As you suspect, floppy is the limitation, because you can't add a "native" ISA bus floppy controller via a PCIe card.

There are a few later ASRocks like N68-GS4 USB3 FX, and 980DE3-U3S3. You have to be careful with revision number to ensure it has floppy. Neither of these have UEFI so Windows 11 without hacks is impossible even without the CPU/TPM limitations.

I'm not personally sure how far you can go on the Intel side, but suspect it's Sandy/Ivy Bridge, and perhaps you would be more likely to have UEFI there.

Even if you got it working somehow, something in the works is x86_64 v1, v2, v3, and v4. v2 goes back pretty far, but I suspect when Windows (and bleeding edge Linux distros like Fedora) bump to v3, it's going to be like the SSE2 situation with later Windows XP updates.

Some quick searching on Retroweb lists a number of LGA1156 motherboards with both IDE and FDD connectors.

They also list four LGA1155 motherboards that have an IDE connector, but don't have FDD connectors.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-10, 18:04:

Some quick searching on Retroweb lists a number of LGA1156 motherboards with both IDE and FDD connectors.

They also list four LGA1155 motherboards that have an IDE connector, but don't have FDD connectors.

They won't have TPM 2.0 though, so are just as unlikely to run Windows 11 as OP's current system.

I'd say you have three choices here:
- stick with current hardware, purchase W10 extended support
- stick with current hardware, run Linux on it instead (no TPM 2.0 requirement for current versions)
- upgrade to newer hardware, use USB floppy & IDE adapters instead of native.

dionb wrote on 2025-09-10, 18:27:

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-10, 18:04:

Some quick searching on Retroweb lists a number of LGA1156 motherboards with both IDE and FDD connectors.

They also list four LGA1155 motherboards that have an IDE connector, but don't have FDD connectors.

They won't have TPM 2.0 though, so are just as unlikely to run Windows 11 as OP's current system.

Oh of course. I was more curious about when things like FDD and IDE controllers were getting dropped from motherboards.

Even looking at industrial board options, it seems those features were getting dropped around the same time.

Ok then let's focus on two alternatives:

1) a system that has floppy disk and IDE and is compatible with win11 (if it exists)

2) a system that has floppy disk and IDE and is compatible with Windows 10 (nit win11) but is much faster than my current one

AlessandroB wrote on 2025-09-10, 20:18:

Ok then let's focus on two alternatives:

1) a system that has floppy disk and IDE and is compatible with win11 (if it exists)

Again, use USB floppy and IDE adapter and this works fine. My Ryzen runs Win11 and works fine with an IBM USB floppy and some old generic USB IDE thing.

2) a system that has floppy disk and IDE and is compatible with Windows 10 (nit win11) but is much faster than my current one

Take a look at Shponglefan's suggestions. They're still well over a decade old at this point, but will be noticeably faster than an Athlon X2 (or even a Phenom X4 on the same board). Still, it doesn't solve the main issue...

What's wrong with the Linux suggestion? Linux is great with I/O and it's not as if this sounds like your MS Office, Adobe or main game PC.

I understand wanting to keep USB out of the equation. There are PCIe cards with IDE interfaces on them, so set that aside.

My experience has long been that USB floppy drives work when the disk is 100% perfect, and quickly go awry when it is not. However, perhaps Greaseweazle is a better long term solution than trying to stick to motherboards with onboard floppy (I have the 980DE3-U3S3 though). There are also USB adapters to let you hook an internal floppy drive up to USB, if you don't want to use an external drive.

I think the question that needs to be answered is what is the real goal here.

Is it to just push the limits of having older storage interfaces (IDE, FDD) on more modern hardware? Or is the goal to be able to manage legacy storage devices from a modern PC?

If the goal is the latter then I would just look to adapters like the Greaseweazle for floppy disks and USB-to-IDE for hard drives.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-09-10, 20:58:

I understand wanting to keep USB out of the equation. There are PCIe cards with IDE interfaces on them, so set that aside.

My experience has long been that USB floppy drives work when the disk is 100% perfect, and quickly go awry when it is not. However, perhaps Greaseweazle is a better long term solution than trying to stick to motherboards with onboard floppy (I have the 980DE3-U3S3 though). There are also USB adapters to let you hook an internal floppy drive up to USB, if you don't want to use an external drive.

If I'm not mistaken 7 to 900 series do not support FDD via SB, but have an external chip to do that (added by manufacturer).
And support only 1 FDD IIRC, not a dual 3.5 + 5.25 (which is handy for floppy imaging).

I've been there and fastest cpu/ram + native FDD/IDE/COM/LPT + SCSI card, isn't easy to achieve.

