Why can't I get the floppy drive to work?

[Santilli]

OK:
This is driving me nuts. I'm trying to get my floppy drive to work, and it won't.

I've replaced the drive, and the cable. No joy.
I'm getting power to it, and, in Device manager, it shows up as
FDC generic floppy Drive \6&6A032C4&2&0 and working properly.
Device Instance ID.

However, when ever I put a disk in, it says
"Please insert disk in drive A"
and doesn't read the disk.

In the bios I have enabled Floppy A, 3 1/2 inch, and 2.88mb, or something like that. I've also tried it at 1.44/something.

I'm baffled.

Thanks

Greg

 

[blakerwry]

make sure the floppy is set in BIOS as 1.44, try another disk? try formatting the disk?

Looks like you've done things correctly. May not hurt to reinstall the floppy drive/controller from device manager.

 

[P5-133XL]

All the device manager cares about is that you have an active floppy controller. It does no validity checking for the actual drive, so it will always list the drive as working as long as the controler works.

How do you know that there is power to it? Is the light on continiously? If so, then you have the cable on backwards. When properly cabled, the LED should only shine when the drive is actually reading/writing. Floppy drives are notorious for not having a keyed socket, so it is easy to put the cable on wrong.

Also make sure that there are no bent/broken pins. Because people commonly simply pull the cable off from the side and there being no socket, it is common for the end pins to be bent/broken and thus not actually get plugged back in when the cable is re-attached.

Another possibility is that the drive is actually jumpered for floppy0, floppy1, or cable select. If you don't have the drive jumpered properly or if it is on the wrong plug then it won't address correctly. Ideally you want the floppy drive jumpered as cable select and if it is the only drive it will be plugged into the last plug (The one with the twist).

 

[Santilli]

Light is on all the time, but, I've tried every possible cable position, and the darn light is still on.

changed the bios to 144/125. still no joy.

Gs

 

[Santilli]

I'm using a NEC floppy, and I have no clue where the jumpers are.

s

 

[P5-133XL]

If the light is on all the time, that normally means the floppy cable is on backwards. Don't go to jumpers, unless that is fixed first.

 

[P5-133XL]

What I mean by backwards is that pin 1 is plugged into pin 34 and pin 34 is plugged into pin 1. To correct this you need to switch the sides the red stripe (the read strip id's pin 1) is on on the drive. Typically, the red stripe is in the same side as all the other ribbon cables on the motherboard end. However, on the drive side it is exactly the reverse as all the other drives (pointing away from the power connector), but that is not always the case. If you are lucky then both the MB and the floppy actually label their pins as to where pin one is supposed to be located.

Just in case you also have an issue with the other cable oriention potential problem. The twisted end of the cable plugs into the floppy drive and the straight end goes into the motherboard.

 

[Bozo]

Usually the red stripe goes closest to the power connector.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[timwhit]

Usually the red stripe goes closest to the power connector.

Bozo :mrgrn:

Not always the case with floppy drives. I've seen the power connector on either side.

 

[P5-133XL]

Usually the red stripe goes closest to the power connector.

Bozo :mrgrn:

With hard drives that is true. With floppies, the standard is just the reverse. However, even that has its exceptions. The true standard, is that the red stripe goes with pin one, regardless of its orientation to the power connector.

 

[Bozo]

Every floppy I've install in the last couple of years (Sony, Teac) has been that way. I guess it's brand specific. :-?

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Santilli]

Whatever.
Still light on, and no read, no matter which way the darn cable is setup.... wneddnce: :bounce: :arge: :-? :spiderman:

 

[Bozo]

Is the BIOS setup to recognize a floppy?

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Santilli]

Yes, the bios is setup to recognize 1.44/ something floppy drive.

I have the feeling it's a jumper that fell off, but no idea where....

or, a bios setting I don't know about...

No One lives forever 2 rocks, and Unreal Tourney is pretty good, too.

s

 

[P5-133XL]

The problem is that a jumper won't cause the LED to be continiously on. The jumpers only determine Master, Slave, CS: i.e. how to address the drive.

 

[MaxBurn]

Why would you have a jumper on a floppy drive? I don't think I have seen one with jumpers.

 

[Onomatopoeic]

Light is on all the time...

Definitely sounds like a backwards floppy drive cable.

Is this a two position cable (i.e. -- a floppy drive cable that can handle 2-each floppy drives)?

