FloppeMachine Project

How to put a floppy drive in your floppy-diskless eMachine...

More details to come when I actually go and do this. I'm going to have to make a pilgrimage to the local hardware store.

WARNING: Adding a floppy drive in this fashion will almost certainly void your warranty. You will be modifying the case in a partially irreversible manner! Do this at your own risk!!!

I recently bought a fairly nice eMachine. Unfortunately, like most PC vendors are beginning to do, eMachines didn't install a floppy disk drive in this computer. Worse yet, installation of an internal floppy is simply not possible. There's no room, even though the motherboard has an onboard floppy drive connection.

Or is there? I happened to notice that the front panel audio/USB connector panel was awfully close to the size of a standard 3.5" floppy drive. My mind raced into action and there just so happened to be a nearly identical model eMachine in the back room that had been turned to scrap when its owners didn't see fit to turn it off during a severe series of power disturbances.

I pulled the front panel and modified the case ever so slightly to accommodate insertion of a floppy drive in place of the nearly useless (for me, anyway) front panel audio connectors. I also did some other mods so as to be able to mount the drive into place securely.

I think that when I do this to my working machine that I will use a grey-fronted HP drive. It should be a pretty nice match with the coloring of the computer.

For more information, I'd suggest looking at the very detailed photos [below] in order. [Each is 320x240 at about 15KB/piece.]