[vcf-midatlantic] USB Floppies that are flexible? Cleaning a 3.5" drive?

[Bill Degnan]

IMHO there is no modern solid USB substitute for the 720K disk drive, for
both software and hardware reasons.  I'd set up a "tweener" PC for this
kind of work that has an actual 3.5" drive installed and an OS like Windows
2000.  You can also install a 5 1/4" drive..
Bill

On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 10:00 AM John Heritage via vcf-midatlantic <
vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

> Hey folks,  two asks -- I'm looking for advice:
>
> Are there any USB or external floppy drive arrangements that are flexible
> like internal floppy drives for allowing formatting and/or reading of
> unusual sector sizes or formats?
>
> Ex:  800KB Atari ST floppies and PC DOS disks formatted in unusual sizes
>
> ..
>
> Second question is -what is the easiest way to clean the heads on a 3.5"
> floppy?   If I have a bunch of 'suspect' floppies that I want to clean the
> head between every disk it seems a little painful to disassemble the drive
> enough to see the heads and clean.  Are there any alternatives?
>
> (I'm used to 5.25" drives where there's often enough space in there to wipe
> without disassembly).
> Maybe there's a good (modern) source of 3.5" cleaning floppies?
>
> (P.S.  I have a K6-3+ PC I can put a fresh OS on so I may be cleaning a
> legacy 3.5" drive instead of a USB floppy).
>
> Thanks!
> John
>