Every floppy drive has a jumper that will allow it to function as "primary" (A floppy or "secondary" (B floppy.

I haven't used a normal floppy drive in years. I've been using LS-120 floppy drives, which use an IDE connection to the host. I also use an LS-120 in an externally-powered USB housing, which allows me to plug it into any computer system that doesn't have a flappy drive.

 

[P5-133XL]

Originally, floppy cables didn't have twists. That meant that to distinguish between A: and B: you needed jumpers: Just like IDE hard drives there was a master (drive 0) and a slave (drive 1). Later, they figured out that by adding the twist to the cable, you could ID which drive was the master (A and the slave(B. To be compatible with both twisted and untwisted cables, the drives added a cable select (CS) jumper which uses the twist to ID the drive. Modern drives still keep the jumpers though they are often hidden on the circuit board and undocumented.

Since all modern drives are supposedly default jumpered as CS and all modern floppy cables have twists, there is very little need for the jumpers any more. With the observation that the LED is continiously on then the problem is obviously not a jumper issue because the LED has nothing to do with deciding if the drive is A: vs. B:

The LED is an indicator that the floppy drives motor is on. There is a data line/pin that signals to turn on and off the motor on the cable. When the floppy cable is reversed, the motor pin becomes connected to a power pin resulting in the motor recieving a continious signal to turn on. That is why I keep saying to rotate the cable....

 

[Santilli]

Problem is, I've tried every possible cable position, switching the cable on the drive, and on the motherboard, and no joy.

Very strange...

s

 

[MaxBurn]

Every floppy drive has a jumper that will allow it to function as "primary" (A floppy or "secondary" (B floppy.

I have yet to see one of those, I have only dealt with the cable with the little twist and a connector on either side of it, the floppy that's across the twist from the motherboard would be "A" and the one closer to the motherboard would be "B" and you can sometimes swap that order in the BIOS.

All the LS120 drives I have seen are IDE devices and of course have master slave jumpers like hard drives. They make LS120's that work on the floppy controller?

Of course I have only really been on the scene sense the P60 / K62-350 days and havn't worked with anything back in the dark ages before that. Must be before my time that they were doing jumpers on the floppys. I have never seen any documentation on that, guess I just learned something. So on the better floppys this would be silk screened on there I guess?

Knew about the drive light being on solid indicating the cable being backwards, thankfully that doesn't destroy anything as I do it all the time, lol


So, Santilli;
What vintage equipment you working with here, really old stuff or last couple years?

 

[Santilli]

Sort of vintage: :wink:

Supermicro X5DA8, with 4 x X15 Raid, plus hotswap 5 drive, SCA box, dual Xeon 2.8 ghz, a gig of ram, and an ATI X800XL video card, along with a variety of peripherals.

I'm having problems getting the SCA box to work, and, if I want to boot from it, Windows asks for the Floppy with the Scsi driver, so, I think, I pretty much have to have a working floppy to give windows it's scsi drivers, for the box.

s

 

[P5-133XL]

Kinda a pain but you can always slipstream the drivers onto a CD and install from there.

 

[i]

Please forgive the obvious comment, but you did make sure that you reversed the cable connector only at one end, right? If you reverse the connectors at both ends simultaneously you're effectively undoing the fix.

I only post this because really the only reason I think anyone is going to come up with for a permanently on floppy drive light is that pin #1 on the drive is not matched with pin #1 on the motherboard's connector. (And hopefully pin #1 is at least marked on your motherboard so you shouldn't need to touch that end of the cable.)

Unless of course the drive is broken in a remarkably coincidental way. As an alternate option, maybe you can scrounge up another floppy drive to test with?

 

[Bozo]

Here is a utility that makes slipstreaming really easy. And it can set up the cd for an unattened install

http://nuhi.msfn.org/index.html

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Santilli]

I've used two floppies, one new, one about a year, both act the same, light on, all the time, no matter what I do, cable wise.

I'm about ready to revamp, install silent fans, with big Swifttech heat sinks, and go only SCA drives. When I do this, I need to be able to do a clean install, and, I'm getting all the stuff I can out of this box.

Only thing is, right now, I've got a working install on a 4 drive, X 15 raid, and, despite the Adaptec card, it still isn't bad, speedwise.