Of the 3 usb fdd units I have, only internal could read difficult disks.
I don't use them that much, but are 1st test to avoid using another machine. I'm lazy when possible 😀
I use https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-MA785 … -UD3H-rev-10#ov and it works well but needs connectors as everything has headers (lpt, com)

My 2 cents.

I use an AM3+ Board for broadband testing which has floppy Port. But be aware that most modern BIOSes only support one floppy. For a Build with two Floppies you will propably Stuck at So939 or 775 for consumer boards.

AncapDude wrote on 2025-09-10, 23:25:

I use an AM3+ Board for broadband testing which has floppy Port. But be aware that most modern BIOSes only support one floppy. For a Build with two Floppies you will propably Stuck at So939 or 775 for consumer boards.

If it were just the BIOS, you could get around it through Linux; I believe the later Super I/Os multiplexed the pins needed for a second floppy drive

I just installed W10 to a temporary drive on my M3A78-M (for testing) and have noticed something absolutely as ugly as it sounds (literally). The floppy drive aggressively checks/reads whenever a USB device is installed/removed. It made a whole ruckus during the install, too. After I connected internet, it sits there, slapping the drive around every couple of minutes now. Must phone home my floppy drive. Reformatting this when I'm done, 🤣 W10 is very slow on this compared to XP

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-09-10, 21:27:

I think the question that needs to be answered is what is the real goal here.

Is it to just push the limits of having older storage interfaces (IDE, FDD) on more modern hardware? Or is the goal to be able to manage legacy storage devices from a modern PC?

If the goal is the latter then I would just look to adapters like the Greaseweazle for floppy disks and USB-to-IDE for hard drives.

I agree. Also, if you only need 1.44MB/720kB floppy, you can go and purchase USB floppy drive that supports both formats. They are still easy to find. And if you only need 1.44MB, you can still get new ones.

To me this seems quite a hassle for a problem that is relatively easily solved. With greaseweazle you can connect 5.25 drives and it can also read/write formats for other systems.

I have ACER B75H2-AM motherboard (s.1155) with i5 3470s which has working floppy connector. But I don't think it natively supports Windows 11.
Anyway it's 3rd generation Core motherboard...

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2025-09-11, 05:19:

[...]

I agree. Also, if you only need 1.44MB/720kB floppy, you can go and purchase USB floppy drive that supports both formats. They are still easy to find. And if you only need 1.44MB, you can still get new ones.

And if you needed anything else, it wouldn't have been supported on last-gen floppy systems like that AM3 board anyway. They only did 1.44MB 3.5" drives.

To me this seems quite a hassle for a problem that is relatively easily solved. With greaseweazle you can connect 5.25 drives and it can also read/write formats for other systems.

That's the serious option of course. Question is whether OP needs anything over and above the basic 1.44MB PC format.

My requests to have everything native were because from times to restore, read, write images, use some diagnostic software having everything integrated natively I noticed that it worked better, especially the floppies. I had USB floppies but in addition to reading less than the old ones, as soon as they find a disk that dirty the heads they are to be thrown away and are unopenable, while in the old drives you can clean the heads and in any case I have a box full of spare parts.

I'd look at just getting a Greaseweazle for floppies then. You can then use old floppy drives with modern PCs and won't be restricted to older motherboards.

OK, I'll consider these two solutions, even though I had some problems with a PCIe-IDE card I bought on Amazon. Which one would you recommend? Are there any better performing chips?

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-09-11, 02:46:

The floppy drive aggressively checks/reads whenever a USB device is installed/removed. It made a whole ruckus during the install, too.

As seen here, just disable/enable the floppy drive on demand in Device Manager. And, to make it easier, create a small .bat file that does the job, then just run it from a shortcut on the desktop.

1:TurnOff
2PNPUTIL /disable-device "USBSTOR\SFLOPPY&VEN_TEAC&PROD_USB_UF000X&REV_0.00\aaaaaaaaaaaa"
3POWERSHELL (New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell).Popup("""Floppy Disk Drive turned OFF""",4,"""Floppy Disk Drive""",0x10)
4goto :Bye
5
6:TurnOn
7PNPUTIL /enable-device "USBSTOR\SFLOPPY&VEN_TEAC&PROD_USB_UF000X&REV_0.00\aaaaaaaaaaaa"
8POWERSHELL (New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell).Popup("""Floppy Disk Drive turned ON""",4,"""Floppy Disk Drive""",0x30)
9
10:Bye
11if "%2"=="on" DEVMGMT.MSC
12exit