Floppy problem: is it the controller or the drive?

[jamespetts]

I am putting together a computer made of old parts to go into the kitchen, and I seem to be having problems with the floppy drive. It will be detected in the BIOS, but it will refuse to boot from it: instead, the system will hang when it tries. It does, however, detect whether a (known good) disc is present, and will act appropriately if there is no disc, and only hang when a disc is inserted.

It will boot from the hard drive fine, but, when trying to access a floppy drive in Windows 98, again it will hang. The floppy controller and drive are recognised without any problems by Windows, and they report that they are working in the device manager.

The floppy drive is one that I bought new in about 2000, and had been used in an old Linux backup server until last year, when I tried to upgrade it, and fried the motherboard by using the wrong type of memory. I doubt that that would have damaged the floppy drive, however, since the hard drives, CPU and graphics card all survived unscathed. The floppy drive worked just before that time.

The motherboard is a new (secondhand) one that I have not used before, so I have not seen it work with a floppy before. Alas, I do not have a spare floppy drive with which to test it.

Does anybody have experience with floppy drive or controller failure and can lend an educated guess as to which of the two might be defective in my case?

 

[Maximouse]

First thing I would try.

See if you can borrow a new floppy cable from another computer and try it out.

Al

 

[jamespetts]

Thank you. I'll try that.

 

[jamespetts]

I tried a different floppy cable: same symptoms. At least that's one thing eliminated... does this sound more like a controller problem or a drive problem now?

 

[Maximouse]

I'm betting that this is more of a drive problem than a controller problem.

I have had quite a few drives quit on me over the years, and considering you had problems with your other computer its possible that the drive was damaged. ( If everything else survived and just the floppy died, then I would consider myself lucky that the FD was all that was lost)

I would try it in a friends computer to see what happens.

Al

 

[Xenocide]

if the light is constantly on, flip the cable on the floppy drive end, you might have to break some of the pcb off at the bottom, but it should already be preforated. that will fix it

 

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your suggestions. I shall have to try the drive in another computer. I did try flipping the cable: the light was not constantly on until I flipped it, so I flipped it back. I shall tell you how I get on

 

[jamespetts]

I tried the drive from that computer in another computer, and it worked fine. The drive from the other computer, that worked in the other computer, did not work in the problem computer.

The problem therefore seems to be the FDC. Is there any possibility that I've missed a BIOS setting, or is it likely that something, somewhere is fried?

 

[Maximouse]

What model motherboard are you using with it?

In the bios settings of my three machines, each has two settings. One is usually at the main screen, which allows you to set the type of drive (1.44 etc) and there should be a setting on another page which will allow you to enable/disable the FDC (floppy drive controller).

Check your board Bios and see if those option are present/set right.

Al

 

[jamespetts]

It's an old Gigabyte GA-5AA. I had the setting in the "Standard CMOS Setup" as a 1.44 (which is correct); there was no setting elsewhere about enabling the FDC.

 

[Maximouse]

It should be in the "Integrated Peripherals" setting page (depends on what revision the board is I guess).

Here is a Link to a copy of the manual for it:
http://america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_5aa_3201_e.pdf

Again, if that is the revision of your board.


You might want to just try loading the bios defaults and see if that does any good.

Al

 

[jamespetts]

It was on "auto". I set it to "enabled", and had the same problem. Fried FDC, does anybody think?

 

[Maximouse]

well, after all the troubleshooting steps you have gone through, I would tend to agree with you that the fdc is fried.

Sorry

Al

 

[link1305]

I agree...fried FDC