Another problem with USB floppies is that they cannot do anything else but writing standard PC floppy disks. For example you cannot use it to write CPC disks using CPCDiskXP (or other non standard formats).

So what can you do when your motherboard doesn't have a proper floppy connector in order to add a floppy that will behave 100% as an internal? Not much I believe but I'd be interested to learn other solutions, if any.

I'll bet that in 20 years time or more, to get a downloaded file onto a 8086 retro rig, one will need to pass the file through at least several systems, going from most modern back in time from rig to rig, just because of the legacy stuff which support got discontinued as computer hardware evolved 🤣.

Asrock Z77 Extreme6

You won't find anything faster than that with a floppy controller onboard.
Pretty decent Z77 board too.

Thanks guys. The seller with the Biostar boards (two of them - he also supposedly had a neat little Foxconn LGA775 setup which would have done nicely too) never bothered to reply, so still looking.

I'll keep Asrock in mind, don't think i've ever had one of their boards before. I live on an island & selection is really limited ... for some reason decent stuff just isn't showing up on the used market, which is annoying. I was hoping there would be a big dump-off after the holidays but that hasn't materialized. Most people still seem to want $200 for a crappy HP / Dell OEM with a really low-end C2D.

The fastest board with a FDD connector is the ASrock Z77 extreme 6.. So faster then this you arent going to find.

I guess the Intel P45 or 790FX / 890FX are the older lastest boards that will or might have both IDE and FDD controller onboard.

konc wrote:

Another problem with USB floppies is that they cannot do anything else but writing standard PC floppy disks. For example you cannot use it to write CPC disks using CPCDiskXP (or other non standard formats).

So what can you when your motherboard doesn't have a proper floppy connector in order to add a floppy that will behave 100% as an internal? Not much I believe but I'd be interested to learn other solutions, if any.

Very simple:

Use an LS120 drive with an IDE to SATA bridge.

I have an LS120 in my P233 DOS machine. I've actually had some compatibility problems with it before & I've never been able to get it to spit out a readable 720k disk (even though it supposedly should be able to.) It could just be my drive which is a little banged up though. Next time I pull it apart I'm replacing it with a standard FDD on the floppy bus.

Don't necessarily need the "fastest" thing I can get for the rig I'm trying to build, but I at least want it to be decent and not bottlenecked anywhere by cynical OEM-type cheaping out. Goals for this machine are: run a 64-bit OS, have multiple cores, have a better graphics card than the Intel HD4000 in my Macbook, and be faster than the dual-P3/1000 its replacing. And have a hardware floppy of course. 😉

What do you guys think of this dual-771 Xeon monster? I like the idea of it but it's a real beast - I worry about the board fitting in my "short" 4U rack case and making enough noise to wake the dead. Also only one 5V PCI slot would be annoying. Also it's about $40 more than I wanted to spend.

Kind of half joking but that seems like a lot of horsepower for cheap(ish.)

Biostar A780L3 - socket AM3, AMD 760G chipset, DDR3 up to 1600MHz (1833 OC), 4x SATA2, supports up to 125w phenom II X6 CPU, FDD + 1 channel IDE + 1x COM port header + 1x LPT port header. Too bad it doesn't support the FX CPU line. Haven't tried the parallel port on it, but the com port works fine, and so does the FDD controller.

Link: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduct … on.php?S_ID=460

xjas wrote:

What do you guys think of this dual-771 Xeon monster? I like the idea of it but it's a real beast - I worry about the board fitting in my "short" 4U rack case and making enough noise to wake the dead. Also only one 5V PCI slot would be annoying. Also it's about $40 more than I wanted to spend.

Kind of half joking but that seems like a lot of horsepower for cheap(ish.)

That is a good board if it will fit your case.

Server/Workstation boards have always been a way to get horsepower cheap if you shop smart.
When the server farms start upgrading, 100s of 1000s of server boards (& CPUs & RAM) get dumped on the market at the same time.
That makes them cheap. - Timing is everything though.
The prices don't always -stay- down and the farms don't all upgrade at the same time.
You basically have to check every few days to see if anything interesting has showed up.
By doing that I picked up several of these for $25 each w/both heatsinks included.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboar … 5400/X7DWN_.cfm

As to it fitting your case the specs are here.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboar … 5000X/X7DAE.cfm
Shows it's the EATX form factor with dimensions (12" x 13.05")(30.5cm x 33.2cm)

There are also dual skt 771 boards in the ATX from factor but you have to pay attention to the CPU location.
Despite being ATX dimensions they don't fit well in many ATX cases due to the CPU location blocking bays.
Also need a CPU backplate to mount the coolers.
Also most don't have sound and there may not be a dedicated video card slot.

