I'm IDE/Floppy free!

Richard Dower

it's interesting to see a PC without any floppy or IDE devices, not only is the inside of the case alot cleaner and those bulky floppy and IDE cables gone, along with the removal of the floppy drive caddy, but resources are also cut down.

All i have now are two SATA optical drives, and both work!, burning alot of CDR and thus far flawless burns, done alot of ripping and playback...thus far everything seems to work ok.

Bios setup is crucial, you have to have boot sequence and SATA ports enabled properly.

In terms of my mobo, the Gigabyte K8NXP-9 nForce4 Ultra...both IDE Channel 0+1 are disabled and RAID options for both are disabled. The floppy drive was also disabled in bios, Floppy drive A + B. Booting is alot quicker as it's no longer searching for IDE and floppy drives on bootup.

In fact my boot sequence is like this, first boot device = USB-FDD, the other two boot devices are disabled :eek:

Now i know you'd say...man you need to have second boot device to CD-ROM, hell are you doing!? :mad:

This is in fact not needed, i've got two WD Raptors on two SATA ports, 3/2. Both of these are enabled and set to RAID. Build a RAID 0 array and said array is set to boot.

Ports 0/1 for SATA are set to disabled for the RAID option, but the ports are enabled. So they are detected in bios and i am able to boot and install Windows from both SATA optical drives connected to these ports.

The USB-FDD is cool, small and quiet and faster then the old floppy at read/write. No floppy disk controller in Windows or IRQ needed, no resource hogging going on.

I'm able to boot from the USB-FDD and install drivers at the F6 stage, overall i am pleased with the route i took and have assured some future proofing as i am sure nForce 5 will add additional support for SATA optical drives and Silicon Image with their 3132 controller continues to improve in bios and drivers.

gline

dude probably everyone on the planet has the same boot up sequence excluding the usb floppy drive

i just have 1st boot device set to hdd and floppy seek off

so basically it skips all drives and goes straight to boot off the hdd. Hardly cutting edge

Its not that big of a deal having no ide devices,

L31mr0d

Yeah I don't understand the big deal. I was expecting some amazing specs or something to back up the need for no IDE Devices, besides the extra space within your system. Which really isn't that important as you can sleeve IDE cables pretty easily.

and i certainly don't think a USB FDD is cool, i don't think any FDD is ever cool. Why do you even need one anyway?

Richard Dower

You need an FDD for installing drivers for RAID, and i know about slipstreaming...just haven't done it as yet.

And my setup IS cool, SATA opticals baby!...who can claim that around here?

Trend setter i am i am :-)

Thomas_S_Hunterson

i was expecting some legacy free mobo
you disappointed me

larryone

Not a bad setup richard.
FDD is certainly not necesary - but it is handy to be able to use toms root boot (linux on a floppy) for disaster recovery. As for RAID drivers, it depends on the raid. I installed a SATA hardware RAID controller on a system that had no floppies. But it really depends on what your hardware is and what os you're using. If your setup requires it, then use it. I really woiuldnt be bothered gatting a system with floppy tho. Any time I need to use one, I'd open the box, lash in a floppy cable, do my business, and close. hehehe i made it sound kindof surgical.

DemonOfTheFall

Word has it the next Intel boards will be legacy free.... Can't see it happening though, not without a lot of work on Intel's part to get SATA Opticals moved along.

Richard Dower

ICH8 is IDE free, mobo makers will probably add some ITE or Promise chip to add some IDE ports.