How to get 5 1/4" floppies to my computer?

Hello, my brother just gave me a couple of classic games, the original Sim City and Populous, but all are on 5.25" floppies. Any idea how I can get them to a computer? Being that I can't find any of those floppy drives any more, and there are no proper 5.25" floppy to USB enclosures. He had them stuffed away in an old box, he doesn't even have the old floppy drives any more.
Could anyone help? I'd LOVE to play these classics again! :cry:
I'd even be willing to do some modding, I'm sure my brother would help since he's the electrical guy of the family.

 

Your best bet would be to probably find a desktop and put a 5 1/4" drive in there, copy the disks to a 3.5", and then use those from a floppy->USB drive.

You may just be out of luck, honestly. That said, there are free games similar to SimCity (including being based on some of the same code) that are out there for download: http://lincity-ng.berlios.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

 

Thanks, but I really want to play the originals. I have very fond memory of those two games when I was in school. I'd really hate to spend even a couple hundred dollars to get an old desktop at a second hand store, just to be able to transfer two games.
There has got to be a way.

 

Try a Salvation Army or a computer dump.

 

I found this company that transfers 3.5" and 5.25" floppies to cd. What do you guys think?

 

There is a way, and it's basically what I said. Unfortunately, it's not cheap because there's pretty much nobody who wants to do that. Such is life... the more exotic, the more expensive. If you can make it to Denver, I've got a bunch of old desktops that I'd love to give you

Edit: Your transfer company, make sure they're ok with doing it with copyrighted disks. It may not work with their terms.

 

I just gave them a call, and they said it's fine. $5 per diskette, I may just do it.

 

research the games first, you might not be able to run them even inside of a virtualbox VM.

 

They will run in dosbox, no worries.

 

Both those games are Abandonware, available for download:

Populous for DOS
Sim City for DOS

 

Guess those floppies have been around for 10-15 years!?
"stuffed away" doesn't sound like optimal storage.

The odds for usable information are not so good.
5.25" used to die on me all the time, even when they were new.

 

I was thinking about that. I guess I'll find it in a few days if they're usable or not. :\