PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

[Allison]

>
>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