kiendra@cod.NOSC.MIL (Robert M. Kiendra) (04/15/89)
I am planning on buying parts and assembling my own AT clone. There are many PC stores here in San Diego and most of them run by Orientals that have very good prices - better than the mail order houses. The advantage of dealing with them is that you have somebody to talk to face to face if there are any problems, but their expertise is some what questionable. I want to install one hard drive (Seagate 225 - 20 MB) and three floppy drives (1- 360k, 5.25; 1- 1.2MB, 5.25; & 1- 1.44MB, 3.5) in the AT chassis (no external drives). Here is my problem: The most common controllers are the type that control 2 hard drives and 2 floppy drives from one card. Two different stores told me that if I added another floppy controller card to drive the 3rd floppy drive, there would be some sort of interaction between the two cont- rollers that would keep me from using the other 2 floppies. i.e. All floppies have to be driven from one controller card. The best solution appears to be to buy a hard disk controller card and a quad floppy controller card to drive the three floppies. Now comes the rub. The only quad floppy controllers I could find drive 2 internal floppies and 2 external floppies, not 4 internal floppies . I'd like to know what the proper solution is before I buy these parts to save myself money and problems. Does anybody know of a quad floppy controller that can drive 4 internal floppies? Was I given correct information about the interaction problem between the hard/floppy controller card and the second floppy controller card? Bob Kiendra
spock@sfsup.UUCP (+Giacchi T.) (04/18/89)
In article <1486@cod.NOSC.MIL> kiendra@cod.NOSC.MIL (Robert M. Kiendra) writes: > >Here is my problem: > >The most common controllers are the type that control 2 hard drives >and 2 floppy drives from one card. Two different stores told me that >if I added another floppy controller card to drive the 3rd floppy >drive, there would be some sort of interaction between the two cont- >rollers that would keep me from using the other 2 floppies. i.e. All >floppies have to be driven from one controller card. > >The best solution appears to be to buy a hard disk controller card and >a quad floppy controller card to drive the three floppies. Now comes >the rub. The only quad floppy controllers I could find drive 2 internal >floppies and 2 external floppies, not 4 internal floppies . > > Bob Kiendra There are floppy extender cards. Most places sell them today. One such card is the Compaticard. It adds 3rd & 4th floppies to the system. It needs you to install the drivers.sys file in your config.sys and the drives will be accessed as D: & E: (assuming that you have only 1 hard disk or only one partition). Otherwise they will be assigned after your last hard disk driver letter. Other such controllers exist. Shop around, you should find one. If you can't, then let me know and I will find out who makes the Compaticard and post it. Good luck: ----------------------------------------------------------------- - - - Only a fool fights in a burning house. - - Most illogical. - - - - attunix!spock - My opinions are mine and you can't have them. - - - -----------------------------------------------------------------
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (04/18/89)
There are several boards on the market that will allow you to connect 2-4 additional drives, and co-exist with your existing standard con- troller. My favorite is the Micro Solutions CompatiCard, which can be located at 4 different I/O addresses. There are two versions: One supports two internal and two external floppy drives. One supports only two internal drives. Since it can be used in conjunction with a standard controller, you can get a standard two-drive controller with your machine, and add the CompatiCard. Besides supporting 8", 5.25" and 3.5" disk drives of all standard densities, the CompatiCard includes device driver software, so you can use the disks even if your BIOS doesn't properly support them (and so you can use both controllers). The CompatiCard is $ 125 for the two-drive version, and $ 175 for the four-drive version. mike berger, University of Illinois berger@atropa.stat.uiuc.edu