USB 5 1/2” disk reader

How is that helpful?

Short answer it's not possible for 5.25" drives. USB 3.5" are possible. For 5.25", the only way I guess it could work is if you use the dISAppointment project to extend an ISA slot from the motherboard, and try plugging an ISA controller card. I don't know if it will be able to boot from the 5.25" drive, and if you use UEFI BIOS then it might be even more unlikely. But it would be a fun experiment overall.

There is no way to add an internal floppy controller to a newer PCIe motherboard. The last Intel mainstream boards that truly supported a floppy controller (w/o bridge chip) were soc775 based iirc.
There is no such thing a PCI floppy controller AFAIK....

Musings on that topic over at VCFED https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/wtb … ntroller.61348/

There's multiple parts to floppy support, one is the BIOS, the second is the legacy ISA infrastructure and the preservation of IRQ 6 and DMA 2 for sole use of the floppy drive (This is how every DOS program will expect to find the floppy drive) and then the actual controller hardware, which was usually on the ISA bus. So, if you're missing any of those parts, you don't really get floppy support as everyone means it, just the ability to copy files to a floppy under specific OS and driver conditions maybe.

Anyhoo, the LS-120/240 via IDE connection loophole is good for 3.5/1.44 and I have that working on a floppy controllerless AM2+ motherboard myself.

Once upon a time, PCI Multi I/O cards existed the same as ISA and VLB multi I/O cards existed, BUT in hugely reduced number of models, and manufactured in hugely less numbers. There were 1993-1996 PCI motherboards without integrated I/O that would have needed these, but there's reasons they did not get them. The PCI machines were typically higher end workstation and workgroup servers and they did not want PCI IDE, they wanted PCI SCSI, so since the only thing on a PCI multi i/o that needed to be on PCI for speed was IDE, they didn't bother getting them in many cases, put a regular ISA i/o card in for the parallel, serial etc, and a PCI SCSI card... Even in the mid 90s when they were available, they were 5 times the price of an ISA or VLB card at least, so it was only the desperate few who bought them then. Many regular users while wanting an early Pentium board, still went with ISA I/O, then later maybe disabled the IDE and put an ATA 33/66 standalone in it. So yeah, they existed but effectively didn't.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-09-27, 02:03:

Once upon a time, PCI Multi I/O cards existed the same as ISA and VLB multi I/O cards existed, BUT in hugely reduced number of models, and manufactured in hugely less numbers. There were 1993-1996 PCI motherboards without integrated I/O that would have needed these, but there's reasons they did not get them. The PCI machines were typically higher end workstation and workgroup servers and they did not want PCI IDE, they wanted PCI SCSI, so since the only thing on a PCI multi i/o that needed to be on PCI for speed was IDE, they didn't bother getting them in many cases, put a regular ISA i/o card in for the parallel, serial etc, and a PCI SCSI card... Even in the mid 90s when they were available, they were 5 times the price of an ISA or VLB card at least, so it was only the desperate few who bought them then. Many regular users while wanting an early Pentium board, still went with ISA I/O, then later maybe disabled the IDE and put an ATA 33/66 standalone in it. So yeah, they existed but effectively didn't.

Are you sure that on those cards, the floppy portion was over the PCI bus, and not routed over the attached "paddle board" to the ISA bus?

Horun wrote on 2023-09-27, 01:56:

There is no way to add an internal floppy controller to a newer PCIe motherboard. The last Intel mainstream boards that truly supported a floppy controller (w/o bridge chip) were soc775 based iirc.
There is no such thing a PCI floppy controller AFAIK....

Once upon a time ... https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk3.htm

There were cards like that, but there were cards that weren't. Bear in mind these may have been 5V PCI 1.0 non plug and play and may not play nice with ACPI etc even on intermediate age boards that still support floppy in BIOS. So PCI but not like PCI became.

giantclam wrote on 2023-09-27, 02:10:

Horun wrote on 2023-09-27, 01:56:

There is no way to add an internal floppy controller to a newer PCIe motherboard. The last Intel mainstream boards that truly supported a floppy controller (w/o bridge chip) were soc775 based iirc.
There is no such thing a PCI floppy controller AFAIK....

Once upon a time ... https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk3.htm

I know about the Catweasle. It is more than a standard floppy controller. Much like the old Copy 2 PC Option Board ISA cards were more than a floppy controller. It is not intended for general use as a floppy controller and good luck on getting one 😀

Horun wrote on 2023-09-27, 02:19:

giantclam wrote on 2023-09-27, 02:10:

Horun wrote on 2023-09-27, 01:56:

There is no way to add an internal floppy controller to a newer PCIe motherboard. The last Intel mainstream boards that truly supported a floppy controller (w/o bridge chip) were soc775 based iirc.
There is no such thing a PCI floppy controller AFAIK....

Once upon a time ... https://www.vesalia.de/e_catweaselmk3.htm

I know about the Catweasle. It is more than a standard floppy controller. Much like the old Copy 2 PC Option Board ISA cards were more than a floppy controller. It is not intended for general use as a floppy controller and good luck on getting one 😀

The whole thing fizzled out, my guess being demand ~ there was none, and things became Amigacentric (more or less because it was such a floppy based platform)...and it made more sense to go the USB route (emulation scene for the most part...ie; why takeup a pcie slot when the mech could only do data rx/tx at <USB2.o speed) ...and life goes on =)

edit: ...but the intent was there initially for it to be the all singing&dancing fdd controller that could handle any disk format thrown at it.

