The FD1771, sometimes WD1771, is a floppy disk controller chip, the first in a line of floppy disk controllers produced by Western Digital. It uses single densityFM encoding introduced in the IBM 3740. Later models in the series added support for MFM encoding and increasingly added onboard circuitry that formerly had to be implemented in external components. Originally packaged as 40-pin dual in-line package (DIP) format,[1][2] later models moved to a 28-pin format that further lowered implementation costs.
^Michalopoulos, Demetrios A (October 1976). "New Products: Single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller". Computer. 9 (10). IEEE: 64. doi:10.1109/C-M.1976.218414."The FD1771 is a single-chip floppy disk formatter/controller that interfaces with most available disk drives and virtually all types of computers."
^"Recent IC Announcements". Computer. 9 (10). IEEE: 66. October 1976. doi:10.1109/C-M.1976.218417. The FD1771 was announced on July 19, 1976, and sold for $60 each in lots of 100.