bing wrote on 2023-06-21, 15:43:

Hi, […]
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Hi,

I own a Packard Bell with a Gigabyte GA-8I945PM-RH motherboard

I could choose two floppy units, but only 3.5" ones (720, 1.44 and 2,88), but i want to install a 5.25 unit to use it in Windows XP.

Is there any way to bypass BIOS settings?
Is there any way to 'tweak' BIOS to allow 5.25" floppy? (Award)

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Not sure if you can do this, but if the WinXP driver bypasses BIOS, it would work. For example, the DOSFDRV.SYS driver for DOS doesn't care what BIOS supports as it directly uses the floppy controller. Maybe the WinXP driver also bypasses BIOS, but I can't say one way or another.

Thanks for your thoughts.
I'm afraid XP couldn't do that.
But if anyone knows...
This is my Packard Bell 'testing' PC, I have a 3,5" floppy, ZIP, DVD writer, multicard reader, TV in-out,... It would be awesome if I could make work this shinny 5,25 floppy drive in it.

If the BIOS doesn't expose it, chances are the built-in IO chip doesn't support it. Had the board supported ISA slot, I would've suggested to disable the on-board FDD controller and install an IO card. But I think this is as far as that particular mobo can go.

Thanks for the help. I'll give it a try.

eesz34 wrote on 2023-06-21, 16:27:

bing wrote on 2023-06-21, 15:43:

Hi, […]
Show full quote

Hi,

I own a Packard Bell with a Gigabyte GA-8I945PM-RH motherboard

I could choose two floppy units, but only 3.5" ones (720, 1.44 and 2,88), but i want to install a 5.25 unit to use it in Windows XP.

Is there any way to bypass BIOS settings?
Is there any way to 'tweak' BIOS to allow 5.25" floppy? (Award)

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Not sure if you can do this, but if the WinXP driver bypasses BIOS, it would work. For example, the DOSFDRV.SYS driver for DOS doesn't care what BIOS supports as it directly uses the floppy controller. Maybe the WinXP driver also bypasses BIOS, but I can't say one way or another.

This is correct, XP (all versions of NT really) does in fact bypass the BIOS for floppy access. The problem lies in that it *does* use the BIOS to enumerate the floppy drives in the system on bootup, and doesn't provide a user definable override. It could be possible to force different behavior but that would require a bit of OS hacking

NT 3.1 WS was the only NT version that natively you could install off a NT 3.1 1.2mb boot disk and the NT 3.1 cdrom (the CDROM had to be off a scsi controller iirc).
NT 3.5x WS explicitly states that if only a 5.25" floppy then you must do a Network install (from the manual)....
so yeah all NT from 3.5x up there was no real 1.2MB support, XP is NT5.