As already mentioned, there's plenty of options, but none of them is perfect.

If I was to add floppy drives to a modern PC, I would probably connect them via KryoFlux:
+ fairly easy to obtain
+ supports all disk formats
- special software required

Optionally, I would also install a USB 1.44 MB drive:
+ very easy to obtain
+ no special software required
- support only for the standard PC disk formats: 1.44 MB, and sometimes 720 KB
- to install internally, must build own 5.25" bay adapter

Grzyb wrote on 2023-09-27, 03:01:

If I was to add floppy drives to a modern PC, I would probably connect them via KryoFlux: + fairly easy to obtain + supports all […]
Show full quote

If I was to add floppy drives to a modern PC, I would probably connect them via KryoFlux:
+ fairly easy to obtain
+ supports all disk formats
- special software required

Greaseweazle. Cheaper and easier to obtain. Software is free for all use cases, and open source, and still updated. I've even dumped MFM and RLL hard drives with Greaseweazle (using customized software the author helped me build).

Grzyb wrote on 2023-09-27, 03:01:

Optionally, I would also install a USB 1.44 MB drive: + very easy to obtain + no special software required - support only for th […]
Show full quote

Optionally, I would also install a USB 1.44 MB drive:
+ very easy to obtain
+ no special software required
- support only for the standard PC disk formats: 1.44 MB, and sometimes 720 KB
- to install internally, must build own 5.25" bay adapter

Not all USB FDDs are made equal, some are better then others. Windows 10 supports 1.44M and 720K formats, as well as JP-specific 1.2M so I'm pretty sure it should be possible to marry such USB controller to 5.25" drive and I will try it one of these days. Though I've never tested 360k format, or anything older than that (160/180/320K or 8" floppies). That being said Win10 is already dumbed down and it cannot format floppies properly, the only way to make sure it works it to use the native machine (or DOS if compatible) to format the media first. Then R/W operations will work. WinXP can format floppies but some custom formats might require complicated command line parameters or will not be possible after all.

BTW some mobo BIOSes that support legacy boot devices (mine does, although I had to turn it off to enable PCIE rebar for graphics card) allow you to use USB floppy drive as boot source. So you can boot into DOS with basic VGA compatibility and run some benchmarks on Zen2/Zen3 CPUs. Fun.

Sadly no, the controllers in those USB drive ensembles do not have the correct track timings for 5.25" diskette drives, and cannot work with them. Many people have tried naively just putting one on.

Given the desire for it, and the ubiquity of modern microcontrollers that have HID class support libraries, I am actually quite surprised that there aren't projects to use, eg, a Teensy or similar, to drive a 5.25" drive over USB.

https://youtu.be/m_s1iw8eW7o

wbahnassi wrote on 2023-09-27, 01:40:

Short answer it's not possible for 5.25" drives. USB 3.5" are possible. For 5.25", the only way I guess it could work is if you use the dISAppointment project to extend an ISA slot from the motherboard, and try plugging an ISA controller card. I don't know if it will be able to boot from the 5.25" drive, and if you use UEFI BIOS then it might be even more unlikely. But it would be a fun experiment overall.

Yeah I'd love to see someone use a dISAppointment to attach a floppy card to a modernish PC and see how well it supports various drives, booting, DOS/Windows support, etc... wonder if anyone's talked about it on the main dISAppointment thread 🤔...

It didn't dISApoint (groan!) Looks like this site shows a TPM to SuperIO chip board:
http://rayer.g6.cz/hardware/lpc_sio.htm
Very cool... might be a solution if you have a compatible motherboard...

I dont need BIOS level access to the floppy drives in the retro sense. I just want to be able to download files on a modern PC write those files to a floppy disk when needed so I can move them over to a retro PC when needed.

I have an adaptec SCSI card that has a floppy controller on it but that is an ISA bus card. I was wondering if there is something similar for the PCI bus?
Or maybe a 5.25" SCSI floppy drive?

They did exist, pretty rare nowadays though ... https://www.recycledgoods.com/daynafile-df-se … l-floppy-drive/

giantclam wrote on 2023-09-28, 02:38:

They did exist, pretty rare nowadays though ... https://www.recycledgoods.com/daynafile-df-se … l-floppy-drive/

Yep and here is what happened in 1997: https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/relea … 97/NW092497.HTM
End of that sort of stuff.....

Horun wrote on 2023-09-28, 03:11:

giantclam wrote on 2023-09-28, 02:38:

They did exist, pretty rare nowadays though ... https://www.recycledgoods.com/daynafile-df-se … l-floppy-drive/

Yep and here is what happened in 1997: https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/relea … 97/NW092497.HTM
End of that sort of stuff.....

Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh... yep yep ... I've only ever seen 1 IRL back in the 90's .... at a school, in the time Apples were standard issue for state schools (and all had db25 scsi out the back) ...there was an urban rumor buzzing the usenet wire back then, that intel did this sort of stuff in retaliation for the AIM/PowerPC direction Apple took, instead of opting for an intel pentium solution...but certainly as you observe, it really was 'the end' for this stuff ; got bought and buried very deep, never to be seen again ...(<-- inaccurate, some of it found a home in industrial applications) .. back in the heydays of the CPU & OS 'wars' ... and even now I hold a hunch Apple never really forgave them, striking out with their own ARM based constructs ; maybe the wars never stopped 😎