The BIOS of my Gigabyte 8IPE775P allows 2 x 5¼", but I don't have any 5¼" to confirm this works.

The system uses the Intel 82865PE MCH + 82801EB (ICH5) and I have an Intel Pentium 4 640 (Prescott 2M) CPU

I'm not sure if it's only my observation, but I noticed that around the Pentium 4 era, the floppy connector on the boards started to have a missing pin (number 6 IIRC). Around the same time, short floppy cables with only one connector (the one for A:) started appearing, those cables had only a single 3.5" connector, no 5.25 connector and had the same pin 6 (?) filled with plastic, so that they could not be used in older motherboards which had all the pins in their connector. With this in mind, I'd say the single floppy trend started around the Pentium 4 era.

red-ray wrote on 2020-03-14, 15:21:

The BIOS of my Gigabyte 8IPE775P allows 2 x 5¼", but I don't have any 5¼" to confirm this works.

The system uses the Intel 82865PE MCH + 82801EB (ICH5) and I have an Intel Pentium 4 640 (Prescott 2M) CPU

I also have some boards based on i865 and i875 chipsets (MSI Neo2, Giga-8ik1100, etc) and they support two FDD including 1.2Mb. The Asus p5p800 se and Asus P5NSLI only supports one FDD iirc.

Horun wrote on 2020-03-14, 16:51:

red-ray wrote on 2020-03-14, 15:21:

The BIOS of my Gigabyte 8IPE775P allows 2 x 5¼", but I don't have any 5¼" to confirm this works.

The system uses the Intel 82865PE MCH + 82801EB (ICH5) and I have an Intel Pentium 4 640 (Prescott 2M) CPU

I also have some boards based on i865 and i875 chipsets (MSI Neo2, Giga-8ik1100, etc) and they support two FDD including 1.2Mb. The Asus p5p800 se and Asus P5NSLI only supports one FDD iirc.

Right, i865 is (just) new enough to consider desktop use, particularly one with Conroe-support.

But..

Just checked the BIOS of the obvious candidate - Asrock's ConRoe865PE - and... only one FDD :'(

Still, gives me hope and gets me digging deeper 😀

dionb wrote on 2020-03-14, 14:26:

My retro setup consists of a number of old machines and a modern-ish support rig that I use to download drivers, images to flash & search for documentation and solutions. My goal is for it to also have as many kinds of different drives to allow it to read old media, back up the contents and copy onto CF cards & USB sticks for Gotek. SCSI, PATA and SATA are all doing what I want, I have ZIP and DVDRW, there are firewire ports too. And 3.5" floppy via USB is gret too. Everything was looking fine until I tried to hook up two 5.25" FDDs (HD and DD). Nope. The nForce3 chipset I'm using and/or the Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA only allows one FDD. So I grabbed another AM2 board I had that would support the same Phenom II X4: nope, MCP6PB M2+ doesn't let me do it either (no surprise as it's a newer nVidia chipset than on the AM2NF3. Then grabbed an HP OEM Intel Q45 board I had with some or other Qxxxx CPU on it. Same story, A: only.

Now, those boards are the oldest 'new' systems I have, next one down is an ECS P6S5A-T that definitely can do dual floppy. Arguably it's the fastest P3 board/system out there, but no way is its P3-1400S suitable for generic web browsing today.

So... what's the most recent chipset/board with dual floppy support? Or is there some simple-ish solution to get two 5.25" drives running on a newer system I've somehow failed to notice?

Hi I don't know what the most recent motherboard with a floppy connector is.
But I used for quite a long time an AM2+ mainboard, if I remember correctly it was the Asus M4A78 Pro. It supported only DDR2 RAM (that's a bit of a disadvantage now), but it supported the Amd Phenom II X6 cpus, quite old, but still perfectly fine to run Windows 10 x64 for example.

EDIT: OK, but I never tested 5.25" Floppy drives on it. Only had a single 3.5" drive connected.
And it seems it also supported one drive only, so ignore my posting, ooops

dionb wrote on 2020-03-14, 17:15:

Right, i865 is (just) new enough to consider desktop use, particularly one with Conroe-support. […]
Show full quote

Right, i865 is (just) new enough to consider desktop use, particularly one with Conroe-support.

But..

Just checked the BIOS of the obvious candidate - Asrock's ConRoe865PE - and... only one FDD :'(

Still, gives me hope and gets me digging deeper 😀

Just checked my MSI P6NSLI (nForce 650i chipset), only supports 1 FDD, like the Asus P5NSLI (nForce 570). So it appears that most Nvidia based s775 only support one in the BIOS (but am sure they support 2 by chipset 🙁 ).

Ugh. Asrock has tons of boards that should in theory support two FDDs, but hasn't implemented them in BIOS (and possibly not in hw either).

Found this vcfed thread of someone asking the same question 4 years back, not very hopeful:
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?509 … l-floppy-drives

Hopeful, but with new issues:
http://www.motherboards.org/forums/viewtopic. … 124358&start=10
This one actually lists a board I could use, the Intel DQ67OW. Only problem: just one PCI slot, and no PATA... not completely impossible, but I'd need PCIe PATA and SCSI adapters here. Also, can't find 100% positive confirmation it does actually implement dual floppy in BIOS, even if the physical lines are present...

