Emax

I know i may be cryin down a well here, but my floppy drive appears to 
be on its last legs, i have an emax HD (with a later OS plus upgrade) 
and an external zip drive (hardset to ID 5 or 6 only) that gets past 
diagnostics then chokes on the disks, what do i do??? is there a way to 
get the emax to boot without being forced to buy a new disk drive which 
is only useful for booting?
~AJB