Besides their great laptops, Sony also created some really nice peripherals for the Vaio line, showing once again why they were (and still are) one of the best laptop companies. One thing that’s worth noting is that all these units are made in Japan

PCGA-FD5

The first drive is Floppy Disk Drive Model PCGA-FD5. It comes with the Sony Vaio PCG-505, but I got it with other Vaio unit. By the lack of the rubber feet, it seems that the unit has been opened, so maybe its internal drive was changed before I bought it. This drive has a proprietary Sony connector, so it’s pretty hard to test it out.

PCGA-UFD1

The next three photos are for the Floppy Disk Drive Model PCGA-UFD1. On the outside it looks very similar with the FD5 drive, the only difference is the square USB Type B plug (usually found on printers), which makes this usable universally, and I used it quite a few times. On the inside, it might be identical to the other drive. This unit came with the Vaio PCG-C1F laptop.

PCGA-CD5

The next five photos are for the CD-ROM with Model PCGA-CD5. While this unit looks really nice, I find it to be useless in my situation. This is because the proprietary connector connects to a PCMCIA card, which I don’t have, and also needs an external AC adapter which I’m missing as well. However, it gets bonus points on the coolness factor, because it has an audio jack and a volume button, which makes it a CD player on its own, which explains the top-loading mechanism.

PCGA-CD51

The last CD-ROM drive in this series is the PCGA-CD51. Even if the model number is only one number difference than the previous model, they are pretty much two very distinct models. This one has a tray that opens, doesn’t act as a CD-player and also uses a PCMCIA interface directly, which makes it usable on many laptops, especially a bit older ones. This card is integrated in the connection cable, and cannot be removed and also has a nice place to tuck at the bottom of the CD-ROM case. This unit came with the Vaio PCG-C1F laptop as well.