ASRock support of products they sell?

[Rick Dee]

Why does ASRock sell a UEFI motherboard with hardware for a floppy drive, but refuses to provide support it in the UEFI firmware?

The floppy drive is not recognized when booting with UEFI into Windows 7 x64.

I received the following answer to an inquiry to ASRock Technical Support about:

This is a known issue. Floppy disk drive doesn't support under GPT format (UEFI mode).

So, I submitted an inquiry about this to UEFI.ORG and this is the response I got from them:

Our UEFI technical representatives have noted that the UEFI system can support floppy disks without any issues and have advised that you consult your motherboard manufacturer for further troubleshooting guidance.

To me this indicates ASRock does not want to support their own product and refuses to do so!

[synack]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

It seems odd that the controller is recognized by windows, yet no drive letter. I would be very surprised to hear that it's an actual BIOS issue. Typically operating systems only need the BIOS/UEFI to get up and running and then take over completely. (with a few services provided like time)

Like this snippit from wikipedia:

Services

EFI defines two types of services: boot services and runtime services. Boot services are only available while the firmware owns the platform (before the "ExitBootServices" call). Boot services include text and graphical consoles on various devices, and bus, block and file services. Runtime services are still accessible while the operating system is running; they include services such as date, time and NVRAM access.

So if Windows can see the controller and it's not disabled, than *I* think any floppy driver letter issue would belong to Microsoft.
I unfortunately cannot confirm as I use Linux, don't use UEFI, and I don't have a floppy drive in my computer.

A "known issue" by ASRock doesnt make it ASRocks fault lol.. It may very well be, but I think you may have made some assumptions.

Admittedly ASRock support is SLOW.. but they are a good bunch of people that are helpful, once you get someone.
Give Emily a PM and see if there is anything ASRock can do or are doing, or ask them if it's a BIOS or OS issue.

I know you are frustrated and need to vent. But getting to the bottom of the issue and getting it resolved is what you are inevitably after, right?

Syn

[parsec]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

IMO, the reply you received, mentioning UEFI and GPT makes no sense relative to a floppy drive. The UEFI style BIOS interface is one thing, but things like GPT are getting into the true functions of a UEFI system, which I doubt you are using, since most people don't. A GPT style file system on a floppy disk is a ridiculous notion, that ASR support person either did not understand you or gave you a "don't know, see ya!" answer.

Consider the logic of adding a feature to a board (floppy port and support), but using a UEFI/BIOS that cannot configure it. I can't believe that is true. What board do you have?

[Rick Dee]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

I have the ASRock 990FX Extreme4 motherboard.

I am not trying to put a GPT on a floppy. I just want to be able to read old floppies on my system.

And, yes, I have Windows 7 x64 installed on a GPT disk and booting under UEFI.

[Rick Dee]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

I found the following information about UEFI:

The commonly used UEFI firmwares support both MBR and GPT partition table. EFI in Apple-Intel Macs are known to support Apple Partition Map also apart from MBR and GPT. Most of the UEFI firmwares have support for accessing FAT12 (floppy disks) , FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems in HDD and ISO9660 (and UDF) in CD/DVDs. EFI in Apple-Intel Macs can access HFS/HFS+ filesystems also apart from the mentioned ones.

This would indicate to me that ASRock is not telling the whole story about why they do not include floppy disk support in their implementation of UEFI.

[synack]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

I found the following information about UEFI:

The commonly used UEFI firmwares support both MBR and GPT partition table. EFI in Apple-Intel Macs are known to support Apple Partition Map also apart from MBR and GPT. Most of the UEFI firmwares have support for accessing FAT12 (floppy disks) , FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems in HDD and ISO9660 (and UDF) in CD/DVDs. EFI in Apple-Intel Macs can access HFS/HFS+ filesystems also apart from the mentioned ones.

This would indicate to me that ASRock is not telling the whole story about why they do not include floppy disk support in their implementation of UEFI.

How do you figure that?
UEFI is for booting and to provide a few services like BIOS used to. If your issue is booting from a fat12 floppy, you have a valid point.
Once the OS takes over, it's up to the OS for your hardware. The OS deals directly with hardware. UEFI does not provide hardware abstraction for your OS. It is not a hypervisor.

BIOS/UEFI can at a hardware/motherboard level disable hardware such as a serial port, floppy drive, hard drive etc. But I think you stated in another forum (windows forum) that the floppy controller is there and appears to be working.

I still don't believe this has anything to do with UEFI firmware.

Syn

[parsec]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

I have the ASRock 990FX Extreme4 motherboard.

