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From: kiendra@cod.NOSC.MIL (Robert M. Kiendra)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Floppy Controller for 3 Drives
Keywords: Controller quad
Message-ID: <1486@cod.NOSC.MIL>
Date: 14 Apr 89 18:39:01 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 37


I am planning on buying parts and assembling my own AT clone.  There
are many PC stores here in San Diego and most of them run by Orientals
that have very good prices - better than the mail order houses.  The 
advantage of dealing with them is that you have somebody to talk to 
face to face if there are any problems, but their expertise is some
what questionable.

I want to install one hard drive (Seagate 225 - 20 MB) and three floppy
drives (1- 360k, 5.25; 1- 1.2MB, 5.25; &  1- 1.44MB, 3.5) in the AT 
chassis (no external drives).

Here is my problem:

The most common controllers are the type that control 2 hard drives 
and 2 floppy drives from one card. Two different stores told me that
if I added another floppy controller card to drive the 3rd floppy 
drive, there would be some sort of interaction between the two cont-
rollers that would keep me from using the other 2 floppies.  i.e. All
floppies have to be driven from one controller card.

The best solution appears to be to buy a hard disk controller card and
a quad floppy controller card to drive the three floppies. Now comes
the rub.  The only quad floppy controllers I could find drive 2 internal
floppies and 2 external floppies, not 4 internal floppies .

I'd like to know what the proper solution is before I buy these
parts to save myself money and problems.

Does anybody know of a quad floppy controller that can drive 4 internal
floppies? 

Was I given correct information about the interaction problem between the
hard/floppy controller card and the second floppy controller card?

		
					Bob Kiendra