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Modern PC Motherboards with Legacy Ports

ajacocks

ajacocks

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Tangential to the ever-recurring discussion of 5.25" floppy drives, on modern PCs, I'd like to compile a list of modern boards, of all kinds that still support legacy ports. Specifically, I mean floppy controller(s), serial ports, parallel ports, and IDE (yes, it seems to be endangered, now, too).

Is this of interest to anyone else? I use this info to find machines to interface with older hardware in my collection. I dredged these two boards out of a search of this forum:

Example:
MSI K9VGM-V: 2 IDE controllers, 1 floppy controller, 1 parallel, 1 serial on back panel, fixed. Supports 1.2mb floppies in BIOS, unknown, if it supports 2 floppy drives.
Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H: 1 IDE controller, 1 floppy controller. Supports 1.2mb floppies in BIOS, unknown, if it supports 2 floppy drives.

Thanks!
- Alex
 
ajacocks said:
Tangential to the ever-recurring discussion of 5.25" floppy drives, on modern PCs, I'd like to compile a list of modern boards, of all kinds that still support legacy ports. Specifically, I mean floppy controller(s), serial ports, parallel ports, and IDE (yes, it seems to be endangered, now, too).

Is this of interest to anyone else? I use this info to find machines to interface with older hardware in my collection. I dredged these two boards out of a search of this forum:

Example:
MSI K9VGM-V: 2 IDE controllers, 1 floppy controller, 1 parallel, 1 serial on back panel, fixed. Supports 1.2mb floppies in BIOS, unknown, if it supports 2 floppy drives.
Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H: 1 IDE controller, 1 floppy controller. Supports 1.2mb floppies in BIOS, unknown, if it supports 2 floppy drives.

Thanks!
- Alex
Click to expand...

From the AMD side, most (not all) of the 790 chipsets, and a few 890 chipsets, seem to have onboard IDE suppoert as well a PS/2 keyboard & mouse support. I've noticed that some of the keyboard and mouse connectors are of the composite "either/or" type. I think you would be out of luck with the 990 chipsets. I'm sure it's pretty much the same story with the comparable Intel boards. Times are changing.
 
Well I'd like to know more about any boards that are out there that have proper "legacy" compatiblity.

The important thing for me is the floppy disk controller.

COM ports, parallel, and IDE can all be added with PCI cards, but as far as I know there aren't any PCI/PCIe floppy disk controllers (why not?!).

And when exactly did FDCs start supporting only one floppy drive? Brilliant idea too, saves the Chinese manufacturers from having to wire up a WHOLE PIN!

I hate those either/or PS/2 ports. It wouldn't be so bad if they were wired so they could use a splitter like some older laptops, but none of them that I know of are.

Although it is possible to add serial/parallel port PCI cards, they never default to the old standard I/O addresses, which can create compatibility issues for some OSes and utilities. So on board is still preferable. And yet they go to the trouble of building in second-rate network, audio, and even video cards on to the motherboards. Go figure.

A big headache is that many places don't list FDCs, COM ports, or Parallel ports in their specs even if they have it. And although they have a million useless search options it is never possible to just say "show me motherboards with an FDC".

The last time I looked the newest motherboard I could find that had most of the stuff was the: ASRock 990FX Extreme4 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157266

It has a FDC, but it only has one COM and no parallel. If only it had another PCI slot.

I had also been looking at the Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 Rev 3.x (3.x version supports additional newer CPUs). Has FDC, only 1 PS/2, 1 Serial, 1 parallel, IDE, and plenty of PCI slots, but no place seems to carry those any more. Also has Award BIOS instead of AMI.

For a less expensive lower end board, the local Microcenter still sells the ASRock 880GM-LE FX 880G, which has an FDC, 2 PS/2 ports, IDE, and parallel (no serial?).
 
The intel dq67ow board supports a floppy drive. (It says 1 1.44)
It has a parallel port on the back and the standard 9pin header for a serial port.
Alas, only 1 ps2 port.
For IDE, you can use a sata to ide bridge.

It supports up to a i7-2700k cpu.

Specs are here.

http://ark.intel.com/products/51999/Intel-Desktop-Board-DQ67OW

It's a Executive series board, and a extended life product for stable platform rollouts.


Later,
dabone
 
I really wish that thr manufacturers would say if the floppy controllers support 1 or 2 floppy drives, both in hardware, and in BIOS. BIOS hacking is a lot of work, and isn't always possible, at all.

- Alex
 
dorkbert said:
I think floppy port support is broken under Win7. USB floppy works fine however.
Click to expand...

Nope. Works fine.

On some motherboards you have to disable HPET (High Frequency event Timer) support in the BIOS as it screws up the floppy timing.
 
