Floppy Disk Controller

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What Does Floppy Disk Controller Mean?

A floppy disk controller (FDC) is an electronic chip controller used as an interface between a computer and a floppy disk drive. Modern computers have this chip embedded in the motherboard, whereas they were a separate component when they were originally introduced.

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Techopedia Explains Floppy Disk Controller

A floppy disk controller (FDC) is a specially designed chip that controls the reading and writing functionality of a floppy drive. An FDC can support up to four floppy disk drives at a time. The controller is connected to the system bus of the CPU and appears as a set of I/O ports to the computer. It is usually also linked to a serial bus of the direct memory access (DMA) controller. In an x86 computer, the floppy disk controller uses IRQ 6, whereas interrupt schemes are used on other systems. Data transmission is often done by FDC while in DMA mode.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.