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Floppy Disk Controller Implementation

At one time the floppy controller was a dedicated card inserted into an expansion slot in the motherboard. Later, floppy controllers were placed onto multifunction controller cards that also provided IDE/ATA hard disk interfacing, and serial and parallel ports. These cards are commonly found on ISA-based and VLB-based PCs created from around 1990 to 1994.

Since floppy disk controllers have basically not changed in quite some time, it has been possible to standardize and miniaturize them. The latest Pentium-class and later motherboards using PCI bus architecture, almost always include floppy disk controllers right on the motherboard. This support is usually provided through the use of a Super I/O chip that includes support for the floppies, serial/parallel ports and occasionally IDE/ATA hard disks.

Next: Floppy Disk Controller Speed

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