PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
>   From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch at 30below.com>
>   Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 12:47:02 -0400
>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words:
>>On 10/9/2005 at 11:04 AM Scott Stevens wrote:
>>
>> >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.
>>
>>And there's a good reason for that.  The PCI bus has no access to legacy 
>>8237-type DMA, so legacy driver code would not work on such a beast.
>
>I've seen several BIOSs can be set up for that - you can set the IRQ & DMA 
>on a per-slot basis.
>
>However, I'll admit that it's a crapshoot... you'd want to make sure that 
>the mobo supports what you want to do. ;-) I'm also *not* going to say that 
>WindersXP will actually support it, as you *might* have to disable 
>Plug-N-Pray to get it to work.
>
>Laterz,
>Roger "Merch" Merchberger
>--

Roger, you hit the nail on the head.  If you want to use XP and the latest
PentiumMMV at 200ghz and read old media it'seems there is an incongreuity 
there.   It would appear more reasonable to use an older less underloaded
machine and a more flexible version of winders for such a task.

For tasks like this where the interface is going to be "unusual" XP, 
win2000 and NT are likely not the best choice as they are known to poorly 
or not support untested/certified hardware.


Allison