The parallel port and the floppy controller are another story. The death of the parallel port is directly attributable to Windows Vista. Any Windows OS, Vista or newer, has _no_ native parallel port support. So, why bother to add a port to your machine, if 99% of the users won't be able to use it?
I have Windows 7 64-bit on a Core2Duo machine. It fully supports the on-board ECP parallel port (hanging off of the LPC bus at LPT1) and even PnP auto-detected the HP Laserjet 4MP that is plugged into it! I don't think Windows 8 dropped support either.