Adapting ASUS Z87 - Plus Motherboard to use a floppy drive

I am trying to use an older Windows 10 machine to load and play around with DOS. The MS DOS will be on 3 1/2" diskettes. Is there any cable that can be used on an ASUS Z87 - Plus motherboard or any motherboard, for that matter, to adapt to and use a 33 Pin twisted wire data cable in order to use a 3 1/2" floppy drive as an A: Drive? Or any other suggestions on how I can hook up a 3 1/2" floppy drive to be seen as an A: Drive?

Ghot said:

Might be a whole lot easier to just find a... digital MS-DOS?

Like on the Internet Archive...
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine



There are 3.5 floppy adapters, but there's really no need to go that route.
Amazon - floppy adapters

OK, thanks. That sounds pretty good. However, I need to ask a couple questions. Would I need to download a MS DOS iso file? Is that what you mean by a digital copy?

If I got an external 3 1/2" drive can I set up a boot sequence that will boot to an external drive first? Here's the thing, I think that I will need that external or the internal to load my Lotus programs

Ghot said:

Probably the easiest way is to create a VM (virtual machine) and run MS-DOS in that.
Or run an OS that will run 16bit apps. Like Windows 3.1 or similar.
I don't do VMs, but @jimbo45 does. He might have some ideas.
He will "see" that I mentioned him.

Something like this...
How to Enable 16-bit Application Support in Windows 10



I also found this... but have no idea if it works or how to use it.
Download MS DOS for Windows 10, 7, 8/8.1 (64 bit/32 bit)


But as I mentioned... running a VM is probably the easiest way.
Until @jimbo45 checks in, (probably tomorrow morning NY time, due to time zone),
make sure you bookmark the "Internet Archive"
You can get any old software you might need, there.
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Thank you for all your suggestions. I may have to try that VM thing but will still need that external 3 1/2" floppy drive in order to use all my old Lotus programs and diskettes with programs that use Lotus 123 to run.

Ghot said:

I'd imagine you can find all your old programs on Internet Archive.

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

I may need to do that but I still have the Lotus 123 program disks and that is really what I wanted to look at. I also have the files I created using that program so hopefully I can get to look at them once I get that external floppy drive from Amazon I ordered. Again, thanks for your helpful suggestions.

I have used images of DOS 6.22 to install DOS in a virtual machine. A long time ago I used a computer with a floppy drive to create images of the original floppies for DOS 6.22. Here is what they look like:




However, if you just need to emulate DOS why don't you try the free program called DOSBox? It takes only a few minutes to set it up.

DOSBox
DOSBox, an x86 emulator with DOS


I just installed DOSBox. Here is it running under Windows 11.