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Looking on eBay for floppy drives, I came across these incredibly cheap Chinese 3.5" USB drives (there are lots of them on offer).
The USB interface is obviously useless for a retro computer. I doubt it, but: Does anyone know if there is anything usable in these (ideally, a decent 3.5" drive with a 34-pin connector)? Or can these be made into something usable?
No, they don't expose an interface useful for retro applications. Many of them will likely use an integrated USB controller + RAM like in this USB floppy teardown so they appear as mass storage.
Usually there should be a rather standard drive within, but you never know until you open one - and whatever you learn will only be valid for that batch. THe next one, similar looking may have different internals.
Many (not all) of them have a 24-pin flat flex cable instead of the 34-pin cable you'd need. If you have an adapter, they work fine.
I have three USB floppy drives of different brands and they all have the same flat flex cable going to a daughter board that converts it to USB. I happen to have an adapter I tore out of something that converts the flat flex to 34-pin and verified that all of them work in my old IBM just fine with it.
