AlessandroB wrote on 2025-09-11, 17:09:

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?

I haven't used a PCIe-to-IDE card, so I wouldn't be able to advise.

AlessandroB wrote on 2025-09-11, 11:38:

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.

You shouldn’t put disks in any drive if they have mold or for some reason serious dirt inside. You are only going to get drives destroyed that way.

Anyways, I’ve used USB floppy drive since like ages without any problems for exactly the use cases you listed, but I don’t insert junk discs into them. Greaseweazle is probably the right choice for you especially if you are serious about archiving and then you also probably want support for 5.25” drives also. Other USB-floppy adapters also exist and you can attach those to a regular drive. But I’d still get the greaseweazle because of the versatility.

As others mentioned, IDE can be achieved with a converter. I personally use an IDE to SATA converter to connect an IDE DVD drive with analog audio for DOS games. The BIOS has legacy IDE mode or the default AHCI.

The floppy connector is the real challenge IMO. Doubly-so if dual drive support is required.

The last build in my signature (HP Z400) is my daily Win11 workstation, and it happens also to be my fastest native DOS machine. My main line of work is 3D game programming, so lots of C++ compilation (hex-core 12-thread CPU, M.2 SSD) and heavy reliance on a decent 3D card for ray-tracing (RTX 2080Ti).
Of course it's not a thread-ripper, so not suitable for Unreal, but I don't use commercial engines.

To go DOS native, I just switch BIOS to IDE mode, and put a USB stick formatted to DOS 6.22. The BIOS boots from the USB as C drive, and I get access to A (floppy disk) and D (CD drive) with full sound blaster support and original OPL3.

The only caveat is no dual floppy drive. Even though I have both drives installed (5.25 and 3.5), I only can connect one at a time.. so I tend to batch my floppy disk work as 3.5" disk batches and 5.25" disk batches.

In DOS native mode, compatibility is really high. Doom and Duke3D are butter smooth. And SetMul L1D will bring down speed to 386 levels.. so some speed-sensitive games can also work.

I also have SATA drives that are disabled in BIOS by default, but if enabled, one has Win98 SE on it, and the other has WinXP. Both also work great but I rarely use them honestly.

What about those hp z8xx workstations? Floppy seems to work:

HP Z800 Time machine build

and some people seem to get win 11 running ?
(and should be faster than a z400 ?!)

Dual floppy drive is not a reuirement. The requirements are floppy drive and ide must wotk, even with a exhotic image/emulation software and a full range of port, serial, scsi, parallel, ps/2, firewire, usb…

Aui wrote on 2025-09-12, 09:31:

What about those hp z8xx workstations? Floppy seems to work: […]
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What about those hp z8xx workstations? Floppy seems to work:

HP Z800 Time machine build

and some people seem to get win 11 running ?
(and should be faster than a z400 ?!)

Yeah that was me as well 😅 The Z800 indeed can do all the retro stuff that the Z400 can (it has athe same BIOS almost). I ended up downgrading back to Z400 because Z800 was very noisy and produced heat like no tomorrow. It had dedicated fans on top of the memory modules, and it requires a stronger fan for the faster dual Xeons. This extra powerful fan is hard to find as OEM for a good price. If you don't install it, the machine will complain on each boot.. you can trick the mobo to believe you have the right fan installed.. but from the amount of heat I saw when using the system, I's say they're not joking.

Strangely, its case design is less roomy than the Z400. Fitting a 5.25" floppy drive in it was very difficult but worked in the end. It leaves not enough clearance for a deep drive like the typical 5.25" floppy drive.

Yes, so Im in exactly the same boat. I had a z820 and could not bear the noice. It was like some autum leaf blower. But a few weeks ago I found a z400 at a thrift store (10 bucks) with watercooling! It does not have a floppy drive yet, but I intend to put one in. If the OP can get such a machine for a good price, I recommend it. These machines seem to be very well build and probably as close as you ever get to a multiepoch PC.