[geeks] Looking for a Modern Motherboard w/ Dual Floppy Support

[J. Alexander Jacocks]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 12:13 PM, Sheldon T. Hall <shel at artell.net> wrote:
> Quoth J. Alexander Jacocks ...
>
>> I'd like to find an as-recent-as-possible small motherboard
>> (micro ATX or less) that still supports two floppies.
>
> I thought a single floppy controller could manage two floppies, using the
> cable to control which was which.

Indeed, it should be able to.  However, a lot of current boards limit
the BIOS to 1 floppy drive.  And, apparently, there exist current
floppy controllers that, contrary to spec, can only handle one floppy
drive.

I don't have any idea if this applies to UEFI boards, but I would suspect so.

Unfortunately, the lack of BIOS support even seems to affect Linux,
which, according to a number of reports, has issues dealing with
non-BIOS-enumerated floppy drives.

The whole issue, here, is that all of these things are very hard to be
sure of, _before_ spending money on a board or machine.  I've already
bought one machine, only to find out that it has only a
laptop-interface (26-pin ribbon) floppy, which can indeed only control
a single drive, and a single 3.5" 1.44mb drive, at that.

Thanks!
- Alex