PCI floppy controller

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 at 19:11, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Back in the 90s, we bought these things by the carton, modified them to
> work with Japanese DOS 2.0 format (PC98) 3.5" floppies, rewrote the
> drivers, added a VxD for Win3.1 compatibility and sold a bunch of them.
>  Popular with some segments of the CNC and other crowds.

Huh! Nice work if you can get it.

> A not well-known fact is that the thing supports up to 4 drives and that
> the configuration NVRAM stores not only the "ID" of the unit but also
> the types of the 4 drives connected.

You mean, in principle 1 interface could control 4 drives? Wow!

> It's rare (and perhaps impossible) to find a real parallel port on a
> modern system--usb parallel dongles don't work

No, I wouldn't expect 'em to.

> and neither do the PCIe
> parallel port cards.

OK, now that surprised me. But on consideration, I suppose that they
appear at different locations.

0x378 for I/O and IRQ 7, wasn't it? :-)

0x3BC and 0x278 for LPT2 and LPT3.

I guess PCI[e] ones appear elsewhere and DOS doesn't know about the addresses.

A Linux driver might have a shot. Any Windows driver old enough to
drive a parallel port won't work on any currently-supported version of
Windows.

>   Along with the legacy floppy interface, the
> legacy serial and parallel ports may have been the last vestiges of the
> ISA architecture to be discarded.

Yup.

-- 
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