On 5/20/23 04:21, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > I was startled to discover my (long gone) Athlon XP box could only > handle a single floppy drive. The BIOS has no option for a 2nd. > > I can't imagine that was a significant cost saving.
It's a matter of pins. I believe that it started when the "SuperIO" chip started packing in more support for various peripheral functions and the 2 pins for drive select and motor control of an extra drive were viewed as least important. Earlier versions of the chip often allowed re-purposing the pins used for the parallel port as an interface for an extra floppy--you saw this on laptop systems, which often had only one floppy drive in any case. cf. Intel's PCISet chip sets. --Chuck
