9 Oct
2005
9 Oct
'05
9:04 a.m.
On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:29:42 -0400
Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
But does that work without digging in further? Does a PC/XT-era floppy
card replicate a PC-AT diskette controller? I am asking, since I've
never tackled such a project.
Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:52:22 -0500
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
One thing I am wondering is if an 8-bit floppy controller card (the
ones from the PC-XT generation, which didn't have floppy IO on the
motherboard) could be modified (if needed) and contrived to work in a
more modern system that still has the ISA bus. If the particular I/O
locations are being used, simple cuts and adds could re-direct the
I/O ports. This would give the enterprising programmer a 765
controller with relevant hardware to plug additional drives into.
The original PC-PC/XT controller is fully documented in the TechRef,
and even has all the cabling in place to support four floppies.
Gee I posted about doing just that. If the machine has ISA there is
no need to mod the card. Just disable (in bios) the mainboard level
FDC and plug in the ISA unit and go.
Also PCI cards work nice for that.
I've never seen a PCI card that had a floppy interface on it. I'm sure
they exist. Not in my junkbox, however, and I don't have the schematic
diagram for them.