JimH866 :
Hi Garf, I don't have an answer and was also looking for a PCI floppy controller. I normally keep my thoughts to myself but I can't stand it anymore. You more ons (spelled incorrectly on purpose) are just that. I see your irrelevent replies everywhere. Keep your comments to yourself. Don't ask why someone wants to do something. It's irrelevent. Don't make irrelevent suggestions or criticize someone's decisions because it's not your business. Stop pretending you're God and judging others. All you do is waste valuable Internet space (bandwidth, etc.) with your useless innuendo. If you don't know the answer just SHUTUP! Don't try to create a forum for your useless self because you're a loser and will always be that way since all you're able to do is use 2% of your brain capacity. You complain about how the world is screwing you over .. yet YOU are the ones that have made it this way!!! All of you who don't know the answer to something and want to chime in needlessly .. well, you know where you can go MORE ONS!
This thread is a bit old but it is still active so I wanted to chime in since I just finally registered recently after being a random spectator every now and then on the forums looking for answers. In fact, I might have read this thread a long time ago and had this been a year ago I probably wouldn't have as much detailed information to provide until now.
I have to agree with JimH866 partially. I don't see anything wrong with asking why Garf needs a PCI based Floppy controller. Perhaps they wanted to know what his purpose was for it and he responded in case he needed to access those floppies one day. On the other hand telling Garf to abandon finding one is where JimH866 makes a good point about that being a waste of a comment. However giving Garf an alternate solution is more helpful. I sure as hell would like to know why they never made one or why they stopped producing them and I can only guess it wasn't profitable anymore. The last time I saw these Floppy and IDE controller cards were on ISA cards or they were built into the motherboard which are getting harder to find. This might have started the trend of eliminating a need for a PCI based controller card version.
Unfortunately, when optical drives and flash drives took over I think that started the decline of the good old floppy drives and floppy controllers. I miss them from a nostalgic standpoint but I also have possibly a few thousand floppies of various vintage software that I stockpile. One method would be to transfer all the floppies to the hard drive or optical discs if it is just data.
IDE controllers probably faded because SATA controllers had more bandwidth, decreased cable clutter, and the connectors used less space on the motherboard. SATA drives were more compact, faster, reached higher capacities, generated less heat, and were much quieter. I remember my old 40GB Maxtor was bulky, slow, hot to the touch, and extremely loud. It took me awhile before I finally gave in and got my first SATA hard drive.
Here's the problem or should I say the limitation of USB floppy drives. Some floppies back in the day contained copy-protection which can't be broken but can only be duplicated onto another floppy. The problem with USB floppy drives is you can't use copy protection duplication software with those types of drives. It must be accessed at the DOS level and not via a USB port. There are some functions it cannot perform via a USB interface and requires a real floppy controller.
Another thing I noticed is the new BIOSs on motherboards restrict hooking up or recognizing more than 1 floppy drive. So duplication is more of a pain because you have to keep swapping the floppy drive source and backup disks constantly.
Another limitation of USB floppy drives is there isn't a self-contained 5 1/4 1.2MB nor 5 1/4 360KB version. Only the 1.44MB high density USB external floppy drive exists. I don't know if this is due to the power requirements of a 5 1/4 floppy drive, that no one has the technical knowledge to produce them, or there simply isn't enough demand. As a result people who want to access those older 5 1/4" floppies are left out of the loop.
One user pointed out a link to a USB 5 1/4" drive but I don't have the money to invest and test that out to see how compatible it is compared to a real floppy controller and a real 5 1/4" drive but it is great something like that even exists as a niche item.
Again the compatibility of using USB based floppy drives is very limited. You probably can only copy files off of it and save files on them at a basic level. I doubt you could use this in DOS and run the software to duplicate copy protected disks.
This leads us to the only other option which is to find an old 486 system with floppy drives still in it.
Personally, this would provide more compatibility for the reasons I described above regarding copy protection and 5 1/4" floppy drives.
Back to a modern day solution.
If Garf's disks are only 720KB or 1.44MB then only an external USB 1.44MB floppy drive is his only option at this point or to buy a modern motherboard equipped with a floppy controller. Copy protection did not exist on 720KB and 1.44MB disks, so if you just want to backup theses floppies you are in luck. AsRock is the only company I can think of that kept producing Floppy and IDE controllers on their various consumer motherboards and they can be expensive. This is probably the best modern hardware solution since no PCI based Floppy and IDE controller exists in production. And even if did exist, I think unless the company provided DOS drivers you couldn't use it in DOS and if you used it in Windows it might require Windows drivers to detect the controller board. If they could somehow make the PCI controller board use default Windows drivers that might be way around needing to install drivers before you could use it. A floppy and IDE controller built into the motherboard also removes this headache since it is detected at the BIOS level the devices are accessible by any operating system that supports them including DOS.
If Garf needs to copy 1.2MB 5 1/4" floppy drives then he can do this with a floppy controller built into the motherboard. I believe most 1.2MB diskettes never used copy protection as far as I can recall.
If Garf needs to duplicate 5 1/4" 360KB copy protected disks than he has to buy a 486 computer to do it. I've tried Pentiums before and they are way too fast and duplication software causes a divide overflow or just hangs.
Even a software emulator like DOSBOX can't run the copy protection duplication software.
Sometimes you need the real hardware to do the job.
Garf may or may not read this but I thought I would shed some light on possible solutions to resolve his floppy drive and IDE dilemma or anyone else is in the same predicament.
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