24 May
2023
24 May
'23
11:29 a.m.
What op sys and version do you want to run on it? Windows changed the
way drivers work after Xp so it may be an isshe. That made replacement
of older PCs that controlled equipment like xray, MRI, and industrial
stuff impossible as the manufacturers couldn’t write new drivers — lost
the knowledge thru mergers and retirements/buyouts.
As i say, i'm in the market for a laptop. Omniflop, the tool i used to
write the RCA MicroDOS floppies, works well with Win2k, and i used a
Dell GX1 running Win2K to write the disks. The direct
drive-to-controller-to-OS links are what i'm after. No USB, Firewire, or
serial/parallel interfaces between the controller and rest of the
machine.Ideally, i'm after an early 2000's laptop. I've got a couple
mid-2000's Dell laptops with floppy modules, but they interface over
USB, which is a no-go for device-level stuff. I figure something from
before, or the early days of USB 2.0 is where i need to look, but i've
seen some machines that use/repurpose the parallel ports for floppy
interfacing. If the SuperIO chip sends direct drive controls across the
parallel port, as i've read somewhere, then i see no issue. But if the
floppy controller is on the drive side of the parallel port, and the OS
requires dedicated drivers to controll it, i imagine i won't have the
drive-level control i require.