[ The PC Guide | Systems
and Components Reference Guide | Floppy Disk Drives | Floppy Disk Interfacing and Configuration ]
Floppy Disk Controller Resource Usage
Floppy disks are so universal that their resource usage has been all but standardized
and has become quite universal as well. In fact, most peripherals won't even let you
select as options the resources that are normally used by the floppy disk controller,
knowing that in virtually every PC these resources are not available.
The floppy disk controller on a standard PC uses the following resources:
- Interrupt Request Line (IRQ): The standard floppy controller IRQ is 6. This is occasionally given as an option
for tape accelerator cards, because they also use the floppy interface protocol and can be
used as replacements for the standard floppy controller. Virtually all other peripherals
will avoid IRQ 6.
- DMA Channel: The standard direct memory
access (DMA) channel for the floppy controller is 2. Again, tape accelerator cards
offer this is an option while most other peripherals avoid it.
- I/O Address: The standard I/O address range for the standard floppy controller is
3F0-3F7h. Strangely, this overlaps with the standard I/O address for the slave device on
the primary IDE channel. In this case, however, this does not constitute a resource conflict because the overlap is something that
has existed for a very long time and is compensated for. It is not an issue of concern.
In some cases these resources can be changed; in most cases they cannot. Even when they
can be changed, they very rarely are since they really are the standard.
 Next: Floppy
Interface Cable
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