Found this BIOS manual for the DQ67OW but is missing the screens of floppy setup.....
Also: Intel 41G board supports one floppy, the G33 supports one floppy.

I got a DQ670W and just tested. No support for a 5.25" drive sadly. Even with the option for a FDD enabled in the BIOS Win10 doesn't see my 5.25" drive (which is working in other machines)

It's not entirely a surprise given the documentation :
- https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/ … roductGuide.pdf > page 50 we see a 3.5" floppy
- https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/ … hprodspec02.pdf > page 71 it's stated that only 1.44MB floppy are deemed acceptable as media type for BIOS recovery

The chipset (a Nuvoton* W83677HG-i Super I/O) supports 5.25" drive though, so maybe a custom BIOS can enable such support on this motherboard: https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/N … 27HF,F,HG,G.pdf (see page 95)

If someone know how to mod/unlock BIOSes it could be a good idea to try it.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-03-14, 17:24:

Hi I don't know what the most recent motherboard with a floppy connector is. But I used for quite a long time an AM2+ mainboard, […]
Show full quote

Hi I don't know what the most recent motherboard with a floppy connector is.
But I used for quite a long time an AM2+ mainboard, if I remember correctly it was the Asus M4A78 Pro. It supported only DDR2 RAM (that's a bit of a disadvantage now), but it supported the Amd Phenom II X6 cpus, quite old, but still perfectly fine to run Windows 10 x64 for example.

EDIT: OK, but I never tested 5.25" Floppy drives on it. Only had a single 3.5" drive connected.
And it seems it also supported one drive only, so ignore my posting, ooops

I have an ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 with an FX-8350. I believe this is the last non-industrial board on the planet with a floppy controller.
It supports 5.25" drives, but unfortunately is also single drive only.
I did an experiment to see whether this is just a BIOS limitation. I booted Linux and loaded the floppy module with the parameter floppy=1,2,cmos which tells the driver to override the BIOS and that there is a B: drive which in this case is 5.25" 1.2MB.
It did not work. When I tried to read from the drive, it did not immediately fail. However the drive's light did not come on and it did not spin. So there is something not connected between the floppy controller and the onboard connector. Or, the controller just doesn't support a second drive in the first place. After about 5 seconds it came back with the same error as if there were no disk in the drive.

I don't think it has to do with pin 6. I looked it up and it is marked as reserved.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:55:

I don't think it has to do with pin 6. I looked it up and it is marked as reserved.

What is special about the pin #6 ?
The pins #12 and #16 are more important for the secondary floppy.

P.S.
SuperIO ITE IT8712 still has dedicated pins for the secondary floppy and they are usually connected to a FDD-connector.
But ITE IT8716 IT8718 have the combined pins which are usually programmed and used for something else.
Winbond W83627EHF/EHG/EF/EG only supports “one” floppy disk drive.

Roman555 wrote on 2020-06-18, 09:02:

What is special about the pin #6 ? The pins #12 and #16 are more important for the secondary floppy. […]
Show full quote

What is special about the pin #6 ?
The pins #12 and #16 are more important for the secondary floppy.

P.S.
SuperIO ITE IT8712 still has dedicated pins for the secondary floppy and they are usually connected to a FDD-connector.
But ITE IT8716 IT8718 have the combined pins which are usually programmed and used for something else.
Winbond W83627EHF/EHG/EF/EG only supports “one” floppy disk drive.

Someone noted above that "newer" floppy cables have pin 6 blocked off as a key pin, and "newer" motherboards have that missing. There was thought that this happened around the same time as secondary floppy support disappeared.

I get curious about the question. I don't know why because I even haven't got any 5.25" FDD 😀
And finally (although only virtually - obviously I haven't got this motherboard too) I found a VIA based motherboard that can support two floppy drives and CPU powerful enough for Internet.
K8M890M-M (V1.0A) . The hardware revision V2.0 doesn't have "floppy B" on the BIOS screenshot in the manual.
Just as example.

I just checked my GME965 / ICH8M industrial board and it lets me select pretty much everything :3
the floppy is connected to a Winbond W83627DHG super I/O controller though, so I guess that's not really dependent on the chipset.

BIOS support is not 100% indicative of the board physically being capable of using the second drive

The only way to know for sure is to hook one up and try using it

will do that, but seeing that it actually uses a legacy super I/O chip and the floppy is not connected to the chipset directly I don't see why it wouldn't support them, also lets me select both as boot device.

imi wrote on 2020-06-19, 22:46:

will do that, but seeing that it actually uses a legacy super I/O chip and the floppy is not connected to the chipset directly I don't see why it wouldn't support them, also lets me select both as boot device.

In your case I'd be inclined to agree. Just pointing it out because I was as surprised as anyone when my Tyan Tiger 100 dual slot 1 BX board gave me the option for 2 FDD in BIOS but didn't actually have pins connected for the second drive