F6 Without a Floppy Drive

[pointertovoid]

Hello dear friends!

Newer motherboards have no connector for a floppy drive though W2k installation needs for recent chipsets drivers provided on an F6 floppy.

I know I can integrate the drivers into the installation Cdrom, but as the choice of the driver tends to need many trials, I feel a floppy is easier.

I read somewhere that such F6 drivers could be supplied on a Cdrom instead of a floppy, but was that for W2k? Or beginning with Xp?

And if I add one of these stupid and expensive floppy drives with Usb interface, will the W2k (Sp4 slipstreamed) install disk access the floppy drive?

Thank you!

[jaclaz]

I read somewhere that such F6 drivers could be supplied on a Cdrom instead of a floppy, but was that for W2k? Or beginning with Xp?

And if I add one of these stupid and expensive floppy drives with Usb interface, will the W2k (Sp4 slipstreamed) install disk access the floppy drive?

You can go for the USB floppy route, BUT you may need this:

Nowadays, it makes little sense (unless you already have such a floppy drive).

Use a grub4dos virtual floppy , instead.

You can "borrow" ideas/methods from:

or from the Wininstall from USB thingy:

(or use the atter to install 2k from USB)

or:

http://reboot.pro/13967/

Before going through that, try simply mapping the F6 floppy image:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=20543

Just for the record, and probably UNnneeded, you can have a "multiple drivers" F6 floppy (or superfloppy), see:

http://reboot.pro/13912/

http://sites.google.com/site/rmprepusb/tutorials/install-xp-from-an-iso

And to make a floppy image:

http://reboot.pro/14354/

jaclaz

[pointertovoid]

Grazie Jaclaz!

Mmmh, I had hoped W2j install Cd would accept that the Bios fools it into accessing an Usb floppy drive as a traditional one.

If this doesn't work naturally, then integrating the host ("controller") driver into the W2k install Cd is probably better:

it must take about as long and after that the result is more comfortable.

But I had read somewhere "you can hit F6 if your driver is on a Cd as well"...

Was that a message from the Xp installation process? It would be nice for W2k!

[Cyker]

Win2K can only take drivers from the floppy; It might have been XP that added USB key support IIRC, butI never got that to work either.

We had this problem in the past before I learned how to integrate AHCI drivers into XP disks by reverse-engineering Dell and HP XP boot disks, but the USB floppy option did work for us.

However, for some bizarre reason, it ONLY worked with TEAC USB Floppy drives and some Panasonic/Matsus***a ones. SONY USB floppy drives did not work at all. And I'm talking about the brand of the actual floppy drive component, not the brand of the USB floppy drive.

[Phenomic]

You can boot from a USB flash drive that has a "floppy" boot sector. You can download it. But I see what you mean about "many trials", Linux will boot straight for the ISO so you don't need to burn a CD. I would simply run 2000 as a guest OS under Linux, that way you don't need any drivers, it installs perfectly on any comput0r

[jaclaz]

However, for some bizarre reason, it ONLY worked with TEAC USB Floppy drives and some Panasonic/Matsus***a ones. SONY USB floppy drives did not work at all. And I'm talking about the brand of the actual floppy drive component, not the brand of the USB floppy drive.

Guess WHAT this (already mentioned) thread is about?

jaclaz