With socket 771 the CPU coolers can cost more than the CPUs so you have keep looking and time that right too.
CPUs and RAM are usually cheap (compared to equivalent skt 775) if you shop.
Those two included CPU coolers would probably cost you $50-$70 if bought separately.

Here is that board's block diagram.
- PCI-X slots 2 and 3 can be used for 3.3v PCI-conventional cards without slowing anything else down.

.

Do you have a dev kit or went with the kickstarter for a retail one? Retail's hardware requirements are pretty steep.

Snayperskaya wrote:

Do you have a dev kit or went with the kickstarter for a retail one? Retail's hardware requirements are pretty steep.

I am at a loss as to who you are asking and what you are asking.

mockingbird wrote:

Very simple:

Use an LS120 drive...... .

I ~LOVE~ LS120 drives even though I only use them as floppy drives.
The motorized eject for floppies just tickles my "gadget geek" side pink.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

I ~LOVE~ LS120 drives even though I only use them as floppy drives. The motorized eject for floppies just tickles my "gadget gee […]
Show full quote

mockingbird wrote:

Very simple:

Use an LS120 drive...... .

I ~LOVE~ LS120 drives even though I only use them as floppy drives.
The motorized eject for floppies just tickles my "gadget geek" side pink.
.

He he... Grabbed one as soon as I saw it from a thrift shop a while ago. It was an external drive, so I have to track down a face plate for it if I'm gonna put it in my rig. Will they work properly with those generic IDE to SATA adapters? It's either that, or hooking it up to the CMD0680 which already has one channel occupied for the optical drives... CMD0680 seems to have the best optical support compared to JMicron and the likes.

PCBONEZ wrote:

Snayperskaya wrote:

Do you have a dev kit or went with the kickstarter for a retail one? Retail's hardware requirements are pretty steep.

I am at a loss as to who you are asking and what you are asking.

The OP.

https://www.oculus.com/en-us/rift/
(edited the link, old use made reference to just 2x USB 3.0, but it was annouced that is requires 3x 3.0 and 1x 2.0)

Minimum (recommended?) specs are a high-end i5 and a GTX 970, and a mobo capable of offering 3x USB 3.0. Most of the boards that match those requirements (especially the USB ports) are new, so I'm not sure if legacy support will be present on them.

Preety unsure anything based on old Core 2 microarchitecture will deliver the needed performance. I think the DKs requirements are lower, that's why I asked him.

I have a DK1. To be honest the published "minimum system requirements" are way over-blown. Any games machine can run one, it just depends what you want to do with it. I'm using it right now on my 2.5GHz Macbook with Intel HD4000 GPU; I think something with a proper standalone graphics card will make heaps more improvement than a faster CPU.

As usual I'm not really aiming at huge new-release "AAA" titles; I want to play around with what the hacker/indie/open source communities come up with for the Rift, and you don't usually need any massive horsepower for that.

@ Snayperskaya
Thanks for the clarification.

I see. What about a 1366? Pretty sure that are plenty cheap options around that deliver sizeable firepower when still having legacy support. I recall the Asus P6T having almost all desirable support, minus the parallel interface.

PCBONEZ wrote:

@ Snayperskaya
Thanks for the clarification.

NP. The whole community was a bit shaky when they announced those requirements. But since it is supposed to deliver high resolution (3k somethingx1080@60FPS) it is doable, I think. Better be sure the hardware will be OK when trhoughputting 15Gb/s+.

(15Gb/s and not 30, that's 3.1 G2)

You're going to need something a lot more powerful than a Core2 to drive an Oculus Rift. I say just build a separate box for writing floppies and other legacy tasks and call it a day.

I've *already* been using it on a Core2. It's fine.
The DK1 acts as a second monitor at 1280x800 and the head tracking stuff adds barely any more overhead than a USB joystick. Any machine that can run stuff at 1280x800 can handle a DK1.

Like I've said a billion times, I have no interest in big-budget, hardware-pig new releases (which won't run on the DK1 anyway as it's no longer supported by the Oculus SDK.) Spending multiple hundreds on this build for what I want to do with it would be silly.