LS120s and making boot disks

[Mercutio]

The machines in my classroom are K6-3 500s (on crappy PC Chips boards) with LS-120s installed. Today I learned that Win98SE won't make a "normal" (Add/Remove Programs > Boot Disk) boot floppy if A: is an LS-120 installed. I've not done much of anything with an LS-120 but it appears to be the case on all of the machines.

I get an error like: "Drive A: is a mapped network drive or not a floppy disk drive."

Any idea why, or how I can make Win98 treat my LS-120s like the fast floppy drives they are?

 

[Mercutio]

Or, more correctly:

"Drive A: is not a floppy disk drive or is mapped to a network drive. Setup cannot create a startup disk."

Amazingly, given that this is an error message given by Windows, google can't find that particular string of text anywhere on the internet, even on the MS site.

 

[timwhit]

Why don't you just create a bootdisk on a machine with a regular floppy drive then copy the data over to the LS120 disk.

Or is this used for teaching purposes? If so why not just get a couple floppy drive and install them in the machines. Even better would be to show the students how to install them.

 

[Buck]

Mercutio,

Is this an internal EIDE/ATAPI drive? Is there an icon for this product on the taskbar or somewhere else with some tools for making a Startup Diskette?

 

[P5-133XL]

Are you using 1.44MB media or LS-120 media? It should work with regular floppies and should not work with the 120MB media. However, you can transfer the data from a 1.44 onto a 120 and make a super large bootable floppy.

According to http://www.toejumper.net/rescue3/disks3.htm

 

[Mercutio]

timwhit, the idea is to have my students make the floppies.

Even moreso, it now disturbs me that I don't know why this is happening.

Mark, I'm using 1.44MB media in IDE-type LS-120s. There is no special software installed on the system for these drives. AFAIK, there's no special software even available for the LS-120.

Win98SE calls these drives "A:" and of course I can read and write to floppies normally, just not use the startup disk creation utility.

I guess I can have my students hit startupdisk.com or something instead.

 

[Buck]

Sorry Merc, Windows98 doesn't need drivers for LS120s.

Are you able to create a system diskette (FORMAT A: /s)?

 

[Mercutio]

Absolutely. The drives work just fine for me, except for that one familiar, handy function of Win98.

BIOS on these machines looks normal as far as floppy-like things go, and, unbelievably, I'm using the last revision of the BIOS for these stupid %$%^-ing PC Chips boards (July of 2000).

 

[Buck]

Absolutely. The drives work just fine for me, except for that one familiar, handy function of Win98.

BIOS on these machines looks normal as far as floppy-like things go, and, unbelievably, I'm using the last revision of the BIOS for these stupid %$%^-ing PC Chips boards (July of 2000).

Does that mean that the BIOS has the LS120 option? Sorry for asking so many questions, but this topic interests me.

 

[Mercutio]

No LS-120/CD-ROM/ATAPI setting in the BIOS. Historically, those are there just to make inexperienced techs feel better, AFAIK.

 

[Tea]

(a) What happens if you just SYS A: from the command line?

(b) If that fails, from DOS Mode?

(c) Use Norton Utilities for DOS (you are bound to have one lying around) to make the disc bootable. (Long shot this last one, but if all else fails it might be worth trying.)

 

[Mercutio]

You misunderstand. The disks function perfectly, unless I'm trying to use the utility available in Windows 98 (the one in Add/Remove Programs) to create the "emergency disk" that includes goodies like SCSI and CD-ROM drivers and whatever the heck is in EBD.cab. I want to do this specifically because it's by far the quickest way to get a boot disk with CD-ROM drivers up and running.

I can sys them and all the other good stuff just fine.

 

[Tea]

Wanna borrow one of the Red Hill batch files? Nahh. You can write batch files yourself, I rather suspect. I don't know that I've ever used the Windows GUI to make a boot disc. Oh yes, I did once, just to see what happened. Then I went right back to using Tannin's batch files. It's easier.

(None of which, of course, if the faintest use to you. Oh well, you pay bananas, you get monkeys. )

 

[Mercutio]

Would every PC running Win98 have access to the Redhill batch files?

I have my own set, too, but unfortunately part of the joy of teaching is that I'm limited to what more-or-less everyone has.

 

[.Nut]

I've made plenty of MS-DOS 6 and MS-DOS 7 boot discs using a SuperDisk floppy drive -- even recently.

They have to be setup in the BIOS properly to map to the "A:" drive letter and you must have Floppy Emulation for the LS-120 is "enabled" -- as opposed to being seen by the BIOS and operating system as a removable mass storage device. At least, this is what the AMI BIOS in the various Supermicro mobos have offered over the years.

 

[Mercutio]

The drives are definitely behaving like floppies. They show up as the "A:" drive and have a normal floppy-like icon, as opposed to the generic "removable storage" icon common to zip drives etc.

These drives are on SEVERELY generic boards. AWARD BIOS, but fewer options than normal. I don't think I could change some of those aspects if I wanted to.

At any rate, as I've said, above, everything else about these drives works perfectly, but I can't make a Windows 98 Startup disk through add/remove programs with one.

 

[blakerwry]

i have a 440bx board with a LS120 in it (connects to IDE, made by Mitsubishi) ... makes boot floppies fine in win98se and winME using the GUI's. Mine acts just like a floppy drive, never installed drivers for it...


I don't know why yours aren't....