mystery floppy drive

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 12:10am

there probably arent too many folk out there asking about floppy drives, but i have one thats been stumping me. floppy drive, appears to be properly installed cable-wise, when booted into windows 98, it will say "this disk is not formatted, do you want to format it" to every disk you put in, formatted and unformatted alike...when it gets to the format screen, it only has one option of disk type and that is 300k floppy (may have the number wrong, i dont have access to the computer right now). if you click format it just says the settings are incorrect, no matter what you do.

as i said its a windows 98 machine, running american megatrends BIOS...in the bios it says "Drive A: None Drive B:None". I thought that might be it, so i changed drive A to 1.44 mb floppy, and then when it boots it gives the same formatting problem...only this time it lists 1.44 mb as one of the options to format...if you click format the computer hangs. any suggestions? i tried reinstalling the device and flipping the cable. neither worked, and im out of ideas.

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Enverex

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5,852 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 2:24am

Is the light on the drive permanently?
If so, you need to flip the cable.
But as you said the cable is right, it may just be dead....

Try changing B: to 1.44 too, though it will probably just give a device missing message.

Enable the "Floppy Drive Seek" option in the BIOS (it will be named something like that) to see if that says anything on boot.

NS

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profdlp

Off To The Gym

21,407 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 4:04am

Listen to 'Shade

...and also, have you tried booting from a floppy? At least that way you'll eliminate (or isolate) any windows problem.

Prof

PS: Don't want to be a gloom merchant, but every drive I've ever seen that does that (and is hooked up properly) has had a read/write head failure.

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mmonnin

Veteran Icrontian

10,545 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 5:33am

They are cheap. You can always get another one.

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Spinner

Getting it done!

5,003 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 12:07pm

Yeah, if you've given the cable a once over, and checked it's the correct way round, then those symptoms only really account to one thing in my book. That's a dead floppy drive. If you get a replacement for it, and it still doesn't work, then we'll have another think for you mate.

Cheers

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MERRICK

DAW Tech

334 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 9:35pm

I believe the other option on capacity for A:\ drives is 720KB which is the capacity of old DD floppies which I actually use on my Roland Hardware sequencer.

Here's an academic topic which I don't expect to be replied to:

Is there anything that can be done with the B:\ drive besides putting in a second floppy drive?

Has anyone done anything interesting? Is the B:\ drive going to be a real mystery in a coupla years (let alone the A:\ drive)?

And on the subject, is the slow read/write of A:\ and B:\ due to the physical media of the floppy or the digital troughput spec?

Just wondering

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Armo

Graf Orlok has nothing on me

2,162 Posts

6 Jul 2003, 9:37pm

its dirty

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 8:38am

good suggestions all. you're right, they are cheap, so we bought a new one and im going to do the install tommorow. i'll update after it works...because it will work....dammit.

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maxanon

Icrontic Posting Maniac

381 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 8:14pm

Khan, please update us if it works (or not). It sounds like a dead/dirty head.

Merrick, I think they will disappear into the legacy la-la land like ISA. If PCI-E comes around, AGP will go the same route.

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 9:07pm

First of all, I installed a brand new sony floppy drive, ensured the cables are hooked up properly and booted. same error, all around. when i set up the BIOS to say 1.44 mb 3.5 inch floppy for drive A, it boots again, gives the same error (disk not formatted) and if you tell it to format the system hangs.

<-confused as hell

PS i couldnt find anything called floppy disk seek in the BIOS.

hints would be appreciated.

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profdlp

Off To The Gym

21,407 Posts

7 Jul 2003, 9:19pm

Did you...

...try a new cable?

...try to boot from a floppy? (Eliminates OS problems)

Prof

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 9:14am

good suggestions... next time i head over there i'll bring over a boot disk and a spare cable. any other ideas?

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Enverex

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5,852 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 11:29am

Did you enable those things in the BIOS as that will tell you at boot if the computer can talk to the floppy drive properly.

NS

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 6:27pm

i really didnt see any options pertaining to that one. its a rather old american megatrends BIOS...

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TheBaron

Veteran Icrontian

2,777 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 6:42pm

aaron which computer is this?

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 6:52pm

duncan's sister's rig. his mom asked me to fix it for them and this is just baffling me. i got the rest of the problems pretty easy...sound wasnt working (because speakers were plugged into microphone port) and too much spyware (adaware + 5 minutes = no more spyware). the floppy drive remains to be a mystery. for those of you who are helping me ponder...remember that it is not the floppy drive itself..i already tried replacing it with a brand new drive. today im gonna try a new cable, and booting from a floppy, and i'll update later.

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 9:40pm

alright, heres the update. floppy drive works. turns out that switching out the drives did the trick, i just couldnt tell because the disk i was using to test it was horribly corrupted. all other disks work fine, so problem solved. everyone who said dead drive was right.

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profdlp

Off To The Gym

21,407 Posts

8 Jul 2003, 9:49pm

khan said
everyone who said dead drive was right.

Do we get a prize?

Prof
(Cash Only - No Checks)

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

9 Jul 2003, 8:23am

no, but i sure appreciate the help! =P

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maxanon

Icrontic Posting Maniac

381 Posts

9 Jul 2003, 2:50pm

Did you try the old drive with a new floppy?

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Al_Capown

Veteran Icrontian

1,189 Posts

12 Jul 2003, 9:28am

I've got the same problem with 3 out of 4 computers on my network. P3 desktop, p4 laptop, and p4 desktop. Amd desktop works fine. Perhaps another reason not to buy intel

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khan

Toast is awesome

274 Posts

19 Jul 2003, 9:23am

yeah i did...no disks work in that drive.

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