New subject: Getting floppy images to/from real floppy disks

21 May 2023

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 Message: 6
Date: Sat, 20 May 2023 07:25:39 -0700
From: Chuck Guzis &lt;cclist(a)sydex.com&gt;
Subject: [cctalk] Re: Getting floppy images to/from real floppy disks.

On 5/20/23 04:21, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:

  I was startled to discover my (long gone) Athlon
XP box could only
 handle a single floppy drive. The BIOS has no option for a 2nd.

 I can't imagine that was a significant cost saving. 
It's a matter of pins.  I believe that it started when the "SuperIO"
chip started packing in more support for various peripheral functions
and the 2 pins for drive select and motor control of an extra drive were
viewed as least important.   Earlier versions of the chip often allowed
re-purposing the pins used for the parallel port as an interface for an
extra floppy--you saw this on laptop systems, which often had only one
floppy drive in any case.  cf.  Intel's PCISet chip sets.

--Chuck 
My main computer is a 15-year old Dell Precision T3400 (Core 2 Duo). It can handle
multiple floppy drives, but the BIOS does not allow 360KB 5.25" disks, only 1.2MB in
that size.

Bob