Pretty sure they dropped floppy support around the time of dropping agp - iirc 2016

myne wrote on 2025-12-04, 12:35:

Pretty sure they dropped floppy support around the time of dropping agp - iirc 2016

I second this.

Recently I went through this - our "modern" HP computer is about that era and it fairly recently occurred to me it also has a floppy connector so I figured I could use it to connect one.

The first hurtle was that it was permanently disabled in bios, it would turn itself off even after selected as active- turns out this was an HP bug, they figured nobody would be removing the systems HP media bay and replacing it with a floppy, so they disabled the option in bios - rolling it back to a previous version fixed that, BUT....

Even after fixing that, and actually being able to boot from a floppy in to msdos on the system, I still could not get it to work under windows 10. Try as I might, I could only get the floppy controller to show up in the device manager, however not the drive itself, I spent several days trying to sort this out to no avail.

The consensus online was that this is indeed a windows problem, with reports of people's drives working fine under windows 7 but dissapearing under windows 10

Don't know for a floppy drive connected to motherboard in Windows 10. But a floppy drive with a converter to USB (cheaply available on Ali etc) works without problem. Even with Windows 11. Could even boot from it. 😀 So maybe that would be a workaround.

Yoghoo wrote on 2025-12-04, 14:15:

Don't know for a floppy drive connected to motherboard in Windows 10. But a floppy drive with a converter to USB (cheaply available on Ali etc) works without problem. Even with Windows 11. Could even boot from it. 😀 So maybe that would be a workaround.

I agree, my USB-FDD NEC UF0002 still works in Windows 11.

Moreover, modern mobos (AM4) support booting from USB-FDD in EFI mode.

Dropping floppy disk drive support from Win10 or 11 is a myth.
I had it working on Win11 when it first launched. The installation was an upgrade from Win10.. and both supported the floppy drive natively (not through USB).
Then I did another clean install of Win11, and then... the floppy drive disappeared. And I think I know why.. It's MBR vs. GPT...

Prior to the second install, my HDD was MBR formatted.. then for the second install I added an M.2 NVMe drive formatted as GPT and I had to use Clover for handling the boot as the motherboard doesn't natively support booting from NVMe drives. (my guess it's Windows logic rather than Clover that inhibits the native floppy drive from detection in the OS).

Now, let me tell you my experience with the floppy drive when it was visible under Win10/Win11.. It was terrible! Windows keeps poking its long nose on the floppy drive for no reason even when there is no disk inside.. obviously it's that crap telemetry they have running all the time (I didn't know it was that back then).. Anyways, the end result was floppy drive empty seek noise every few seconds.. to the point I wanted to disable the device but didn't find a way to do it via device manager..

So yeah... if you really want to try it, go back to a fresh install with MBR, and see if you can control those useless accesses.

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-12-04, 15:27:

Dropping floppy disk drive support from Win10 or 11 is a myth. I had it working on Win11 when it first launched. The installatio […]
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Dropping floppy disk drive support from Win10 or 11 is a myth.
I had it working on Win11 when it first launched. The installation was an upgrade from Win10.. and both supported the floppy drive natively (not through USB).
Then I did another clean install of Win11, and then... the floppy drive disappeared. And I think I know why.. It's MBR vs. GPT...

Prior to the second install, my HDD was MBR formatted.. then for the second install I added an M.2 NVMe drive formatted as GPT and I had to use Clover for handling the boot as the motherboard doesn't natively support booting from NVMe drives. (my guess it's Windows logic rather than Clover that inhibits the native floppy drive from detection in the OS).

Now, let me tell you my experience with the floppy drive when it was visible under Win10/Win11.. It was terrible! Windows keeps poking its long nose on the floppy drive for no reason even when there is no disk inside.. obviously it's that crap telemetry they have running all the time (I didn't know it was that back then).. Anyways, the end result was floppy drive empty seek noise every few seconds.. to the point I wanted to disable the device but didn't find a way to do it via device manager..

So yeah... if you really want to try it, go back to a fresh install with MBR, and see if you can control those useless accesses.

I'm not sold on it being just MBR related. My install is MBR. Granted the floppy controller was disabled when windows initially got installed, however this should make no difference since after sorting that and enabling it it successfully gets detected and shows up in the device manager - just the actual drive doesn't. I tried several brands of drives and some straight cables (you never know if OEM could have required a twist or straight one for drive A) - nothing.

I don't doubt your claim that it working in win10/11 could be more of a hassle then a benefit and have given up on pursuing it anyway (I will probably go the USB route if anything), however I remain perplexed as to why that is, since it should just work if the controller gets detected (you would think anyway)

I have unistal and reinstall the device and now is working perfectly... boh???

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-12-04, 15:27:

Now, let me tell you my experience with the floppy drive when it was visible under Win10/Win11.. It was terrible! Windows keeps poking its long nose on the floppy drive for no reason even when there is no disk inside.. obviously it's that crap telemetry they have running all the time (I didn't know it was that back then).. Anyways, the end result was floppy drive empty seek noise every few seconds.. to the point I wanted to disable the device but didn't find a way to do it via device manager.

I had exactly this problem on windows 7 - the drive grunting every few seconds without a disk in. Ended up removing the drive.