PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

[Scott Stevens]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:29:42 -0400
Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> wrote:

> >
> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
> >   From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net>
> >   Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:52:22 -0500
> >     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
> >     <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> >
> >One thing I am wondering is if an 8-bit floppy controller card (the
> >ones from the PC-XT generation, which didn't have floppy IO on the
> >motherboard) could be modified (if needed) and contrived to work in a
> >more modern system that still has the ISA bus.  If the particular I/O
> >locations are being used, simple cuts and adds could re-direct the
> >I/O ports.  This would give the enterprising programmer a 765
> >controller with relevant hardware to plug additional drives into. 
> >The original PC-PC/XT controller is fully documented in the TechRef,
> >and even has all the cabling in place to support four floppies.
> 
> 
> Gee I posted about doing just that.  If the machine has ISA there is
> no need to mod the card.  Just disable (in bios) the mainboard level
> FDC and plug in the ISA unit and go.
> 

But does that work without digging in further?  Does a PC/XT-era floppy
card replicate a PC-AT diskette controller?  I am asking, since I've
never tackled such a project.

>   Also PCI cards work nice for that.
> 

I've never seen a PCI card that had a floppy interface on it.  I'm sure
they exist.  Not in my junkbox, however, and I don't have the schematic
diagram for them.