floppy drive fail message

[thesaint]

i am using all my old computers to configure one that will work for basic operation. i am using an iwill p54tsw mobo with p100 processor, 128mb ram 6gig hard drive, floppy and cd rom. i can get the whole system to boot but it will not recognize the floppy drive. i have tried changing the bios with no luck, i have tried 3 different floppy drives with no luck, tried switching the cable. i am using the cable after the twist to the floppy drive. dissable the floppy switching in the bios. anything eles i can try? thanks for all replies. the saint

[snow]

Hey,

I love playing with junk hardware too, but sometimes in my haste I end up getting the cables backwards sometimes and it's no fun 2nd guessing yourself. My suggestion would be to forget the twist stuff (which I hate) and make sure you've got pin1 (red line on the cable) matched with pin1 on the board and on the drive (toward the power cable on the drive). Never hurts to try the obvious-- I ALWAYS forget to and end up doing all this unnecessary troubleshooting.

[Rancher]

Originally posted by thesaint
i am using all my old computers to configure one that will work for basic operation. i am using an iwill p54tsw mobo with p100 processor, 128mb ram 6gig hard drive, floppy and cd rom. i can get the whole system to boot but it will not recognize the floppy drive. i have tried changing the bios with no luck, i have tried 3 different floppy drives with no luck, tried switching the cable. i am using the cable after the twist to the floppy drive. dissable the floppy switching in the bios. anything eles i can try? thanks for all replies. the saint

You mean windoze sees drive A in my computer? Place a disk in drive A, make sure your bios has floppy drive seek enabled & reboot. If the controler is ok your system will hang with script; non system disk error when it seeks the drive A. If not the floppy socket on mobo is buggerd or worse the controler is flakey

[thesaint]

when it boots to windows it does show the floppy as a drive, but when you try to get it to read a disk it say drive not ready, cancel or retry. i also can not acess the drive through dos.

[Rancher]

Originally posted by thesaint
when it boots to windows it does show the floppy as a drive, but when you try to get it to read a disk it say drive not ready, cancel or retry. i also can not acess the drive through dos.

I'm taking the "no show in dos" to mean while reboot and floppy in drive A and seek floppy enabled in the bios, the puter did NOT hang? This is not DOS but a POST from bios really. Can you hear the post SEEK the drive? And the green lite on drive A comes on briefly or continusly?

Lets jump ahead here for a minute. within devicemanager select floppy disk drives & click the plus to open. now rite click the drive itself & click remove answer yes & reboot. Windows software will refind & install what's needed to work the A drive.

[thesaint]

i tried removing the a drive and letting windows reinstall it but same problem. the drive light does flash on during boot up and if i am in windows and double click on the drive it will run the drive. but it just says drive not ready no matter what floppy disk i have in it. also i still get the floppy drive fail (40) in boot up. thnaks

[highrisemech]

Twist your ribbon cable 180 and try.

[morriswindgate]

BAD FLOPPY. If you want to spend a few bucks to learn something, take the thing apart and you will see how fragile the head mounts are and how easy it is to have them become useless.

[Rancher]

Originally posted by thesaint
i tried removing the a drive and letting windows reinstall it but same problem. the drive light does flash on during boot up and if i am in windows and double click on the drive it will run the drive. but it just says drive not ready no matter what floppy disk i have in it. also i still get the floppy drive fail (40) in boot up. thnaks

It's done for then. A drive that is! R.I.P. \\\Rancher///