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ITX motherboard with dual floppy support wanted.

Fire-Flare

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Joined
Dec 17, 2009
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Washington State
Thanks anyway, but I've decided to install a LS-120 drive in my existing system to read and write 3.5" floppies.
 
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doesn't exist. at least for Win7. You might find a pentium 3 era board for win98.

This has been asked here before. Long story short, I use a micro atx setup. 1 5.25 floppy on the mobo itself, and I use either a usb 3.5 drive or an ls-120.
 
I think there were one or two mATX (a bit larger, but still small) Socket AM2+ boards that still had 2-floppy support. The problem with mITX is that everything's on a diet, and sacrifices must be made for the good of the cause. ;)
 
The downside with AM2 and later motherboards was that to use floppy drives the High Performance Event Timer needs to be disabled. One can't have a system setup up to provide both good game play with an FPS from 2005 and access the floppy drive; changing the BIOS and rebooting is needed.
 
Well, I'm not a game player, so that doesn't affect me. Perhaps there's a socket 939 board that fits the description, then.

I have a socket 478 P4 mATX board from IBM that supports 2 floppies, but it's utter garbage otherwise. Uses SDRAM, not DDR and a slow P4...
 
Well, I'm not a game player, so that doesn't affect me. Perhaps there's a socket 939 board that fits the description, then.

I have a socket 478 P4 mATX board from IBM that supports 2 floppies, but it's utter garbage otherwise. Uses SDRAM, not DDR and a slow P4...

Thanks for the offer, but I need the board to be ITX or DTX; It's going to live inside an unmodified IBM 5150 chassis and mATX won't fit in the motherboard area.
 
If i was doing that, i'd probably use a rasberry pi and usb floppy disks. No 5.25, but there are ways around it. I would not be surprised to find a pi shield that controls floppy disks.
 
You might be able to find a used Shuttle SN41g2 or a sff of that vintage with a floppy connector.
 
Well, I've used an Orange Pi to read and write USB floppies using Ubuntu for ARM.

But somehow, I don't think that's what the OP is after. For example, when he's given an .IMD for a 5.25" 360K floppy, what does he do?
 
Thanks for the offer, but I need the board to be ITX or DTX; It's going to live inside an unmodified IBM 5150 chassis and mATX won't fit in the motherboard area.

Are you sure it won't fit? I looked at a couple of pictures and the 5150 has five slots on the back, which is more than enough for a MicroATX board. Though I'm not sure how you'd mount it since there is no space for the rear I/O area unless you mounted the board sideways or something.

Also keep in mind that not all MicroATX boards are the same dimensions. Some are what I like to call "2/3 MicroATX" where the front part of the board is cut down an inch or two like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128696

These types of boards are very small and cram into confined spaces pretty good. I managed to stuff a board about this same dimension into a Compaq iPaq and it has far less room than a 5150 does, a 5150 is like a warehouse in comparison.
 
A 5150 motherboard roughly corresponds in size to the "Baby AT" form factor that was popular before ATX cases came into the picture; rougly 330×216 mm.

A microATX (typical) is about 244×244 mm, but some are as small as 171x171mm, or just a silly milimeter larger than a mini ITX.

Regardless, the holes will be in the wrong places and the expansion slot positions won't match modern spacings. A PC XT case could well accomodate any standard Baby AT board, and has the correct slot spacing. I used to run a 486 in one with no particular issues.

Now, WTX boards are really impressive... :)
 
Are you sure it won't fit? I looked at a couple of pictures and the 5150 has five slots on the back, which is more than enough for a MicroATX board. Though I'm not sure how you'd mount it since there is no space for the rear I/O area unless you mounted the board sideways or something.

Also keep in mind that not all MicroATX boards are the same dimensions. Some are what I like to call "2/3 MicroATX" where the front part of the board is cut down an inch or two like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128696

These types of boards are very small and cram into confined spaces pretty good. I managed to stuff a board about this same dimension into a Compaq iPaq and it has far less room than a 5150 does, a 5150 is like a warehouse in comparison.

A 5150 motherboard roughly corresponds in size to the "Baby AT" form factor that was popular before ATX cases came into the picture; rougly 330×216 mm.

A microATX (typical) is about 244×244 mm, but some are as small as 171x171mm, or just a silly milimeter larger than a mini ITX.

Regardless, the holes will be in the wrong places and the expansion slot positions won't match modern spacings. A PC XT case could well accomodate any standard Baby AT board, and has the correct slot spacing. I used to run a 486 in one with no particular issues.

Now, WTX boards are really impressive... :)

I made an 'adapter plate' that secures an ITX board to the original mounting holes. (Yes, sideways)

It has the large DIN connectors for keyboard and audio output just like the original 5150 too, so anything wider than a DTX board would go underneath the drive bay and the connectors would be inaccessible.

But this conversation is moot now that I've learned I can boot from an LS-120 drive for the second floppy. I've decided to pursue one of those instead.
 
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