Ok this is weird. I have a panasonic floppy drive installed in the comp in my sig. I have the bios set to seek and the bios find it's upon booting up. Windows see it too. The weird thing is no matter what disk i put in windows say the disk is not inserted....try again. The weird thing is when I try to access the disk it lights and appears to be working the disk, but then the error message appears from windows. Any ideas?
mnake sure youve got the floppy cable the correct way round and the power lead is on securely. my pc picks up the floppy drive whether theres power to it or not and the light will still come on when you try to access it but it wont work properly without the power
Yes the floppy always worked good. I have no idea whats wrong. Im gonna try a different floppy cable and hopefully this will solve the problem.:> <eidted for typos..ozzy214:>>
Update Sypher explain this to me please. I tried two different cables. The kind where ya could hook two floppies to one port. Nothing right? Well I used single cable and now it work's. Any ideas? The funny thing is the mobo manufacter provided a dual cable.:>
possible break in the wire for the read signal. had that happen on a parallel port on a p1 that went from motherboard to back of case. wouldn't print but changed the cable & it did. 1 of the mysteries of computing!!
Nah ddp. I tried two different dual cables and same thing. Only the single cable would work. Any ideas?:>
yes that 1. if didn't have that split & twist, that could have explained why it work & the dual connector cables didn't work.
Nope the dual cables have the twist also. This is really weird. Unless my epox board only supports one floppy. But then why give me a dual connector? I need the dual to work cause the single is too short.:>
you have the drive at the end of the dual cable? is the single identical wiring wise to the dual except for the extra connectors?
Yes at the end. And yes the wiring looks the same. This is weird. Maybe there is a bug with the board. I just tried clearing cmos and resetting my settings. I dont get it. Unless the mobo only works with particular brands of floppies.
Well I took a known working one out of a running comp. It worked for ten seconds and then stopped. Now it wont even work in the original comp. Just great. Maybe thos board is frying the floppy or something. I been installing when the power is shut down. SO who knows.:>
power shut down in what way as should either switch off on back side or disconnect the power cable as still might be power going thru
Switch on back of psu shut down. Plus I have a keyboard that lights up. So as soon as I see the lights go out the capacitors are drained. Oh well live and learn.:>
Another thing that may help in the learning process, is that it's not necessary to set your BIOS to "seek" the floppy during startup. All that does is determine if the floppy is a 40 or 80 track disk, or reports if there is an error with the drive. Having that option set, which could be argued, actually slows the system down unless you require the floppy drive as a main boot device. Some say that setting allows your hard disk time to spin up properly before the system starts reading the boot information...but today's drives startup plenty fast, and don't require any significant wait period. Just set the standard options as 1.44..should be all ya need. For reference: http://www.roger.id.au/tweaks/BIOS/biosfeaturessetup.php#8
ozzy214, Since we are speculating, did you try both connectors of the dual cable to see if the “shortest distance to the M/B connector” of the two worked? As in the old day; (A: Drive and B: Drive,) dual floppy cable? Just curious.
Yup. I did try both ends of the cable. I think I must have fried the floppy or something. I ordered some off of ebay and see what happens. Thanks to all who tried to help. Much appreciated.:>
