16 Jan
2005
16 Jan
'05
7:14 a.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005, Scott Stevens wrote:
Unless you need to be able to have 2 disks of the same size active at
the same time, you don't need four drives.
I have a 5.25/3.5" combo drive that handles all four of those formats
(and 3.5" 360K) just fine. The gorgeous part is that it occupies a
single 5.25" bay.
You have to be careful with the newer x86 motherboards, though - a
lot of them will only configure a single floppy at the BIOS level. I
don't imagine that's a big deal in this crowd though. ;)
Doc
The original IBM-PC's floppy controller made
provisions for four floppy
drives. There are control lines to select up to four drives on the
single interface. They put a 37-pin D-shape connector on the bracket of
early IBM floppy controller cards so you could plug in an expansion case
with two external floppy drives.
I only did this once, as an experiment, to see if I could run my old
WWIV BBS on floppy-drives only, to reduce the noise of the machine. (It
worked, but was much slower.)
I'm pretty sure the 'fix' isn't to plug in an old IBM controller,
though, unless you're already talking about a vintage restoration
project. But the third and fourth select lines should be available on
some controllers.
I'd like to make a box with four floppy types: 5.25" 360 and 1.2, and
3.5" 720 and 1.44. I seem to recall someone here did this.