I am not trying to put a GPT on a floppy. I just want to be able to read old floppies on my system.

And, yes, I have Windows 7 x64 installed on a GPT disk and booting under UEFI.

You should be able to have GPT and MBR formatted disks in the same PC.

With your floppy drive installed and connected, what do you see in the Device Manager entry for the floppy drive? I would think Windows 7 has a driver for it.

[Rick Dee]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

How do you figure that?
UEFI is for booting and to provide a few services like BIOS used to. If your issue is booting from a fat12 floppy, you have a valid point.
Once the OS takes over, it's up to the OS for your hardware. The OS deals directly with hardware. UEFI does not provide hardware abstraction for your OS. It is not a hypervisor.

BIOS/UEFI can at a hardware/motherboard level disable hardware such as a serial port, floppy drive, hard drive etc. But I think you stated in another forum (windows forum) that the floppy controller is there and appears to be working.

I still don't believe this has anything to do with UEFI firmware.

Syn

I suggest you read the information about UEFI (or EFI) and BIOS at the two links below:
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BIOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Particularly the intro to UEFI:

The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a software interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is meant as a replacement for the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface, present in all IBM PC-compatible personal computers.^[1][2] In practice, most UEFI images have legacy support for BIOS services. It can be used to allow remote diagnostics and repair of computers, even without another operating system.^[3]

[synack]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

Yes I have, And? They say exactly what I have been saying all along!

OK lets play the quote game :P

from "Wiki, BIOS":

The BIOS then locates boot loader software held on a peripheral device (designated as a 'boot device'), such as a hard disk or a CD/DVD, and loads and executes that software, giving it control of the PC

From "Wiki, UEFI": (and you above)

UEFI is meant as a replacement for the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware interface

From "Wiki, UEFI, category Booting":

OS loaders are a class of UEFI applications. As such, they are stored as files on a file system that can be accessed by the firmware. Supported file systems include FAT32, FAT16 and FAT12. Supported partition table schemes include MBR and GPT.

And finally... A picture of the flow from "Wiki UEFI"

Pay particular attention to the last (top) bubble that states:

Boot Services are Terminated; operation handed over to operating system loader

Everything in those two Wiki pages are in the context of "booting." Nothing is there for continuously providing the sole hardware interface to the OS. (With the exception of date/time as the BIOS/UEFI is the hardware interface for the Real Time Clock.)

msdos at one time used BIOS helper calls for rudimentary disk access, but those functions are no longer used since windows 3.11.


Anyway, I don't think you see it. I'm not here to try and convince you, I'm only a fellow consumer trying to help steer you in the right direction.
Good luck with solving your issue. I read somewhere that USB floppy drives work well. You could try that to convert your floppies over to say USB thumb drives or whatever.


Syn

[parsec]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

While I agree with synack, are you saying the UEFI that ASRock uses (sourced from someone else) does not supply support for floppy disks recognition and configuration? That would be ridiculous, if the board has a floppy connector, and no way to switch to a standard BIOS that would support a floppy drive.

Or are you talking about launching the UEFI shell?

[synack]

Re: ASRock support of products they sell?

While I agree with synack, are you saying the UEFI that ASRock uses (sourced from someone else) does not supply support for floppy disks recognition and configuration? That would be ridiculous, if the board has a floppy connector, and no way to switch to a standard BIOS that would support a floppy drive.

Or are you talking about launching the UEFI shell?

Those questions for me? or the OP? lol

This is what I know about the situation: (between posts here and on a windows forum)
After booting windows 7 via UEFI, the floppy controller is present and enabled in the device manager, but no "a:" drive shows up.
After booting windows 7 via BIOS mode, all is well.
I could be mistaken, but I'm sure that booting from floppy is not an issue. Maybe the OP could clear that point up.

The OP via asking questions on the windows forum and to the UEFI organization has determined that the issue must be ASRock not implementing floppy support in the "UEFI" bios. This was drawn from a response from the UEFI organization where they basically said "UEFI has support for floppies, contact your motherboard manufacturer."

What I was trying to explain to the OP was that they must have meant "during booting" as UEFI support for floppies would be irrelevant from a windows 7 (OS) perspective.
They may have made an assumption that the OP knew the context in which their answer applied, when they made the generalized answer.

Someone else from the other forum seemed to suggest that windows for whatever reason, disables the a: drive when booting from UEFI. However for the life of me, I cannot reason why they would.

I'm not sure what the issue might be however, I highly doubt the UEFI is at fault in this particular case.

Syn