The Stealth Affair: I goofed :(

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 6:23 pm

While you dont have to 'reformat' the drive per-se, you do run into quite a few biod issues. Many new MOBO's simply do not support those old floppy drives. I have also found that it is extremely rare to find a new MOBO which supports the floppy combo drives.

After ordering 3 combo drives I finally found one that the 5.25 drive would read in one of my pc's. Although it won't recognize the 3.5 drive as the bios only supports one floppy.

Point being, it can def. be a hassle getting one hooked up. And for someone, such as myself, that owns many many old PC games, having one of these drives is invaluable. otherwise all my games are just pretty boxes and manuals with no use.

skotafactor · Post by **skotafactor** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 7:37 pm

Ceri Cat wrote:Reformat? You don't need to reformat a 5.25 drive, you can reformat the disks but the drive itself is no different to a CD-ROM really except access is more like a hard drive. And it goes onto the floppy bus, if you find a cable that's old enough it'll usually have two types of plugs, one for the 3.5 floppy, and another for a 5.25 floppy which usually has a connection like an old cartridge game in the back.

There were really no practical advantages for the 5.25 apart from those of us trying to salvage our old games next to nobody uses them. Heck at one point a lot of software was released with both sets of disks in the box, the old Printshop DOS titles come to mind for a start. Wordperfect 5.0 and 5.1 as well.

I did some research on this, before buying a floppy drive off of eBay to find myself disappointed. I'm not very technologically educated, but plenty of people online stated that the drive wasn't supported by their PC's even after they messed with the bios. I'm just saying that there's plenty of new technological advances that let people relive nostalgic memories (ex. DVD and VCR combos, 3.5 floppy USB ports, newer record players) I don't see why the 5.25 floppy has to be an exception

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 1:25 am

i guess when 3.5" usb floppy drives were first made, regular 3.5" floppy drives were probably still in production - whereas 5.25" floppy drives had been out of production for many years. would have been relatively a lot more work and expense to start manufacturing them again, for a probably very small market.

Ceri Cat · Post by **Ceri Cat** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 3:48 am

There are sometimes tricks you can pull to bypass the bios detection for drives depending on your OS. I've found for example under Windows 2000 at least on a machine where the bios doesn't register anything above 32 gigs I can set the bios to none for that drive's position and 2000 will still detect and install the drive properly. I've never had to try this with a floppy drive as I still have a legacy system setup for recovery purposes amongst other things, and I'd bet XP probably doesn't have drivers for 5.25s anymore regardless.

It's halfway tempting to have a look into making the drives though because while there's a limited market there's nothing really stopping someone from making them to order.

skotafactor · Post by **skotafactor** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 4:05 pm

Ceri Cat wrote: It's halfway tempting to have a look into making the drives though because while there's a limited market there's nothing really stopping someone from making them to order.

If I had the money, experience, time, and resources, it's deffinately something I would look into. If only one company made such a thing, due to the demand, they would actually make a good amount of money.

Ceri Cat · Post by **Ceri Cat** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 4:28 pm

skotafactor wrote:
Ceri Cat wrote: It's halfway tempting to have a look into making the drives though because while there's a limited market there's nothing really stopping someone from making them to order.
If I had the money, experience, time, and resources, it's deffinately something I would look into. If only one company made such a thing, due to the demand, they would actually make a good amount of money.

Well look at it as a might happen scenario. If there was sufficient interest for a prototype to be developed you might see something in a few months as I know one or two businesses with the resources to produce that haunt these forums.

skotafactor · Post by **skotafactor** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 4:33 pm

Well, the 3.5 USB was introduced a year ago, I think, and since then, people all over the web have been moping that there isn't one released for the 5.25. It would make hunting old games down so much easier; I wouldn't have to worry what floppy format it was in

Ceri Cat · Post by **Ceri Cat** » Thu Jul 10, 2008 8:12 am

Longer. 3.5 USBs have been around for years because they're so convenient for laptops that don't have one internally mounted.

sammymarlo · Post by **sammymarlo** » Fri Jun 17, 2011 9:21 pm

skotafactor wrote:Is the only difference that James Bond's name is changed to John Glames?

No. Operation Stealth was the original version of the game, and Stealth Affair featured some upgrades.

In Stealth Affair, the maze arcade sequences have been re-done. In the original Operation Stealth there were 4 mazes and in Stealth Affair there are only two plus they have been redesigned to make them easier - this makes it much easier to get past the arcade sequences.

Plus some of the English text has been changed - fixing some of the bad translation errors in the original Operation Stealth.

Also, in the cut-scences, you can click past text, instead of having to wait for it to go away.