FDD type

[Ferrarius]

Hello, I've got a quick question regarding the detection of the type of floppy drive. You can ask the CMOS what floppy drive is inserted after the BIOS finishes, but is this updated when another drive is inserted?

[ruisleipa]

I don't know if the hardware is even designed to handle plugging in new drives while running. It may not be the wisest thing to do, but you could do a simple test and try.

Share the results with us.

EDIT: Isn't the drive settings set up from the BIOS. I don't think there is any kind of autodetect.

[Zenith]

Random question, but do they actually have floppy drives that support more than one type of floppy disk?

And AFAIK it's difficult to impossible to autodetect when a floppy is inserted into the drive. I think the best way (and I think Windows does this too) is to wait for a user/application to try and access the drive and fail if a floppy is not found.

[JackScott]

Floppy drives (IIRC) have a "media change" facility that tells you when a new floppy disk has been inserted.

There are some 2.88MB floppy drives that can read and write 1.44MB disks. But they are about as common as hen's teeth. It is correct that no autodetection of drive type is done, that is usually set in the BIOS. For example, in XP and Vista, you can set the BIOS to have a 1.44MB floppy drive, and My Computer will show a drive as being present, even if it isn't. Now Windows is pretty dumb in that regard, but it does show you how little auto detection is done for that older hardware.

[jal]

Random question, but do they actually have floppy drives that support more than one type of floppy disk?

I have seen floppy drives that physically accepted both 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. I have never owned one though, so I'm not sure how this was handled by an OS. Presumably it appeared as two drives.


JAL

[linuxfood]

I'll check when I get home, but I own one, and I *believe* it actually just had two physical connections.
Meaning, it's just two separate drives in one "box".

[Troy Martin]

There are some 2.88MB floppy drives that can read and write 1.44MB disks.

And I personally have never used a 2.88 MB disk. I've formatted 1.44 to 1.68 (and still do often) but that's probably the highest.

[jal]

I'll check when I get home, but I own one, and I *believe* it actually just had two physical connections. Meaning, it's just two separate drives in one "box".

That's what I figured. In those days it was rather costly making custom chips, so I bet they just doubled the logic, only to sell ot for four times the price :).


JAL