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ISA card with Floppy controller bypassing internal BIOS

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First post, by Choux69

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Hi. I have an old exotic PC with Intel 80286 and ultra basic BIOS that supposedly supports floppy drives (360ko up to 1.4Mb) and HDDs. This PC also has 8-bit ISA connectors. It looks that the internal floppy drive controller has some issues. While I can mount and boot on an IDE HDD under DOS, there is no way I can get any floppy detected whatever BIOS settings and floppy jumpers position / floppy models.
So I am thinking about installing an 8-bit ISA card that has a floppy controller, could bypass the internal BIOS and manage the floppy by itself. I heard there were some ISA I/O or SCSI card with BIOS.
Do such cards exist? If yes, what would be good models? Thanks

Reply 1 of 7, by Horun

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Yes Floppy cards with BIOS do exist, have one in my Turbo XT for support of HD floppy drives. Cannot remember the brand but know the old ones are getting rare and very expensive (compared to other controllers)...
added: Here is a newer version that might work: https://monotech.fwscart.com/DeluxeFloppy_8bi … 4_19478745.aspx
Can you disable the onboard floppy controller ? and... Can you post a picture of your motherboard ? Most 286 have some 16 bit ISA slots..

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 7, by Choux69

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Here is a picture. There are 4 long ISA connectors and 1 shorter at the top of the image
The long would look like 16 bit ISA right? What's make me confused is that the rare article that I find about this Goupil G5 286 mentions only ISA 8 bits in the specs

https://mega.nz/file/RIB0kLiS#4dgV_AoWQ5fTGiV … eWQnG3LzupenrvM

Reply 3 of 7, by Horun

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Those should be 16bit ISA slots....found this: https://www.system-cfg.com/detail.php?ident=444
"Manufacturer: Society of Microcomputing and Telecom Company (Créteil, France) AKA - S.M.T.
Release date: 1987
Reference: Goupil G5 286
Processor: i80286 at 8 MHz
Memory: 1024 KB RAM
ROM??? KB
Interfaces: 4 x 16-bit ISA slots, 1 8-bit ISA slot
Special feature: In the same aluminum profile case, the G5 range extends from the 8086 at 8 MHz with MDA display to the 386SX at 20 MHz in VGA.
Good to know: access to the BIOS is done by holding down the S key until a beep is heard."

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 4 of 7, by Choux69

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Great find! Thanks a lot for the support!

Reply 5 of 7, by dionb

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Hang on... is the BIOS actually the problem? If the onboard floppy controller is flakey, you can use an add-in controller with the system BIOS. So long as you disable the onboard controller and the add-in controller uses default resource locations, BIOS won't even know it's a different controller.

Reply 6 of 7, by Choux69

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Dionb, sorry for the late answer. Bios does not allow me to disable the floppy controller (unless setting the floppies at 'none' means disabling the controller..). There may bit a jumper on the MB to use but I don't know which one...

Reply 7 of 7, by maxtherabbit

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If you cannot logically disable the dead floppy controller on the motherboard, your choices are either to physically remove it (desolder) or not have a working floppy drive unfortunately

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