12 Oct
2005
12 Oct
'05
8:06 a.m.
Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
From: Dan Williams <williams.dan at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 09:17:32 +0100
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>
On the whole I prefer my solution. A simple 486/66 on a board that doesnt
have any "chip set" and ISA cards that are easy to find in junkers.
Convenient, you bet. The board board I selected uses PS2 keyboard and
mouse. I have two spare boards and the nicads have been removed to
prevent leakage. Thse have done well for floppy futzing from any 5.25
to any 3.5" (excluding the near unseen 2.88).
Another good choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza boxes such as the 425/np
though 466/np. Theses are small, use PS2 connectors for keyboard
and mouse and the board supports most floppies (x2), IDE disks to 500mb
and S3 VGA video. There is room enough to add a CDrom or 5.25 floppy.
A third candidate just a shade larger than the Dell pizza boxes is a AT&T
Golbalist 620. That's a P100 box with three ISA or PCI slots, mouse,
and keyboard are PS2, video is VGA and room for a IDE disk, CDrom and a
3.5 floppy inside.
Beats wailing ones head against the wall with trying to retrofit current
solutions. Also solves the how to reuse older hardware that exists for
free.
Allison
Dan, I don't think I've ever seen a
5.25" PCMCIA drive. Do they exist? There's actually not a huge amount of
difference between the PCMCIA bus and ISA. IIRC, you can get PCMCIA-PC104 adapters and
PC104 is very close to ISA.
Cheers,
Chuck
These guys made one ten years ago, there might be some around.
http://www.accurite.com/PR-PC.html
Dan 
12 Oct
12 Oct
7:39 p.m.
On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 08:06:10 -0400
Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
I don't know that I've ever seen a 486 motherboard that didn't use a
'chipset.' The ASIC
'chipset' motherboards came in the late 286/early 386 era. The big
'Full AT footprint' '286 motherboards don't use a 'chipset' but
rather
lots and lots of TTL gates and standard Intel 8xxx LSI chips.
Tony can probably add a few comments about the switch from 'regular
logic' PeeCee motherboards to 'chipset' based ones, as he seems to be
running a 'processor upgraded' IBM AT system specifically to avoid
'black box' ASIC-base motherboards.
Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
From: Dan Williams <williams.dan at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 09:17:32 +0100
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
On the whole I prefer my solution. A simple 486/66 on a board that
doesnt have any "chip set" and ISA cards that are easy to find in
junkers. Convenient, you bet. The board board I selected uses PS2
keyboard and mouse. I have two spare boards and the nicads have been
removed to prevent leakage. Thse have done well for floppy futzing
from any 5.25 to any 3.5" (excluding the near unseen 2.88).
Dan, I don't think I've ever seen a
5.25" PCMCIA drive. Do they
exist? There's actually not a huge amount of
difference between the
PCMCIA bus and ISA. IIRC, you can get PCMCIA-PC104 adapters and
PC104 is very close to ISA.>
Cheers,
Chuck
These guys made one ten years ago, there might be some around.
http://www.accurite.com/PR-PC.html
Dan Another good choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza
boxes such as the 425/np
though 466/np. Theses are small, use PS2 connectors for keyboard
and mouse and the board supports most floppies (x2), IDE disks to
500mb and S3 VGA video. There is room enough to add a CDrom or 5.25
floppy.
A third candidate just a shade larger than the Dell pizza boxes is a
AT&T Golbalist 620. That's a P100 box with three ISA or PCI slots,
mouse, and keyboard are PS2, video is VGA and room for a IDE disk,
CDrom and a 3.5 floppy inside.
Beats wailing ones head against the wall with trying to retrofit
current solutions. Also solves the how to reuse older hardware that
exists for free.
I definitely don't have any 'current solution' hardware here that I am
wailing about not being able to use. My Dell systems are
first-generation 100MHz bus Pentium III systems, which makes them
'rather old' in current terms. Today somebody at work gave me an 'old'
machine out of his car from home that he didn't want anymore. Said 'you
can probably salvage something out of it.' Then he dropped the comment
that it probably has an 800 MHz process. Uh...
The fastest machines that I have here at home at present run _550 MHz_
processors. How times have changed, I guess. The 'future' I am
avoiding is machines without an ISA bus, with only USB for keyboard,
mouse, and other peripherals, etc.
I agree about the usefulness of keeping around some 'plain old' legacy
systems from the '486 or early Pentium era. I've always kept boxes like
that around for things like the machine at the bench that programs
EPROMS (my EPROM programmer is one of those Needham PB-10 ISA card
programmers (it will last FOREVER since the most 'proprietary' parts on
it are two 6821 PIAs)
4:59 p.m.
On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 08:06:10 -0400
Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
I don't know that I've ever seen a 486 motherboard that didn't use a
'chipset.' The ASIC
'chipset' motherboards came in the late 286/early 386 era. The big
'Full AT footprint' '286 motherboards don't use a 'chipset' but
rather
lots and lots of TTL gates and standard Intel 8xxx LSI chips.
They exist, I have seen several TTL motherboards with TTL for 386
and 486. Some hybrid TTL and one or two chipsets as well.
Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
From: Dan Williams <williams.dan at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 09:17:32 +0100
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
On the whole I prefer my solution. A simple 486/66 on a board that Dan, I don't think I've ever seen a
5.25" PCMCIA drive. Do they
exist? There's actually not a huge amount of
difference between the
PCMCIA bus and ISA. IIRC, you can get PCMCIA-PC104 adapters and
PC104 is very close to ISA.>
Cheers,
Chuck
These guys made one ten years ago, there might be some around.
http://www.accurite.com/PR-PC.html
Dan Tony can probably add a few comments about the switch
from 'regular
Another good
choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza boxes such as the 425/np
wailing about not
being able to use. My Dell systems are
first-generation 100MHz bus Pentium III systems, which makes them
that it probably has an 800 MHz process. Uh... The fastest machines that I have here at home at
present run _550 MHz_
I agree about the usefulness of keeping around some 'plain old' legacy
systems from the '486 or early Pentium era. I've always kept boxes like
Agreed. I keep some old 386/486/pentium boards around. In fact, I
have small collection of PS/2 machines. Not the playstations! :)
Cheers, Wizard
13 Oct
13 Oct
6:39 p.m.
On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Allison wrote:
Another good choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza
boxes such as the 425/np
though 466/np. Theses are small, use PS2 connectors for keyboard
and mouse and the board supports most floppies (x2), IDE disks to 500mb
and S3 VGA video. There is room enough to add a CDrom or 5.25 floppy.
I have 2 of these, and they're quite nice. You can run 25, 50, 33 and 60
MHz chips in them with the right rejumpering (so my 425s are running 66Mhz
now). Dell even had the motherboard docs online, last I checked. There's
only one problem: the BIOS won't boot off any non-FAT formatted floppies,
though it's happy to boot anything off the HD. This makes putting a
'modern' OS (linux, in my case) on them a bit of a challenge. I've stuffed
one full of ne2k, intel and 3com cards and use it as a firewall.
Alexey
6863
days inactive
6864
days old
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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ajp166＠bellatlantic.net -
alexeyt＠freeshell.org -
chenmel＠earthlink.net -
jpero＠sympatico.ca