However, if I can pull all the 68 pin drives, I've got boot drives for a number of new/old computers to go, with a 36 gig X15 as my boot drive, or, a raid, of two of the above, for boot, on a scsi 320 channel, and drives about maxing out LVD, at 75 mb/sec, each.

We will see.

s

 

[Santilli]

Turns out the floppy I bought was DOA.
S

 

[iGary]

I've ran into the occasional "older" conventional floppy drive that was not compatible with modern high-speed computers.

However, I've used 10, 12, and 15 year old floppy drives on recent-vintage P4 systems and they worked flawlessly (PS: the 15 year old floppy drive was a 5-¼ inch drive that I used to retreive some data off 360 KNB and 1.2 MB floppies).

 

[CityK]

Speaking of old floppy drives -

Anyone know if an old extenal laptop floppy drive use the same voltage as a regular floppy drive?

 

[iGary]

Speaking of old floppy drives -

Anyone know if an old extenal laptop floppy drive use the same voltage as a regular floppy drive?

An *old* external floppy drive will have its own AC-to-DC power supply. But then again, you may think something made in the year 2000 is "old."


If this is the case, are you talking about a PCMCIA external floppy drive, or a 90's external SCSI floppy drive? The PCMCIA floppy drive will be bus-powered, which means it uses +5V DC over the PCMCIA bus. The newer CardBus provides +3.3V DC.


If it's an external SCSI floppy drive, it will definitely require an external power supply.

 

[CityK]

Nope, none of that.

Its on a Toshiba Tecra 500 (circa '95)... The machine came with an external floppy, no external power. It plugs into a small port on the left side of the laptop. The port/connector bears a strong resemblence to a parrallel or scsi type connection, albeit much smaller. The specs just lists it as an "external floppy drive port". However, I know that this model provided the option of choosing to use the external device for either HDD/floppy/CD rom (you'll see mention of the "modular" design in the specs).

I've had this thing lying around for a couple of years (with the intention of someday getting it to run again -- problematic psu or power cells) but just can't be bothered for something 10yrs old. So, instead of taking up space any longer, its going off to the recyclers next week.

But then I got to thinking that it might be useful to hang on to the external floppy drive. I was thinking of ripping out the port on the laptop and wiring it for a regular internal floppy ribbon cable and floppy power connector. I could then just mount the port in an empty punchout on the back of a system's i/o plate, attach the floppy ribbon to the mobo and plug in a power connector, and presto!, if the need for an internal floppy drive arises, just plug in the external internal unit.

The benefit of doing this would be that (a) it frees up the internal floppy bay for another hdd and (b) it would act/behave just like an internal floppy drive (which is all it really is, albeit it gets strung outside of the machine), and thus be bootable and DOS friendly, as I imagine a usb floppy wouldn't necessarily.

Hence the questions regarding its power source. I don't know if what I propose is possible, given that its somehow drawing power from the laptop. Would likely have to take the stupid thing apart (again) and have a look see at how the port is wired to determine what goes where and how its getting power etc etc... And as memory serves me right, there were a million little screws involved. I just don't want to spend the time to find out that its impossible...but if it is possible, then this project may very well hold some utility for me.

 

[iGary]

Yoikes. It's a parallel port floppy. It requires a DOS driver to function, meaning that you can't use it as a bootable floppy drive.

The "desktop computer version" of these contraptions normally used an external power supply. Back in the late 1980s and early '90s, these nightmares typically sold for US$399.

 

[CityK]

Yoikes. It's a parallel port floppy. It requires a DOS driver to function, meaning that you can't use it as a bootable floppy drive.

Ahhh - the old "OS before the egg" syndrome eh! Or is that chicken before the driver? Damn. I guess pulling the ol' El Torito gang out of retirement ain't an option now is it. Lousy bunch of slackers.

Back in the late 1980s and early '90s, these nightmares typically sold for US$399.

Awesome! By my calculations (and having assumed a conservative 5% annual rate of appreciation), this little gem is now worth ~$650 !! Now where is that Antiques Roadshow...

 

[i]

Yoikes. It's a parallel port floppy. It requires a DOS driver to function, meaning that you can't use it as a bootable floppy drive.

Are you sure about that? I have to say I'm a little doubtful because I have an IBM ThinkPad from around the same era that has an external floppy drive, with a cable that hooks up to a port exactly like what CityK describes...

The port/connector bears a strong resemblence to a parrallel or scsi type connection, albeit much smaller.

