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Question about infamous CMD 640 IDE Controller

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First post, by NTG2001

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I recently picked up a system with a CMD PCI0640B on board. I've already accepted that using it as an IDE controller in not wise especially since I'll be running DOS and not a newer OS like Linux that "fixed" its issues. However, this controller also acts as a floppy controller, and it too falls issue to one of the most baffling oversights I've ever seen where it can have conflicts with the IDE portion if they're being used at the same time. (Did they have zero QA testing or something?)

My question is this: Is it still okay to use it's floppy controller if I'm using a different IDE controller (or even SCSI)? Are there any other issues with it's floppy controller or is it just when being used with the faulty IDE controller that issues arise?

Reply 1 of 2, by darry

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AFAICR, the CMD640 is a clusterf*** of monumental proportions.

This might provide some insight : [IDE controller] CMD640/PCI0640B data corruption bug

If I had one, I would probably heatgun or dremel it off, but that might be the Shiraz talking. 😉

Reply 2 of 2, by NTG2001

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Hmm, maybe it's best to avoid it altogether. The motherboard has a VLSI VL82C594/596 chipset. Don't know much about it, but maybe the chipset itself has floppy support built in and it's using that? The BIOS has an option to enable or disable primary and secondary IDE controllers which kind of implies it has an IDE controller integrated in the chipset, and thus likely a floppy as well. This could also just be referring to the primary and secondary IDE channels and not actually two separate controllers.

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