PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware
>   From: Dan Williams <williams.dan at gmail.com>
>   Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 09:17:32 +0100
>     To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>> Dan, I don't think I've ever seen a 5.25" PCMCIA drive.  Do they exist?  There's actually not a huge amount of difference between the PCMCIA bus and ISA.  IIRC, you can get PCMCIA-PC104 adapters and PC104 is very close to ISA.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Chuck
>>
>These guys made one ten years ago, there might be some around.
>
>http://www.accurite.com/PR-PC.html
>
>Dan

On the whole I prefer my solution.  A simple 486/66 on a board that doesnt 
have any "chip set" and ISA cards that are easy to find in junkers.  
Convenient, you bet.  The board board I selected uses PS2 keyboard and 
mouse.  I have two spare boards and the nicads have been removed to 
prevent leakage.  Thse have done well for floppy futzing from any 5.25
to any 3.5" (excluding the near unseen 2.88).

Another good choice is the 4" tall Dell Pizza boxes such as the 425/np
though 466/np.  Theses are small, use PS2 connectors for keyboard 
and mouse and the board supports most floppies (x2), IDE disks to 500mb 
and S3 VGA video.   There is room enough to add a CDrom or 5.25 floppy.

A third candidate just a shade larger than the Dell pizza boxes is a AT&T
Golbalist 620.  That's a P100 box with three ISA or PCI slots, mouse,
and keyboard are PS2, video is VGA and room for a IDE disk, CDrom and a 
3.5 floppy inside.

Beats wailing ones head against the wall with trying to retrofit current
solutions. Also solves the how to reuse older hardware that exists for 
free.


Allison