...and it's definitely not a parallel port.

Maybe there's an easy way to find out: CityK, does the laptop have enough power to turn on? Got a bootable floppy disk handy?

 

[CityK]

Boot disks I have handy! But a laptop that works I have not. The batteries are long drained, and I ensured it wouldn't be working again when I took it apart 2 years ago -- I mangled part of the PSU. Actually, a little bit of soldering would easily fix my mangling, but I detected what looked like corrosion along traces of the PCB so I suspected that was the cause of its woes (it would suffer power failures after about 30s, nor would it charge the batteries when off).

After reading Garys' message I went out to the garage (the laptop's current home before it gets shipped out to the great beyond) and had a look at the external floppy device.

The male connector (that which plugs into the laptop's port) has 26 pins, two rows, with the top & bottom pin at each end offset from the the other pins (i.e their longer). I imagine that the 4 end pins are power related, leaving the 22 centre pins for data transmission.

I then ejected the floppy drive from the external case. The back of the floppy drive had a connector that resembled parallel. Inside the enclosure there was what looked like a pin assignment molded into top of the cover, but I couldn't read it properly because of the angle, nor could I figure out how to take the enclosure apart (despite having removed the two visible screws).

At the back of the enclosure was a PCB with the female connector that the drive would plug into. The only writing on the PCB that I could distinguish was "Toshiba FV2FD2". Upon returning inside, I did a google search, which of course turned up a number of links to Toshiba parts carriers, but none gave any clear description of the part other then "PCB". However, for viewing pleasure, it is percisely this puppy.

 

[i]

The male connector (that which plugs into the laptop's port) has 26 pins, two rows, with the top & bottom pin at each end offset from the the other pins (i.e their longer). I imagine that the 4 end pins are power related, leaving the 22 centre pins for data transmission.

That is how my IBM ThinkPad's connector looks. And as those 4 end pins are mounted forward of the others, they connect first, so for the electrical safety of the drive's electronics you are probably right about them being for power and ground.

At the back of the enclosure was a PCB with the female connector that the drive would plug into. The only writing on the PCB that I could distinguish was "Toshiba FV2FD2". Upon returning inside, I did a google search, which of course turned up a number of links to Toshiba parts carriers, but none gave any clear description of the part other then "PCB". However, for viewing pleasure, it is percisely this puppy.

Take a look at the larger image pop-up at the site you found, CityK. How many pins do you count? I came up with 80, but my eyes hurt while trying.

With a 26 pin external connector I'm reminded of the old Iomega SCSI Zip drives. Remember those non-standard 25 pin SCSI connectors they had? And how they did all kinds of mangling to normal SCSI to make that happen? Well ... you've got a 26 pin connector there, or possibly 22 plus 4 for power. Hmmm.

That, combined with the fact that there's an 80 pin connector internally, and the fact that you can alternately plug in an external hard disk or CD-ROM drive into the same exact connector, and the fact that my IBM ThinkPad is a lot less modern than your laptop (based on that PDF spec sheet of yours) and it's floppy drive is not parallel based (so far as I know), and the fact that the PDF spec sheet also mentions that the docking station provided SCSI ports, and the fact that yes they did used to make SCSI floppy drives, and I'd wager a guess that you've got a non-standard SCSI cabling setup that's actually supporting a SCSI floppy drive.

"SCSI floppy drive?" you ask. I happen to have two ancient bookmarks, here and here, that are so old I had to turn to archive.org to find copies of the original content. You see, there was point at which I was so sick of the masses of cabling inside my case, and the poor performance of IDE devices, that I really looked into going all SCSI. (Note that the links to the PDFs at the "winstation" site are still active, courtesy the web archive site.) Anyway...

You will also note that, at the "winstation" site, they mention the following for their "Notebook 1.44M Floppy Drive":

Internal 26-pos Notebook 1.44M floppy disk drive w/Black Front Bezel

"26-pos" eh? From a company that also makes standard 50-pin SCSI floppy drives? Hmm.

I'm not an expert (certainly not anymore), but I'd wager that what you've got there is some kind of SCSI setup. If you're lucky, it's just the cabling and superfluous connectors that are non-standard. If you're unlucky, everything's non-standard. See if you can find a way to open that enclosure and see what the pin diagram says.

