PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Oct 2005

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Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
   From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org>
   Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 10:14:31 -0500
     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at
classiccmp.org>

On Sunday 09 October 2005 10:00, Scott Stevens wrote:
  On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:25:29 -0400

 Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:
  A simpler way to beat the only one floppy
problem.  Find a PCI
 floppy/IDE card and disable the onboard controller.  Simple fix.

 I used that fix at work to solve a problem mother board that lost
 all floppy control due to lightining/power transient.  Since
 everything else worked and I needed to get to other problem systems
 that was a good fix.

 Allison 
 An even better 'fix' would be to disable just the floppy interface on
 the motherboard and use an ISA SCSI interface (i.e. a 1542) of the
 generation when there were versions with a floppy interface onboard 
This doesn't work well when you have a recent enough machine that it 
doesn't have ISA slots.  Heck, I've got UNIX boxes from 1996 (getting 
nearly on topic now) that have PCI but no ISA slots.

Though, I'll have to say that I've never seen a PCI card with a floppy 
controller on it (well, um, other than the Catweasel, of course). 
I have a few and JDRmicrdevices still sells them.  
Most hoever are not plain FDC though I have a few 
of those too.  There are PCI FDC/IDE/serial combo
cards that that can have any of all of those 
functions disabled. Around here it's not hard 
to find older cards at used computer stores.

Allison