Baoran wrote on 2020-11-19, 04:42:
cyclone3d wrote on 2020-11-19, 04:13:
Well, as long as it supports 5.25" drives, you can always use a USB 3.5" drive in Windows if it doesn't support dual floppies in the BIOS.
I don't like usb floppy drives. I once bought one from ebay and it does not work and it was not worth returning because it was cheap and the seller was demanding a proof that it does not work and I thought that would be more trouble than it is worth. Is the need for dual floppy drives the reason why I would not be able to build a windows XP system like that?
No, there are board that support dual floppy drives that would definitely work with XP. I just don't know where the cutoff was. If I remember correctly, some boards have chipsets that support dual floppies but the BIOS only supports a single floppy.
That being said, I have a bunch of different USB floppy drives. My favorite was a 2x speed drive that I used for a few years before it recently flaked out on me. Going to see if I can get it going again. If not, I'll order another one.
The others I have are all Dell branded. One is a USB only drive and then the others I have are ones I salvaged from when we got rid of old Dell laptops at work. The old floppy modules also support being used over USB which is really cool.
USB floppy drives are finicky in Windows 10 as in you have to take certain steps to get them to read and to format them but they do still work.
XP should have no problems at all with a USB floppy drive.