crippleware back then, the somewhat more infamous example being the "update and brick your G4-upgraded B&W" debacle. I'm pretty sure the floppy-killing firmware update for iMacs was "mandatory" to run... was it OS 9? on those things, so you'd probably have a bit of a time finding an iMac that didn't already have it.

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