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Setting up 2 floppy drives on Intel SE440BX-2

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First post, by matan2001

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I'm planning on setting up a somewhat retro computer with the Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard I found knocking about in my house, but I've spotted an issue - the floppy controller on this particular mobo does not support 2 floppy drives at once (I wanted to put 3.5 and 5.25 drives)...

Are there any workarounds for this? I've read that ISA floppy controller cards can be used instead of the built-in one but this is my first build so I'm not feeling so confident...
(specifically, I'm wondering if the Adaptec AHA-1542C has 2 drive support since someone is selling it locally and quite cheaply)

Reply 1 of 4, by Errius

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I have a AHA-1542CP running two floppy drives in one of my machines. I don't know the difference between the AHA-1542CP and AHA-1542C.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 3 of 4, by Errius

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Yes, but you will need to disable the integrated floppy controller in the motherboard BIOS. Check that there is an option to do this before spending any money. There will probably also be resource conflicts between the Adaptec card and other devices (sound card etc.) which you will have to sort out.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 4 of 4, by chinny22

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As your just starting out, thought I'd just mention You will probably rarely use the 5.25 once your up and running especially with modern alternatives like large HDD's networks, even CD's, and you could always copy anything on any disks you have onto something more convent.

Of course if its simply because you WANT to have both drives then that's totally understandable, I'd just run the rest of the system up first and see if you really want it or not.

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