[Bill Johns]

The old 5 1/4 drives have nice little steppers in them. And the board to control it. I have tried hooking up an old PS/2 5 1/4 floppy drive positioning stepper up to the parallel port, using the step and direction connections, and grounding the motor on terminal. But no luck yet.
I get the pulse train from the port so I know that is working. Any ideas?
The motor locks when power is supplied to the drive PCB.
This is a very nice web site. And some really sharp folks on here. Glad I found it.

[ynneb]

Welcome John. Glad you like it here. There has been a few posts in the past regarding those small steppers. From what I remember reading, they are just too small to drive a machine of any useful size.
From what I have seen, to buy bigger steppers is not that expensive, especialy if you buy off ebay.

[H500]

Ynneb is correct. I started out using these motors. They are fun to get started with and might work on a very low friction system, but they are far too weak. The friction on a 1/4" threaded rod can cause them to miss steps unless you're going really slow.

To check if your board is ok, connect a wire to the step input and alternately touch +5v and ground. The motors should move.

[Bill Johns]

Thank you for the information.
Haven't had the time to play with it again. Plan on using another drive controller, other than a PS/2.