Ensoniq Floppy Disk support with external (USB) Floppy Drives
Question: I've got a bunch
of EPS floppies, a USB floppy drive, and Windows XP. Can I read ans write these floppy disks with XP and the USB floppy drive?
Answer: No, and here's why:
A USB floppy is a drive and controller card combined, controlled by USB. No USB controller maker I know of has documentable routines on how mess with the control card to make it read and write other geometries then the regular DOS one.
A "built-in floppy", however, uses the standard floppy card controller or one of the motherboard, without the hindrance of USB, and can be controlled. That's the magic in the OmniFlop replacement driver, or the routines in programs that worked in Win98/DOS.
It's all in the access to the drive controller. With USB, you don't have that access.
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