USB Floppy Drive

This USB-Floppy drive is the latest version and has some advanced features that older units did not have - it has the ability to read and write up to 100 floppy partitions per each USB thumb drive. First, a little about this product and what it can and what it can not do: This drive is a direct replacement for the floppy drive that came in your Milltronics machines.

(The actual unit may vary slightly from this image)

It can use a properly formatted USB thumb drive to move files between your PC and the machine. It can not handle files larger than 1.44 MB without using file compression software. The software provided allows you to format a thumb drive as a single floppy or as 100 floppies. The thumb drive must be compatible with USB version 1.1, most thumb drives that are listed as USB 2.0 are compatible, but not all. When formatted for 100 floppies, you will only be using a maximum of 144MB if disk space (1.44mb*100). The rest of the disk space will be unusable. You can use larger thumb drives but they will also lose the rest of the data storage area. If you have an older 256MB thumb drive they should work OK. But 2GB are getting hard to find and I would assume that sooner or later the 4GB will get hard to find as well. But for now the 2 and 4GB are available and inexpensive. The 4GB thumb drive supplied is pre-formatted for 1.44MB and with the 100 floppies option (partitions 0-99) Floppy partition 0 contains the Floppy Manager Software and a copy of this instruction sheet. These files should be copied to your PC. Once copied, you can delete the files on the thumb drive or keep them there if you wish. The thumb drive is set to default to floppy partition 0. The Floppy Manager Software allows you to format other USB drives and allows you to switch between the different floppy partitions. Each partition acts like an individual floppy disk. You can only access one floppy at a time and each floppy can only hold data up to the 1.44MB formatted floppy size. The partitions will allow up to 256 files per floppy, not to exceed 1.44MB per partition. So, 256 1K files = 256KB no more files can be used. 2 files of 720KB each =1.44MB no more files can be used. (These are limitations of the MS DOS operating system and your old floppies worked the same way.) To select a different floppy, use either the Floppy Manager Software on your PC or use the buttons on the front of the USB Floppy drive. The right hand button Unit shifts the right hand digital display counter up one digit, (0-9). The left hand button Tens shifts the left hand digital display counter up one digit (00-90) so a display of 00 is the first floppy, a display of 01 is the second floppy, a display of 55 is the fifty-sixth floppy, and so on.

(The actual unit may vary slightly from this image)

When you plug your thumb drive into your PC USB port, you can view and use only the currently active floppy partition. You will not be able to view any of the contents of the other 99 floppy partitions unless you select it from the Floppy Manager Software or select a different floppy partition by pressing the Unit or Tens button on the USB Floppy drive. The active floppy partition will then be displayed on the digital display.

Floppy Manager 1.23 Software

Insert the supplied thumb drive into your PC, select My Computer, and navigate to the thumb drive. It will be identified as FLPPY0. Double click on the icon to see this:

Highlight the two files, right click on the file names, and choose the Copy command.

Create a folder on the hard drive and copy the Floppy Manager software into your PC.

Floppy manager software, shown with the USB drive inserted in the PC and the check mark for multi floppy service is selected. Pressing batch format formats all 100 partitions, single disk formats just the partition selected.

Selecting SFD enhanced edition allows you to select from the different floppy partitions.

Floppy 2 shown with a 1.4MB file

Floppy 0 shown with one 1 KB file This ability to switch active floppy partitions gives you the opportunity to sort your program files onto different partitions. For example, you might put all the files for a project on a separate partition, as all Customer As files on a different partition, etc.