 

[i]

You know CityK, from that spec sheet it sounds like you've got a great little laptop there. I mean, heck, it has CardBus slots! My ThinkPad doesn't have those - just the older 16bit PCMCIA slots. Are you sure you can't find a replacement power supply somewhere?

 

[i]

*sigh* Or maybe it's not SCSI. I wish I could find a definitive explanation on how those 26-pin connectors are used on those older Toshibas.

 

[i]

...and then of course things like this from Adaptec turn up that, as listed under "External Connectors" at "Technical Specifications" section, have the following:

26-pin connector attaches to 50-pin High-Density (included), 50-pin Low-Density (included), or DB25 (via mail-in offer) cable

If Adaptec can squeeze SCSI through a 26-pin connector via a 32-bit Cardbus slot, why couldn't Toshiba have something similar acting as a host controller inside a Tecra laptop?

 

[CityK]

The male connector (that which plugs into the laptop's port) has 26 pins, two rows, with the top & bottom pin at each end offset from the the other pins (i.e their longer). I imagine that the 4 end pins are power related, leaving the 22 centre pins for data transmission.

That is how my IBM ThinkPad's connector looks. And as those 4 end pins are mounted forward of the others, they connect first, so for the electrical safety of the drive's electronics you are probably right about them being for power and ground.[/url]It looks a lot like a combo between the HPCN50 pin & HPCN50 pin...shape wise and form that is.

Take a look at the larger image pop-up at the site you found, CityK. How many pins do you count? I came up with 80, but my eyes hurt while trying.

Yep, its an 80 pin. I popped the floppy out again and paid closer attention.

With a 26 pin external connector I'm reminded of the old Iomega SCSI Zip drives. Remember those non-standard 25 pin SCSI connectors they had? And how they did all kinds of mangling to normal SCSI to make that happen?

Nope, don't remember....I've only taken an interest in hardware more or less in the last 5 years or so.

Well ... you've got a 26 pin connector there, or possibly 22 plus 4 for power. Hmmm.....That, combined with the fact that there's an 80 pin connector internally, and the fact that you can alternately plug in an external hard disk or CD-ROM drive into the same exact connector, and the fact that my IBM ThinkPad is a lot less modern than your laptop (based on that PDF spec sheet of yours) and it's floppy drive is not parallel based (so far as I know), and the fact that the PDF spec sheet also mentions that the docking station provided SCSI ports, and the fact that yes they did used to make SCSI floppy drives, and I'd wager a guess that you've got a non-standard SCSI cabling setup that's actually supporting a SCSI floppy drive.....You will also note that, at the "winstation" site, they mention the following for their "Notebook 1.44M Floppy Drive":

Internal 26-pos Notebook 1.44M floppy disk drive w/Black Front Bezel

"26-pos" eh? From a company that also makes standard 50-pin SCSI floppy drives? Hmm.....
I'm not an expert (certainly not anymore), but I'd wager that what you've got there is some kind of SCSI setup. If you're lucky, it's just the cabling and superfluous connectors that are non-standard. If you're unlucky, everything's non-standard.

Yep, I'm pretty sure now that I got a 26-pos cable connecting to a 80-pin SCSI floppy!

See if you can find a way to open that enclosure and see what the pin diagram says.

Couldn't get it open! Have know idea how the top and bottom of the thing are held together. Anyways, I managed to remove the FV2FD2 backpane, which allowed much more light in and I was able to read it. Turned out to be nothing of importance:

Toshiba OME >PC+ABS<
47T111280  00
(a 6x13 Grid) with only the top row and the 13th column populated:
Row 1 - 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 UT
Col 13 - UT 9 0 1 2 3

 

[CityK]

You know CityK, from that spec sheet it sounds like you've got a great little laptop there. I mean, heck, it has CardBus slots! My ThinkPad doesn't have those - just the older 16bit PCMCIA slots.

You know I thought that both of them were plain PC Card slots! I didn't even spot the stuff about SCSI that you found.

Are you sure you can't find a replacement power supply somewhere?

I'm positive I can find one. The cheapest one I found was something like $25US from somewhere deep in the heart of the Jersey swamplands. Nothing reasonably priced locally.

I don't know if I can justify shelling out ~$40-50 (after tax, shipping & currency conv.) for something so "old"...especially when I'm not certain that it was the PSU (although likely). Part of me would really like to get it going, but the rational side of me (that keeps saying things like "you'll get more utility out of putting that money towards groceries!") keeps rearing its ugly head.