Having given this topic more thought, over this past weekend, I believe that it can be reduced, in scope. The only ports that really are critical, for a "legacy" compatible board, are those that can't be easily replaced with add-in cards. Can anyone think of a port that can't be directly replaced, via either USB or ISA/PCI/PCIe, other than the floppy controller?

There are lots of add in I/O cards that provide serial and parallel ports. There are USB PS/2 adapters, and even (though uncommon) PCI/PCIe PS/2 adapter cards. Are there any others that I have missed?

- Alex
 
ajacocks said:
I really wish that thr manufacturers would say if the floppy controllers support 1 or 2 floppy drives, both in hardware, and in BIOS. BIOS hacking is a lot of work, and isn't always possible, at all.
Click to expand...

For some chipsets, it's a matter of I/O pins on a package. At least a couple give say either 2 floppies or 1 floppy and some other important device, such as a parallel port. The board manufacturer makes the decision and sets the BIOS to configure the chip appropriately. There were a couple of laptops that capitalized on this and allowed you to hook an external floppy to the parallel port, but that's all in the dim past now.
 
This sort of information is most usefully maintained in a Wiki. Somebody starts a list with columns for the relevant specs, and a comments column. It can be set up so any member can add to the list or add comments against an entry. The Wiki feature on this forum is very under-utilised.

A general discussion thread like this quickly loses track of the core information, and eventually lapses into disuse.

Rick (heading out the back door)
 
Yeah, well, the answer to the post question will ultimately be "none".

I did some prowling and it looks like there still are a few, but they're quickly sunsetting and will be gone as more and more manufacturers leave the desktop market. Industrial PC motherboards, such as those made by iBase are probably your best current bet, but even the ones I could find were Socket 478 or LGA 775.

Maybe it's time to engineer some sort of inexpensive box that supports all of the legacy stuff...
 
Chuck(G) said:
Yeah, well, the answer to the post question will ultimately be "none".

I did some prowling and it looks like there still are a few, but they're quickly sunsetting and will be gone as more and more manufacturers leave the desktop market. Industrial PC motherboards, such as those made by iBase are probably your best current bet, but even the ones I could find were Socket 478 or LGA 775.

Maybe it's time to engineer some sort of inexpensive box that supports all of the legacy stuff...
Click to expand...

Well, I'm sure that a PCIe floppy controller could be designed, but it would require the efforts of someone like Jens Schoenfeld (the guy who designed the Catweasel). The 3.5" floppy problem isn't nearly as bad, since there are USB 3.5" drives for general use, but 5.25" floppies (not to mention 8"!) are a real pain. The only options that I am aware of are the KyroFlux and the DiscFerret. Both have significant issues, though.

AFAIK:
KyroFlux was originally designed only for archiving, and so has very limited write support. Also, very few software packages can read the images that it creates, since they are proprietary, and were designed specifically for SPS.
DiscFerret is not yet complete, and the documentation is really unclear as to what the status is. Does anyone know more than I do?

- Alex
 
Joseph, that P6T is a 2008 motherboard. It may be still in production (I'm not sure) by ASUS, but a quick check didn't show any major retailer stocking them (all "out of stock"). That might be good if the demand is ahead of supply, or just a sign that the pipeline is empty.
 
Does the P6T indeed support 1.2M, and even 360K floppy drives? If so, that's worth noting. Also, does it support 2 drives? A lot of the newer boards don't.

- Alex
 
ASRock still sells a Z77 motherboard with a floppy connector. Too bad its their top of the line model!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157295

The first legacy port to vanish was the parallel port in 2008. RS-232 seems to be hanging on, and PS/2 seems to be quickly fading. I have also noticed that the MicroATX versions of many motherboards tend to still have the serial and parallel headers while the full ATX ones don't. If you are content with the H77 chipset, there are plenty with legacy ports still for some reason. I don't know the situation with AMD chipsets, but they seem to hang onto the old stuff longer. Really, there is no reason why manufacturers are deleting these ports besides cost cutting. The LPC controllers they use still support all these ports.
 
As the desktop market shrinks, you can expect to see a lot of cost-cutting on boards. I note that although there are a couple of manufacturers who advertise ISA-equipped P4 Socket 478 boards, there's a lot of weaseling as in "Does not support ISA DMA".
 
ajacocks said:
Does the P6T indeed support 1.2M, and even 360K floppy drives? If so, that's worth noting. Also, does it support 2 drives? A lot of the newer boards don't.

- Alex
Click to expand...

according to what my BIOS says it does indeed support 1.2 MB and 360k drives I also forgot to mention that it has ps/2 ports for the keyboard and mouse.
now if only it had serial ports and parallel ports
 
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