Floppy Drive Advice - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

27 Sep 2010

...

 I think the problem is that many modern motherboards don't have the pins
 of the second drive select and MotorOn signal wired up. Whether the
 signals exist on accessible pins of an I/O chip I don't know (if they do,
 it may be possible to add jumper wires, but some people are afraid of
 soldering to motherboards).

Quite likely they don't. The first time I ran into a motherboard like this,
I was fortunate enough that the manufacturer provided a schematic online. I
looked at it and at the data sheet for the SuperIO chip that the motherboard
uses, and I found out that that SuperIO chip does not have enough pins to
run two floppy drives and also drive all the fans and other stuff on that
motherboard. IIRC, the SuperIO is configurable and does have the option of
bringing the signals for the second floppy drive out to pins, but if you did
that, some other functions that the motherboard needs more could not be
brought out to pins.

  --Tim