"As I recall, those two chips were fairly large. And fairly late -- to the marketplace. We had lots of issues with them. [...] Sometimes the elegant solution isn't the best solution." -- Dave House, digressing to the 8271 during "Oral History Panel on the Development and Promotion of the Intel 8080 Microprocessor" [link], April 26th 2007, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California.IntroductionAround 1977, Intel released a floppy disc controller (FDC) chip called the 8271. This controller...